Ruth Dudley Edwards: I believe Joshua Bonehill-Paine is genuinely repentant and would be a powerful voice against extremism
I intended to write today about the latest nonsense about a united Ireland being around the corner, but I’ve been deflected by the row about the selection of Joshua Bonehill-Paine to stand as a Conservative candidate for the Somerset Council.
These days Bonehill-Paine is a much-admired and very funny political satirist on the right (see the YouTube channel The Crewkerne Gazette) who is a passionate opponent of all kinds of extremism, particularly anti-semitism, but he served time as a young man for his Jew-hating and allied political violence.
“Kemi Badenoch, you've got this very very wrong,” said Labour peer Luciana Berger, who left the party for a time over its appalling anti-semitism under Jeremy Corbyn, and whom Bonehill-Paine was convicted of harassing.
She thinks his record is so foul, he crossed the line and he should not be allowed to stand for public office.
Now, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is respected and liked by many English Jews over her fervent support for their community, but for some, it’s a bad judgment.
This took me back to a fraught period in 2017 when my dear friend, the ex-terrorist Sean O’Callaghan, died and my tributes to him understandably upset many unionists who didn’t know him.
Those who did understood that he had repented and had themselves taken seriously the biblical injunction “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him."
An idealistic child, Sean had been fed with hateful propaganda for violent republicanism and was taught to rob and murder for that evil cause.
When he realised the reality, he spent the rest of his life atoning and repenting by becoming a spy for the forces of law and order, sabotaging IRA operations, giving himself up and serving time for all his crimes and once out of jail devoting himself to saving impressionable young people from dangerous ideologues.
I see Bonehill-Paine as being in that honourable tradition.
In gaol he read the Bible and at 21 came to realise that he had embraced antisemitism as his whole way of seeing the world.
“It turned grievance into ideology, paranoia into purpose, and hatred into identity.”
In the years since he left prison he's been a campaigner against all forms of extremism.
And as Sean did, he draws heavily on his own experience to explain to young people how “grievance, isolation and conspiracy theories are pulling them into an extremist worldview.”
The Times of Israel — which described his criminal past as “ugly” — described “his self-reforming journey” as remarkable.
Because of my years of public opposition to violent Irish republicanism, my views have carried weight with many unionists.
I’d like to think that my record of supporting Jews and being a Zionist carries some weight with too.
On my desk I have a tin badge saying ‘I Stand With British Jews’, which l wore on 23rd July, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar known as Tisha B’Av.
I keep it to hand to wear when, for instance, there’s another event locally backing Palestinian Action.
I believe Joshua Bonehill-Paine is genuinely repentant and would be a powerful voice against extremism.
l Ruth Dudley Edwards’ books include The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions and The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice