War hero living in house of George Orwell says state of emergency should be declared after Brexit vote

Today, Frank Medhurst, a 96-year-old published author, is talking with great passion in that same house, his own home in Carlton, near Stockton, about his belief that the British state must once again be saved.

Mr Medhurst's letter to The Guardian before last week's referendum arguing in the strongest possible terms went "viral", was passed on tens of thousands of times online and was picked up and retweeted by tragic Yorkshire MP Jo Cox.

His opinion in that letter was taken notice of because he raised fears that Brexit could threaten the peace in Europe, a peace he fought for as an RAF gunner in the Second World War.

HERO: The blue plaque on the house at Carlton, Stockton, where George Orwell lived. Current owner, Frank Medhurst, erected the plaque himself when Stockton Borough Council declined. Picture: CHRIS WEBBER

Books on peace spill out from all corners in this house for it is a subject Mr Medhurst has studied all his adult life. So it could be thought strange that this pensioner, whose own father fought in the trenches of the Great War, began his adult life frustrated he couldn't get to fight quickly enough.

"I could see war was coming, anyone could," he says, discussing the near-Armageddon of the Second World War over coffee and biscuits, holding a model of a lightweight-looking plane he served in as a gunner. He explains he applied to join the Navy's airborne fleet and passed the medical in April, 1939, months before the actual outbreak. "But when war broke out they said they didn't need me straight away," he says. "I was so frustrated I got the next train to join the RAF."

The young man had a tough war. He served in Gibraltar, South Asia and then in the North Atlantic. Of 54 airmen who went to South Asia with him, only 21 survived and he lost his hearing due to the sound of gun fire and clattering of spent shells. "War is wicked, a vile situation," he says, simply.

Mr Medhurst's letter before the referendum argued that the European Union should be maintained in the cause of peace. "If the nation should fall for this deceit (of Brexit)," the letter says, "I can only conclude that the lives of my comrades – Irish, Scots, Welsh and English – were lost in vain."

HERO: Franklin Medhurst in his days as an RAF gunner in the Second World War

Now, after the vote, he believes a state of emergency should be declared and a national government formed.

Referring to the likelihood of a new Scottish referendum, given Scotland voted 'remain' and England 'leave,' he says the matter is urgent. "A country about to lose half its land and a significant part of its population is in an emergency situation," he argues. "We need a national government and we should have people from Scotland and Northern Ireland leading it. The country must be saved."

Mr Medhurst, who was once one of the most important urban planners in the country and resigned from his job redesigning Teesside because the government and local councils wouldn't commit to demolishing poor standard housing, argues that the real frustration demonstrated in the massive 'leave' vote was about inequality.

"Look at Hartlepool," says Mr Medhurst who worked with The Northern Echo's greatest campaigning editor, Harold Evans, in the 1960s. "About 70 per cent voted 'leave' but the town has one of the lowest numbers of immigrants in the country. At the end of the war the ratio of pay from worker to his or her boss was about ten to one...now it can be 200 to one. We have become a highly unequal society. It's that issue, which does not get talked about, which causes frustration."

Inevitably our chat turns to our mutual hero, George Orwell. Mr Medhurst, who has written a book about corruption in town planning in the 1960s heyday of convicted architect John Poulson, explains how he only discovered the great journalist and writer lived in the house after living there for 12 years.

One lonely night he was reading a third volume of George Orwell's papers by a fire when he stumbled across his own address at the top of one of Orwell's letters. Electrified, he found out more, much more, including how Orwell's wife, Eileen O'Shaughessy, a South Shields lass, died at Newcastle Infirmary. She had half written a letter to her husband. When journalist Orwell returned from covering devastated northern France that letter was on the hall table by the door.

"He would be on my side on this argument, I think," says the old war hero who was fighting when Orwell was writing. "He didn't want any more war. No-one wanted any more war."