Kelly Fanatics are on the Nose even in Beechworth

A couple of weeks  ago the  Beechworth  Historical Re-enactment Group announced they were looking for a new “Ned”. The person who grew a big bushy beard and played this central role in the recent Ned Kelly Weekend had decided he didn't want to do it again, so they were advertising for a new volunteer to step forward. 

And then to my complete surprise, after their AGM last Monday they announced, as in a death notice that  - “with much sadness” -  they’ve abandoned plans to hold the Ned Kelly Weekend in 2016. This ends  a 13 year-long run of the annual event, and though they say they are just having a break for a year,  its pretty obvious they are fed up with doing Ned Kelly re-enactments and want to get on and do other stuff. 

“Its time too get get back to our roots and reenact all aspects of the 1880’s and not just the Kelly story which has dominated our group for the past few years”

This is really quite a significant change and shows that interest in Ned Kelly Mythology is shrinking even in Kelly country. One presumes the visitor numbers are down - because if the thing was booming everyone would be happy - and clearly theirs having a real struggle finding anyone interested enough in the Kelly myth to  donate the time and effort to help them run the NKW.

On the NKF and IronOutlaw Facebook pages comments on the decision reveal that there have been “shitfights” going on among the organisers and wanna-be organisers, and a feeling that in recent years the whole thing has been a bit lacklustre. This is what the Ned Kelly Forum key master wrote about it : 

“yes people this is the politics of our Ned Kelly world at its worst. This is a disgrace and those individuals who were a part in doing this ought to be ashamed of themselves and all will be made public very soon"

I hope he is feeling ashamed of his own role in this - last year  the NKF offended the NKW organisers by putting on a show of their own on the same weekend and just up the road, so they could take advantage of the hard work the NKW people had done in organising their event and attracting the crowds. This year it was announced on the IO Faceboook page that they were all “back in love” having somehow patched up the relationship between the two groups but I suspect its all gone sour again. Given what I have seen of the way Kelly Fanatics behave towards people who have different opinions to their own, I am not surprised the NKW people have decided to abandon the whole thing. They are probably trying to rid themselves of kelly bullies who tried to dominate their organisation and compel it to present Kelly as a hero and a saint. 

So this is a step in the right direction, a step away from re-enacting myth and pretending its history, perhaps towards a more honest presentation of Kelly country history in the future, one that acknowledges other views of Ned Kelly.  Ive noted that the Ned Kelly Vault pointedly states at the very top of its Facebook page “We are not a shrine we are a museum” 

It will be interesting to see if the NKF Keymaster makes good on his claim that “all will be made public very soon”. - in other words he wants to air all the dirty linen. In my experience the loud mouths on NKF are all talk and no action.

I wish the Beechworth Historical re-enactment Group all the best for the future and congratulate them on this bold move, putting the Kelly fanatics in their place.

The tide has clearly turned and is now running out on Kelly Mythology.


APOLOGY TO NKF : the announcement about being “back in Love” was made on the IronOutlaw Facebook Page, not the NKF Facebook Page as I originally mistakenly wrote. I was informed of this in an anonymous comment which I won’t publish but I apologise to the NKF for this error. I do note however that the person they described as “matchmaker” was a prominent NKF Member, the self described “Neducator” whose talk created all the acrimony when the NKF promoted it in competition with the NKW. 

And, incidentally I couldnt help noticing tonight that the NKF Key Master has quietly deleted from yesterdays  Post his claim that “all will be made Public very soon”  This was what I predicted yesterday from the kelly loud mouths - all talk and no action. I wonder who told him to pull his head in?

The Last Outlaw : Part One

Described on the DVD box as “The Classic Australian Miniseries”, The Last Outlaw, is yet another Kelly creation of Ian Jones, and yet another self-proclaimed “True Story”.  Produced to celebrate the centenary of Ned Kelly’s death, this four part made-for-TV mini-series was said at the time, 1980, to be "the most ambitious and costly series yet mounted by Australian television” Much was made at the time of the effort that was expended in making everything about the series as historically accurate as possible. It won awards.

I have at last found the time to watch it. The four episodes last an hour and a half each, and in this Post I will review the first episode, which covers five years of the life of Ned Kelly, from 1869 to 1874.

