MOURNERS packed the aisle at St Ninian’s Craigmailen Church in Linlithgow to remember Robert Salmond, the father of former First Minister Alex Salmond.

The father of four, grandfather of five, and great-grandfather of two, died on June 5 at the age of 95.

During the Second World War, the engineer was a petty officer in the Royal Navy, where he worked on two different fleet carriers, including HMS Indomitable, when she was torpedoed during the invasion of Sicily in 1943.

After the war he worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Pensions, helping miners who had contracted lung disease to get compensation.

Delivering the eulogy, Salmond told mourners: “When I was a lad, I was struck between the contrast between this carefree Saturday morning figure reciting poetry and the sometimes stern father who spent a great deal of time hunched over his civil service papers sprayed out across the living room carpet.

“It was years later that Willie Wilson, an ex-miner from Kinneil colliery, and my Dad’s favourite golfing partner, put me right.

“He explained that Dad was greatly respected in the mining community as the adjudicator who would go to the ultimate degree in finding a reason for granting appeals for industrial white finger and the other occupational diseases. It’s called public service and what a contrast with today, where private companies are bribed to deny disabled people their entitlements.”

Salmond also confirmed the “mostly true” story of how his father’s political allegiances changed from Labour to SNP after a canvasser for Tam Dalyell, thinking he was a kindred spirit, joked that SNP stood for “Scottish Nose Pickers”.

Robert, offended on behalf of a friend, never voted Labour again, and the canvasser had inadvertently created “a whole generation of SNP supporters, candidates and First Ministers”.

Robert’s wife, Mary, died in 2003.