Why did I campaign so hard for Brexit?

Why did I campaign so heavily for Brexit? The campaign is not yet over, but most of mine ended yesterday when the group that  I attached myself to mounted its last street stall. Some individuals from the group have taken leaflets to deliver themselves, but I can barely walk at the best of times, so that option is out for me.

If you want to understand what motivated me then you first need to know that a son of mine was born on the 7 June 2000 in Mexico City, and sixteen years later to the very day, on the 7 June 2016, he finally received his British nationality. The reason for that is partly due to the fact that unlike his half-brothers, I am not married to his Mexican mother, but mainly it is because successive British governments have tried to pretend that they have immigration under control, when actually they haven't. So the children of men like me who have non-EU offspring have had their lives made difficult whilst almost every European and his offspring could just wander in at will. 

When this young fellow was born back in 2000 the rule was that a British mother could obtain a consular birth certificate for her child born abroad, but a father could only do it for children born legitimately. That was fine and dandy for my two legitimate sons, but not so good for the other one. I promised his mother that I would keep abreast of any changes in the legislation, and even though I have not seen the woman in many a long year, I kept that promise.

In about 2006 the law was changed to allow fathers to register their children irrespective of marital status, but it was not made retrospective, so it only applied to children born after that date. I then got in touch with old cronies from university days who had by then become senior state functionaries and politicians, to see what could be done.

More than one told me that the reason behind it all was that the government had made the minimum concession that it thought that it could away with under British equality legislation, and fathers like me would just have to wait our sweat until it was politically possible to admit our children to their rights.

That change happened just a  few months ago, and my son's mother and I then went through the complicated ritual that led to my son's registration as a British national. 

On one level the EU has nothing to do with this, but actually it really has everything to do with it.

If the country was not being inundated with Europe's flotsam and jetsam then this legislation would not have been controversial. However, and quite rightly in my view, all governments after the 2008 financial crisis had to be seen to at least try to control the influx, and the only way that they could think of to do it was to discriminate against people born outside the EU.

What the Federasts who want this situation to continue do not realise is that there is a whole, wide world out there that British people have settled down the centuries and many of us have left offspring in those distant lands. Those children should have more rights over this, the land of their fathers, than any European.

As I look back on the campaign for independence that ended for me yesterday, I reflect that had this issue of my son's pending British nationality not come to the fore in spring this year, I probably would not have wrecked my health campaigning for Brexit. I would have blogged about it, probably written my two e-pamphlets Brexit: For a New Country and Why Scotland Should Leave The EU, and certainly voted for it, but that would  have been enough. 

I did it for my sons, all three of them, if you want to know the truth. That their generation may inherit this land as is their right.