As I write this, I glance at a funeral mass card on a shelf above my desk. The card is from 1963 – for John F Kennedy – recently retrieved from the belongings of my late mother-in-law. Aged 92, Betty Healy from Co Galway died last year in a wonderful Camden hospice on the Feast of All Souls. It was a dignified death. Betty’s parents had left the West of Ireland for New York, passing through Ellis Island in 1910 before returning home in 1925.

Throughout his thousand days in power, Jack Kennedy represented the hopes not just of a nation, but millions of Irish around the world and of generations forced from their homeland. I was contemplating this family history following recent elections and the difficulties facing my party, the Labour Party.