His passionate speech, coming after ten and a half hours of debate, was greeted – most unusually – with applause from both sides of the House.
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On Wednesday night Benn’s son Hilary, serving as Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, stood at the dispatch box to support the Conservative government’s motion calling for British air strikes on Islamic State militants to be extended to Syria in defiance of his party leader’s position.
The motion passed by 397 to 223, with dozens of Labour MPs voting against their leader to back the government.
But the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman Alex Salmond accused the Commons Speaker John Bercow of bias by allowing Mr Benn and Foreign Secretary extra time for their summing-up speeches.
“We have a moral and practical duty to extend to Syria the acts we are now taking in Iraq”, Benn told the Commons, addressing his party directly.
But the comments sparked an angry response from Tony Benn’s granddaughter, Emily.
“I hope you examine your conscience and retract it”.
Salmond was further quizzed on his comments during the radio interview to which he replied: “I think that is fair political comment to contrast the view of the father and the son”.
Mr Benn’s speech, which we are told he wrote in the chamber during the debate, has been described as “truly historic” by commentators.
Cllr Hughes also retweeted a link to the Mirror editorial suggesting that although Prime Minister David Cameron “got his way he may live to regret it” in which the effectiveness of air strikes were questioned. So reasoned an impassioned Mr Benn.
“As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism”.
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“We are here faced by fascists – not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in the chamber tonight, and the people we represent”, he said to a chamber that sat silently listening. “They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt”.
