Hilary Benn, the new British Secretary of State for NI, was in Roslea on the Twelfth to visit the grave of his great-great grandfather. The Leeds South MP has just been appointed as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in Keir Starmer's new Labour Government and for one of his first engagements in the North attended Twelfth of July celebrations in Fermanagh.
He then posted a series of tweets referencing his journey to Holy Trinity Church in Clogh, Co Fermanagh to visit the grave of his great-great grandfather Dr Thomas Graydon who he tweeted "is remembered on the family gravestone". Dr Graydon, he posted, was born in Roslea but, like so many others emigrated to the United States where he died in 1900 aged 49.
Hilary Benn is the son of long-serving left-wing Labour MP, Tony Benn. Of his appointment as Northern Ireland Secretary of State, that he will be "a friend to all, beholden to none." One of his followers on X tweeted he could've travelled a few hundred yards further to cross "the seamless border into Co. Monaghan close to Smithborough and Scotstown" and remembered how he had been to Tyholland during "the BREXIT fuss".
