Nurse’s dying wish to campaign for Brexit in the EU referendum has been granted, 19 YEARS after her death
Lifelong Labour supporter told her son to do everything possible to get Britain out of the 'Common Market'
A RETIRED nurse who told her son to use her money to campaign for Brexit has placed a newspaper advert - 19 YEARS after she died.
Hilda Churchill, who died in her nineties in 1997, spent most of her life with her political views kept closely to her chest.
But in her final years she told son John that if there was ever an opportunity to leave the ‘Common Market’ he should use any money she left to help the cause.
And John, a retired electrical engineer, remained true to her wishes and used £2,500 she saved up to place two adverts for her in local papers.
The first - which said staying in the EU would result in a single economy and eventually a single country - was published on Saturday.
John, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, said: "We were talking, and she said if there was a referendum which came up, she wanted me to use her money - anything that she left me - for it.
"She said she was never given the chance of a referendum and she didn't think that was right.
"She never really expressed her political views to me - except when it came to this Common Market thing.
"I'm certain that if she was here to vote today she would vote to leave the EU.
“That was the grassroots Labour position."
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Hilda, from the Rhondda Valley in south Wales, had two children with her late husband who was also called John, a machinist, and three grandchildren.
After moving to Gloucestershire she worked in hospitals, including a tuberculosis isolation unit, until she retired in her 60s.
A lifelong Labour supporter, she aired her anti-Europe views after the UK government signed the Maastricht Treaty - which lead to the creation of the euro - in 1992.
The agreement to integrate Europe was supposed to create a common economic and monetary union, and was signed by 12 nations.
The first advert outlines the "seven steps" towards a single country of Europe.
It says the UK is currently at step five - after the Lisbon Treaty, which was signed in 2007 and adds: "Warning not for the faint-hearts."
The advert will also be printed in another paper in Gloucestershire - yet to be chosen - this week.
Married John, 78, a UKIP supporter who is campaigning for Vote Leave, said: "Her feeling was that we never wanted to be in in the first place.
"She said 'one day you will be able to use my money to get us out of the common market.
"My mum was caring and feisty. She knew her mind quite well.
"I suppose I could have left the money to the Vote Leave campaign, but I wanted to have more control over it."