February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Just how does the party sustain support for its political strategy when politics, as far as the nationalist residents of North Belfast are concerned, is not working?
Kelly, who was once imprisoned for attempting to blow up the Old Bailey in London, pleaded for calm after nationalist residents began attacking British soldiers and PSNI officers who were marshalling an Orange Order march through the neighborhood on July 12.
Residents had been angered by a PSNI decision to allow loyalist “supporters” of the Orange Order to walk through the area despite a Parades Commission ruling that specifically banned such a move.
Kelly suffered a broken arm during the fracas and was reported to have saved the life of at least one British soldier who had become isolated from his colleagues.
Kelly was lauded in the mainstream press for his actions. Here, said commentators, was a man, once imprisoned for his violent resistance to the British presence in Ireland, now risking his own safety and political credibility to come to the aid of the very men he once plotted to kill.
Republicans who support the peace process have said that Kelly’s actions were designed to prevented the killing of nationalists. Had a British soldier been seriously injured or even killed in the riot, republicans feared the Parachute Regiment would have opened up on the crowd. Their fears were given credence by a report in the Daily Telegraph that claimed the soldiers were in fact only moments away from firing on the nationalist crowd.
However, the reaction of some former republican comrades may have disheartened Kelly.
Republican Sinn Fein was scathing in its analysis of Kelly’s actions.
“By their actions in Belfast during the loyalist marches, the Provos proved that they are agents of the British forces of occupation when they allied themselves with the police and army and the Loyalists thugs against the Nationalist people,” the North Kerry branch of RSF said.
RSF split from the Provisional republican movement in 1986 in response to a decision at that year’s ard fheis to stand for elections to D