The first thing one notices is that it has a very 80’s TV kind of look to it. It may well have been cutting edge when produced but its now very dated – for example the action is awfully drawn out and slow, something I doubt would be acceptable to modern TV audiences. The scenes are often quite theatrical, such as those  around the Kelly kitchen table, where the camera observes from one end of the table where one chair conveniently remains unoccupied so the view of the others isn’t obscured – its as if the screenplay was designed for a stage Play.

In any event, apart from Harry Power, the characters in Part One are terribly wooden. Harry Power however is colourfully played, and is the only one who seems to have real personality. However his exploits are portrayed as a sort of game, and are accompanied by jolly music which wrongly makes highway robbery seem to be something jovial  when of course  for the victims they're frightening and traumatic. By contrast John Jarratt portrays Ned Kelly as a pale and naïve, too-well behaved dullard, devoted to his mother in a supine and sentimental way who has almost nothing to say for himself. Wild Wright on the other hand is an unbelievable caricature of a ruffian, and the fight between him and Ned Kelly drags on and on with tedious repetition of the fake punches, the aghast spectators and close ups of bloody faces with fake blood on them, and Ned and Wild alternately dragging themselves up out of the dust to then floor the other. 

In so far as historical accuracy is concerned, I got the impression that the costumes and street scenes and the external appearance of the Kelly houses were indeed true to the original. However, as poverty stricken selectors I thought the Kellys were all much too clean and too well dressed, and the interior shots of their bark hut made it look very middle class, not at all squalid as it was actually described as, at the time by Nicolson.  More importantly though, its very apparent right from the beginning that in the telling of the story, what is told is very much the view of Ian Jones, a man who is an avowed Kelly Sympathiser. Thus, Kelly is portrayed as mild mannered and polite, almost devoid of personality or passion – an overdone saccharine kind of Saint. In keeping with that image Ned is shown meekly, almost reluctantly holding the reins of horses while Power robs people on the highway, and then when they are shot at, Ned cowers in a kind of mute catatonia.  Jones sets out as true what we now know as the myth that Ned was in innocent possession of the horse borrowed by Wild Wright, and later, the naïve Ned Kelly is talked into becoming a horse thief by George King, a possibility it would seem that had never once entered the pure mind of Ned himself. Shame on George for corrupting the saintly Ned!!

However, in addition to the sins of commission, there are even greater sins of omission in this episode, things the average viewer would not realize were missing, and as a result, anyone other than a Kellyphile would unknowingly derive a highly skewed and inaccurate understanding of Ned Kellys life story. Significantly, Ian Jones begins the story AFTER Neds lucky acquittal on a charge of assaulting a Chinaman in 1869, and he only mentions the McCormick incident in passing even though it resulted in Ned serving time for assault and indecent behavior.  The prior history of growing up in an atmosphere of resentment and suspicion of the English and of authority, of Reds decline into alcoholism, of multiple episodes of family violence and trouble with the law – all this is ignored, yet these were all hugely influential in shaping the life and attitudes and behaviors of the growing Ned Kelly, and knowledge of them crucial to a proper understanding of his story. The decision to commence the story telling after these significant negative events in Ned Kellys young life can only be seen as a deliberately chosen tactic designed to bolster the myth of  Ned Kellys innocence and render less explicable the Police interest in the Kellys, and make it look more like sinister and unjustified persecution. This is unforgiveable dishonesty in my opinion, deliberate myth-making disguised and presented as historical re-enactment by Ian Jones who inserted at the beginning of the Epsiode “All Characters events names dates and places in this series are drawn directly from fact.” Indeed, but the ones that are drawn are only the ones that suit Mr Jones. The facts that don’t support Ian Jones version of the truth are conveniently ignored. But who in the general population would know?

Actually my first thought after watching this first episode was to remember what Mark Twain called the Book of Mormon : “Chloroform in Print”  I was amazed to watch the incredible richness and complexity of the life and times and personality of  Ned Kelly reduced to this boring and sanctimonious misrepresentation. Quite apart from being seriously misinformed about the real Ned Kelly, I  think modern audiences would find this episode quite dull: “Chloroform in film” .

