The recent vote over air strikes in Syria at Westminster has stirred up some strong feelings on either side of the debate.
It’s not really surprising, as no-one should take a decision to go to war lightly.
There is little doubt that Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, son of left wing icon Tony Benn, made a stirring and emotive speech which may have tipped more Labour MPs into the government lobby than had been expected.
That Hilary Benn makes for an unlikely hero of the hour is an understatement. He has the appearance of an Oxford don. The speech won applause from all sides of the House and was classic Westminster.
Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader. was not pleased with the speech.
Salmond, who missed a key debate at Westminster but found time to unveil a portrait of himself in Edinburgh, seems to think he knows the mind of Hilary’s father better than the Benn family.
Salmond suggested that Tony Benn would be spinning in his grave had he heard his son’s speech. Emily Benn, Tony’s granddaughter, called on the surly Salmond to withdraw his remarks.
In a weekend article for The Independent, political columnist Matthew Norman recalled an interview with Benn senior, when the latter was being pushed to disassociate himself from his more right wing son - then a rising star of the Blair administration.
The normally gentle Mr Benn gave this response: “Don’t dare suggest to me that, because we have political differences, I am ashamed of the son I adore.”
Norman recalled another story of Benn snr falling out with another commentator over similar comments about his son and when he finally reopened a conversation, he said: “Never disrespect my family again.”
At a Labour conference I once had breakfast with Snr & Jnr Benn and also witnessed nothing but filial love.
“Like most fathers there was nothing but pride from Tony Benn for his son,” wrote Norman.
Salmond has fallen into the trap of many political third parties - presumptions to claim primacy of interpretation over the views of families.
Ten years ago, I agreed to accept an honour. The grandson of an IRA veteran from the War of Independence and with a fairly impressive family and personal nationalist pedigree, there were those who were quick to line up to say this was some kind of betrayal.
I have never made any secret of my pride in my grandfather’s IRA narrative or that of his father who fought in the First Word War.
Unlike many, I knew that he rejected violence as a direct consequence of the civil war and I also knew that when my grandfather was approached in the 1950s to become one of the leaders of the re-forming IRA, he refused on the grounds that only politics and not the bullet would never achieve their objectives.
Others became much slower learners. None of this stopped republican trolls taking to social media to attack me.
So therefore imagine my surprise to discover that my own father had given an interview to the Sunday Times on the matter saying he was proud of the recognition. In fact no-one in my family ever criticised my decision.
But internet trolls are now commonplace and it seems that some have no sense of irony or self-awareness. Some seem to suffer from historical memory loss and political myopia.
Given the senseless waste of innocent lives as result of our ‘Troubles’ one would have thought that supporters of former paramilitary organisations would have maintained a dignified if not embarrassed silence rather than moralising over the rights and wrongs bombing ISIL.
But not so - as this week I read threads from several republican sources criticising the newly elected MP for St Helen’s North, Conor McGinn, for voting for the Syrian air strikes.
McGinn’s crime it seems was ‘forgetting his south Armagh roots’ and by implication was betraying his father, a respected former SF councillor and activist.
Before McGinn got elected he said in an interview “that he was proud of his father but that their political outlooks differed”.
McGinn reiterated the positive influences of his parental and community upbringing in his maiden speech whilst his proud parents listened to him from the public gallery.
It’s doubtful if the McGinn family discussions are as anodyne as the Waltons but in that they are not different to any other Irish family.
Ultimately, the trolls would do well to remember that McGinn’s mandate comes from his sizeable Lancashire electorate and not his genes.
