Editorial: ​Saying sorry is not enough if you call for something as shameful as MPs to be killed

With great dignity, Katie Amess – whose MP father David was murdered by a deranged Islamist – has spoken about the vile remarks by Kneecap calling for Tory MPs to be killed.

Ms Amess told BBC Radio Ulster that her life had been destroyed. She said of the republican rap band: “I think when they hear these words from me I have hope they're going to say they're sorry, they didn't think it through.”

The contrast with her measured words, appealing to reason, and Kneecap’s hate and mockery and extreme slogans and unapologetic use of republican terror imagery, could not be more stark. The problem, however, is what if they just get away with an apology? For calling for the killing of Tory MPs?

If the band did not mean it then it needs to say so. When we have tried to get a comment, their manager says: “Nobody from Kneecap will be providing comment to your 'paper’, ever.”

Since the beginning of rock and pop, bands have behaved rebelliously, wildly and said outrageous things. We would be a priggish society if that was suddenly expected to stop. But we have become a culture in which people are jailed for hate speech. People have been given prison sentences for making racist comments in private Whatsapp chats. One woman was jailed for more than two years for putting out a disgusting tweet after the Southport murders calling for hotels with migrants to be set on fire.

Are we the sort of country that jails people for hate speech or not? This paper says we should have a very high threshold before people are given criminal convictions for shameful speech. But if we are going to do that, then calling for MPs to be killed must result in equivalent punishment.

It was republican terrorists – the sort of people who wore the balaclavas that Kneecap find so funny – who killed four of the six MPs murdered since World War Two. • Kneecap issued an apology to the families of David Amess and Jo Cox, but not to those of MPs murdered by Irish republican terrorists, after this editorial went to press in our print edition. They also insisted that they do not support Hamas or Hezbollah or killing civilians. The band does not to answer questions from the News Letter but we would like to know if they condemn Irish republican paramilitaries and the many, many civilians killed by such terrorism, and – if they do – whether they think that imagery such as a balaclava might be an insult to such dead