NKF Members 100 Day Epic Fail

The prominent Ned Kelly Forum member and Kelly sympathiser who decided in June to attack the Death of the Legend Blog Post and Comments about the killing of Constable Lonigan must be cursing himself for rushing away and shooting his mouth off on his Facebook Page. I bet he wishes he had never committed to print his half baked theories and silly diagrams about what happened, and then attacked and rubbished me for pointing out the huge fatal flaws in his theory. I bet he wishes he hadn’t tried to wriggle out of the mess he made by going back and re-naming his comment “Part One : McIntyres Version ”,  because by doing that he obligated himself to produce Part Two, which he implied would be HIS explanation. 

He must be regretting all this because as the days weeks and now months have gone by, and he has failed to come up with the promised Part Two, his credibility as some sort of Kelly “Expert” is eroding to zero, and his original Comment and his abusive responses to my demands for him to make good on his promise are being seen more and more clearly as bluster and bullying and a smoke screen that hides......nothing! He hasn’t got a clue about how to get out of the mess he made for himself and so he is staying mute. 

I am not surprised that he hasn’t responded to my latest Post on his Page, and I am not surprised that he has posted nothing at all about anything since July. 

Its now 100 days since he made these remarks, but I am not going to forget or forgive his abuse of me and this Blog, of his boasting about how he destroyed my earlier Forums, of his ignorant attacks on anything and anyone who disagrees with him - and I am not going to stop demanding he make good on his promise to come up with Part Two. As long as he continues to fail to  keep his word, I will continue to remind him and everyone else.

Ned Kellys Skull : Science rebuts Kelly “Experts"

 

The Baxter Skull and Tooth

Its been more than a month since the annual Ned Kelly Weekend at Beechworth. On the Kelly websites and Facebook pages only a scattering of comments can be found, all declaring it a great success, but I had hoped by now to have read someone’s report of the  events that were staged. In particular I was hoping to hear something about the lecture given by Dr Craig Cormick , because it was the only original and credible event  on the programme – I read that it was sold out – but nothing else. Maybe someone who reads this Blog went to it, and can send in a Report. 

I have previously written that the behavior of some Kelly Sympathizers resembles that of Religious fanatics. One such similarity is the often curious relationship that believers have to rational argument and Scientific truth preferring their mythology when it clashes with what science has revealed. An amazing example is the Mormon rejection of  the entire well established prehistory of North America in favour of what their religious texts say. 

The Baxter Skull long ago labelled on the side as “E Kelly"

In a similar way, Bradley Webb the creator of the largest and oldest Kelly resource on the internet, Iron Outlaw, apparently still clings to his view that the skull of Ned Kelly was on public display in the old Melbourne Gaol until it was replaced in the early 1960’s by a skull from India. This replacement skull, the skull of a person Webb says was “some poor Indians” was the one famously stolen by Tom Baxter, believing it to be Ned Kellys in 1979. It was finally returned and analysed by the Victoria Institute of Forensic Medicine, as reported by Craig Cormick in his book, and found with absolute certainty to NOT be the skull of “some poor Indians” as claimed by Brad Webb. Sadly it was not Ned Kellys skull either!

Bradly Webb made his claims about these skulls on his personal website in 2011, and in February this year, after reading Cormicks book I posted a comment on Webbs article about the skull pointing out that he was wrong. This was his reply: 

NCS Publishing27 February 2015 at 14:48

To dear old crusty Bill Denheld - bill@denheldid.com - (or his semi-literate daughter who posts on his behalf), I know you like to hide behind the 'Dee' facade but maybe it's time you pulled your head out of your arse and realised what you actually know about the Ned Kelly story can be written down on the back of a postage stamp...

I’m pleased I kept a copy of this because if you go there now, these vile and misinformed comments have been deleted,  but still there is no acknowledgement that the content of the Post is misleading and wrong.  Science has proved Bradley Webb wrong but he clings to his belief like a willfully blind religious fanatic.  I do note however that last month on Iron Outlaw a link was posted to a talk about the skull by  Craig Cormick on the ABC , which could perhaps mean that Webb has finally admitted his error, though is too embarrassed to openly admit it, or  decent enough to apologise to me or Bill and his family for such an outrageous reaction. Such is the caliber of some of the leading lights of the Kelly world!

