Roger Dunn, of South Embankment, Dartmouth, writes:

So MP Sarah Wollaston reverses her European Union membership decision.

I’m sure it was preceded by much soul-searching and one whose declaration required a great deal of courage. And still on the subject of courage: in my lifetime, my dad and four uncles risked their lives to save our country while under attack from the most fiendish of weaponry as we were threatened by imminent occupation. My uncle Len was killed in action.

They also fought to restore freedom to all those countries – with one obvious exception – and with whom our Prime Minister negotiates.

 So why isn’t Great Britain, perhaps with ‘favoured’ status, seated at the head of the EU conference table more often?

 And how has being an EU member, with an organisation called the CBI, helped us with any of the following in my children’s increasingly overcrowded homeland.

* Seven out of 10 cars on our streets now come from one EU country. If its commercial vehicles are included, it is embarrassing. Yes, I drive another foreign car, but only because I couldn’t find any equivalent car made by a British-owned company. See my later comments on labelling.

* The steel ordered for the new Forth road bridge is being supplied by China and shipped halfway round the world. The transportation of this steel consumed enough of the Earth’s dwindling fuel-oil resources to fill Slapton Ley. Goodbye again to British Steel!

Yet we perfected the steel-making process and built the world’s first iron bridge.

* Hinckley Point nuclear power station’s future development (a strategic resource) to be decided by EDF France and China. Yet, we split the atom and built the world’s first nuclear power station.

* Finally, four Royal Navy re-fuelling tankers ordered in 2012 from South Korea at a cost of £450m. Yet we built the world’s first iron ship.

Swan Hunter’s shipyard on Tyneside, where the Ark Royal was built, is now acres of mud flats.

 But there is one hopeful sign. I noticed recently that some birthday cards in a local store bear the sticker ‘Made in Great Britain’ under a picture of the Union Jack.

The same store, many years ago, used to proclaim that ‘90 per cent of our goods are British made’.

Will Sarah campaign for it to made obligatory for a ‘Made in Great Britain’ label to be attached to home-produced goods?

This would help encourage us towards buying, for example, a British-made car, washing machine etc, thus providing engineering and research and development job opportunities for our kids in the near future.

 And let’s not forget; we are never alone. We have access to a large part of the world with which we still share two unique assets – the same English language and a tried and tested, mutually beneficial kinship.

A kinship demonstrated by the shoulder to shoulder support we’ve benefited from during earlier war-torn times.

That knowledge may be the pointer towards a better future away from continental collaboration.

 So – come on leaders! Let’s not be frit!  If you want to do the best for our country, Great Britain, here’s my suggestion:

First, stop trying to frighten us or spending time point-scoring over your own rivals. Then take a good look at the jobs the rest of us are actually doing and which you are paid to support.

Then, depending on whether in or out is your choice, either get across that Channel and on our behalf start punching effectively – as the leader of a country with an admirable track-record.

Or start planning now for a new future, with us all standing once again on our own two feet.

We and our children deserve no less.