What family has ever been made stronger by being torn apart?

As Referendum day approaches, we can all see just how much the argument and debate about Scotland’s future has stirred emotions; hardly surprising, given what is at stake. And yet these emotions are also felt south of the border by many families – mine included – whose lives have been intertwined across it.

My father once said that “Being half Scots myself, my heart beats faster whenever I cross the border.” His mother, and my grandmother, Margaret Eadie Holmes came from Bridge of Weir, a few miles outside Paisley. She was intensely proud of her Scottish heritage and she made her own union when she married my grandfather William Benn – a Londoner.

Towards the end of my father’s life we often discussed the Referendum, and when asked for his view about Scotland separating itself from the United Kingdom, he would simply reply “I am very much against it” and then add with that twinkle in his eye “in the nicest possible way.”

I think he felt so strongly about it, as do I, because of the ties of family and politics between Scotland and England that ran through him like a thread. He could not imagine that the land of his mother’s birth would separate itself. And he also felt passionately that the socialism for which he campaigned throughout his life was based on fundamental labour movement  principles. Solidarity. Standing together. Supporting one another in the good times and the bad. He believed that the Labour cause is best advanced by that old trade union slogan: “Unity is Strength”.

The campaign has been passionate and vigorous, and I have no doubt that my father would have enjoyed participating in it; after all he was never one to shrink from saying what he thought. He understood that those who argue for independence do so in good faith, but he fundamentally disagreed with them. And I, too, feel that we are not only bound together by our shared history, but by the future solidarity that remaining together will secure.

After all, what family has ever been made stronger by being torn apart?

Hilary Benn is the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government