The Guardian carried a very interesting interview on Saturday with David Wolfe about his father, who was executed in South Africa for bombing a railway station during the struggle against apartheid.
Although the fact wasn’t necessarily relevant, the piece didn’t mention that Wolfe is chair of the Press Recognition Panel (PRP), the body established by royal charter to decide on the suitability of press regulators.
But I would guess that a reference to Wolfe’s PRP role might well have drawn yet more readers to the fascinating, and tragic, story of his background.
It transpires that it wasn’t until Wolfe was 16 that he discovered the truth about his father, John Harris, who was a member of the anti-apartheid group, African Resistance Movement.
In July 1964, he left a suitcase containing a bomb in the whites-only section of Johannesburg railway station. It exploded 13 minutes later, killing one woman and causing extensive “life-changing” injuries to another.
Harris was convicted of murder, sentenced to death and hanged in April 1965, becoming the only white person to be executed in South Africa for a crime against apartheid. He was 27.
David, now 52 and a barrister with London’s Matrix Chambers, has revisted his past for a Channel 4 documentary, which will be screened on 27 August.*
In it, he talks to his mother (who has died since the programme was made) and other people who were there at the time, including the badly injured victim.
As the Guardian’s Joanna Moorhead noted, the film raises several questions. What should Wolfe feel about his father’s crime? Are the sins of a father visited on his son? Does David feel - and should he feel - guilt for his father’s actions?
Wolfe’s mother, Ann, returned to Britain after her husband’s execution. She later met and married an environmentalist, Martin Wolfe, providing David with an “extremely happy” childhood.
Does Wolfe think he was affected by his father’s actions and his reasoning for them? Wolfe told Moorhead: “I think what my father’s story gave me was what I would call a healthy scepticism about the way government and society works, and about the need to be independent-minded.”
That sounds like a good basis for a man with the uncomfortable task of making decisions about press regulators under the gaze of considerable hostility from newspaper publishers and editors.
*The Good Terrorist on Channel 4, 8pm, 27 August
