Son of IRA killer launches badge initiative encouraging public support of British Jews

The son of a convicted IRA killer has begun an initiative designed to support British Jews, saying that he has “a fair idea about fanaticism and where it leads to.”

Rory Hanrahan told The Times that he has begun selling badges featuring the union jack, along with the words “I stand with British Jews”. He has sold 800 badges so far, and told the paper that “I just felt that non-Jewish people needed the opportunity to do something, even if only something very small, when they see awful things happening to very decent, normal English, Scottish, Welsh people who just happen to be Jewish.”

The 45 year old, who manages pubs in Oxfordshire, said that he had been motivated to start his campaign after meeting a woman at one of the pubs he runs who told him she had been “treated terribly” at a conference in Oxford because she hailed from Israel. He aimed, he said to give people a way to show support for Jews while “removing politics from it completely and the larger questions of Israel and public policy and things like that.

“A guy getting on a bus in Golders Green, whose family has lived here for 400 years and is a very nice chap, deserves just to be able to get on and go wherever he’s going without anyone giving him a hard time.”

Hanrahan’s father was Sean O’Callaghan, who as a member of the Provisional IRA was part of a team who fired mortars into military base, killing a British soldier. He later became a mole within the IRA, working to combat their activities from within, before eventually handing himself in to a police station in England, confessing to two murders he had carried out while in the IRA. Sentenced to life in prison, he was granted a pardon six years later, and died in 2017.

Hanrahan told the Times that the intention was to encourage people buying the badges to wear them on a specific day – Thursday 23 July, which this year marks the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av.

In a message on social media, Hanrahan said: “Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av) is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, commemorating centuries of tragedy and persecution faced by the Jewish people.

“By wearing your badge on this day, you’re making a simple but powerful statement: British Jews are our neighbours, and we stand with them. No marches. No rallies. Just a quiet, dignified act of British fair play and human decency.”

Any profits from the sale of the badges will be donated to a Jewish charity, he said.

More information on the campaign can be found here.