Being a European

I was born in 1948 and got my education through a family that believed in socialism, democracy and people giving each other a leg-up in life. The other group that influenced my early days were the teachers I came across, especially in secondary school and at university.

These people had served in the second world war all over the world. Some had seen things they preferred not to talk about. But they came back to Scotland with the same belief in democracy - and education was paramount.

They had mostly been denied a university education in the 1930s and they made up for it after 1945. They drank in knowledge, argued with their university tutors, questioned everything and went on to become astonishingly well-read and challenging teachers. Our schools were suddenly full of clever, well-educated young working class people. Mr Chips was out. Night school was in. The women left behind to run the country during the second world war had the same attitude: ambition for ourselves and other people ran right through Scotland in the 1950s and 60s.

When the Tory prime minister in 1960 was telling working people down south 'you've never had it so good' and encouraging workers to measure their prosperity by having a car and an annual holiday in Mallorca, and while the Tories desperately clung on to the colonies and the 'Empire', Scotland was already following a different line in life.

Scots believed in the future of Europe. Not the EU. Europe. The continent had been through two world wars in 30 years. Some Scots had fought in the Spanish Civil War. They knew about Fascism and there was hope and determination among many Scots from a socialist background that none of this was going to happen again. I grew up knowing about the Holocaust, about the major part played in world war two by the Russian people, etc, and I'm grateful for the political education I got back then.

Now, two days before the UK is forced out of the EU, I feel as distant from England's brexit as it's possible to be. How did brexit happen? Honestly, four years after the EU referendum, there's no point in going back over the scene.

But it's disturbing to live in a state where the people who voted for and got brexit are still telling the rest of us that brexit is likely to fail - and when it does it will be the fault of people like us who voted to remain in the EU. Where a whole state, heavily dependent on trade, is prepared to abandon the biggest trading market in the world, with no guarantee of a plan B to cover the employment  - or any other - needs of the population.

I could go on but why bother? I have lost my citizenship as a European. I have no right to travel or live wherever I want in 28 EU countries. My country (Scotland) can't welcome other Europeans to come and live and work here, no matter how much we need them or want their expertise. The young people in my family can't study in universities in other European countries.

It's not that we've reverted to life in Europe as it was before the EU. It's as if we've even lost the rights Scots had in the late middle ages, when we could and did send our young people to study in Salamanca, Bologna, Paris, Rome, etc. On 1 February, we'll be back to queuing up to fill in forms in 'friendly' European countries. Back to being seen as aliens rather than neighbours.

How is this an improvement? Was there no other way? Surely Scotland can find its way back to Europe. Thank you for leaving a light on.