I WENT to bed on Thursday, June 23 convinced that I would wake up finding that we were still chained to Brussels and all its works. I was depressed.

But with the Prime Minister, leaders of countries, the American President, the Governor of the Bank of England, the leaders of trade unions and financial experts all urging us to remain, how could it be otherwise?

At 4.30am on June 24 I could not sleep, I had to know the worst and I pressed the button on my bedside radio and I was utterly astonished to find that the leavers like myself were ahead and expected to achieve a majority in the referendum.

I get tired of footballers who have scored the winning goal, are asked how they feel and say they are over the moon.

I felt I was over the furthest galaxy in the Universe.

At last Britain could stand up tall, go its own way, make its own policies and laws, and where our leaders appeared to be failing we could get them out and try again.

Unlike the Brussels bureaucrats, I believe that the main reason for this extraordinary result was apprehension about the effects of uncontrolled immigration from Europe.

David Cameron, with enormous energy, had gone round Europe meeting every single Prime Minister throughout the European Community but not one of them would agree to sanction any change to the right of all citizens to travel and reside in any other EU country they so choose.

But their last pronouncement claimed that we had 65 million people in our population though there could be one or two million more that had come in unnoticed.

At this rate of increase by 2040 we would have 20 million more and by the end of the century this would be over 100 million.

Housing lists of people who are at present seeking a house or flat runs into millions because pathetically few houses have been built in the last few years and folk cannot afford the existing places.

We cannot turn the country into a great refugee camp and the need now is to have new towns.

The Forest of Dean, because the government can get it free as it belongs to the Crown, could probably site one of these here – that is, if it has not been dug up if they find gas and oil in the zones which are now being marketed.

We cannot cope with such population pressure without enormous loss to the quality of life.

Those of us who voted leave are accused of racism. When I completed my National Service in 1958 I took a post with a very large insurance company at their head office in Aldwych London. The company found it had a great shortage of typists who could deal with financial accounts in those happy days before computers. There was just one application for an urgent vacancy which was from a young woman who had all the qualifications necessary. She did not get the job. The leader of the typing pool said that if a Jamaican was to be appointed she would quit immediately and probably this would be followed by other members of her team. I was so angry about this and other similar incidents that I quit the company and became a teacher.

Today such racial discrimination is illegal and rare. The problem is essentially overcrowding a densely populated country.

I have a copy sent to me by a relative from Dover from the Dover Express. Dover is overwhelmed with migrants, mostly young men from Europe who are here legally but the East Kent police have in the last year arrested over 3,000 who are illegal.

The copy in my hands refers to the latest protest. The Dover MP appealed to the Home Office to ban the march, but the police said they had no right to stop people peacefully protesting according to an agreed plan.

Some 700 police from far and wide all in full riot squad armour, carrying shields, and accompanied by 8 police on horses similarly protected. The cost of this operation was well over £1million

However, the violent demonstrators who most­ly came from a distance also got wind of this reception and only 32 waving a flag and calling slogans actually turned up at Dover whose residents fearful of the expected battle had turned it into a ghost town.

Did you know about this? Was it on the news? Of course not. The government has successfully silenced reporting about the tension along the channel coast. They didn’t want you to vote leave and they have tried to hush it up.

But now we are free and as soon as our politicians get out of the horrible mess they’ve got themselves into we can copy the example of other countries, like Australia, who have had to deal with similar situations.

June 23 2016 is a date that will appear in school history books for centuries to come. We must be able to control our borders. – Roger Horsfield, Bream.