In any case Cormicks story is a fascinating example of the power of science and forensic medicine to uncover the truth, and would have made his lecture a fascinating one I expect, quite apart from the opportunity to meet the author and to gather additional snippets of information about the case.

Its worth recounting it here, for anyone who hasn’t read Cormicks book :

In brief, a skeleton – minus the skull -  was exhumed from the grounds of Pentridge prison and identified as belonging to Ned Kelly by using DNA analysis. The DNA extracted from the bones was mitochondrial DNA and it was compared with mitochondrial DNA from a man called Leigh Olver, a direct maternal descendant of Ned Kelly’s sister Ellen. It was believed that the skull wasn’t with the rest of the skeleton because it had been souvenired when all the skeletons buried at the Melbourne Gaol, including Neds, were dug up and reburied at Pentridge in 1929.

The skull stolen from the Gaol in 1979 and still in the possession of Tom Baxter was thought to be Neds but no DNA could be extracted from it, so other methods had to be used to try to identify it. Old photographs taken of the skull before it was stolen, and an even earlier plaster cast of the skull confirmed Baxter’s skull was indeed the one that had been on display in the Gaol, and held earlier in the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra. There had been no switching of skulls as claimed by Bradley Webb.

The next thing that needed to be done was prove that this was indeed the skull taken from the Kelly grave when it was dug up in 1929, so public appeals were made asking for any family knowledge, traditions, photos or artefacts of any kind that could possibly help. Remarkably, a descendant of  someone who was at the exhumation turned up with a 1929 photograph of his grandfather actually holding the skull, and he also brought with him a single tooth that his grandfather had allegedly taken from the skull before handing it on! The tooth had remained in the family who understood it to have been one of Ned Kellys!

It must have been an electric kind of “eureka” moment when the scientists took the tooth and found it was a perfect fit for one of the empty sockets in the Baxter skull, thus establishing with absolute certainty that the Baxter skull was indeed the one exhumed at the old Melbourne Gaol in 1929. It certainly wasn’t “some poor Indians” as asserted by Bradley Webb in 2011. It would also have been pretty exciting when the scientists managed to extract DNA from the tooth, but sadly it proved the skull had never been Ned Kellys! So where is it?

Theres a thread on the Ned Kelly Forum from 2012 about the Skull.  

The NKF Member who rubbished Cormick on Facebook earlier this year but then later deleted his comments, asserted in 2012 that he and Mr Webb knew “without a doubt who has Neds head” He wrote that he has “no doubt that the Melbourne University are knowingly in possession of Neds skull” As is typical with these self appointed experts who dismiss actual scientists, Jager felt no need to back up his  assertions with anything as trivial as “evidence”, or “ facts" or even his reasoning for claiming he knew where the skull was, and the thread ended limply. These are of course sensational allegations and would if true be headline news on every TV channel and News report. But there has been no further NKF interest in the topic for three years! So here we have another loud mouth claim, like the one about explaining Lonigans wounds  that turned out to be nothing but hot air and self promotion. 

So we are left with the ongoing mystery of what happened to Ned Kellys skull. It would seem that it was never buried, but kept as a ghoulish souvenir, and may still be “out there” somewhere, but perhaps no longer identified as Neds, because since 1929 his was believed to be the one at the old Melbourne Gaol, the one known now as the Baxter skull.

Ned Kelly's Devotion To His Mother: Another Myth

Ned Kelly, according to the Mythology, was devoted to his family and particularly his mother. He is reported to have said of his father “Red” Kelly that, “a finer man never put his feet in two shoes” – a commendably loyal, but wildly inaccurate sentiment from a son who lost his father to alcoholism at the age of 11. Ned was said to have then become the dominant male in the household, forced into assuming responsibilities beyond his years, a not too uncommon arrangement in families even today. But his mother seemed to have no trouble forming new relationships with adult males, such as the Englishman Bill Frost (when Ned was 13 or 14) and then with the mysterious American George King. So one wonders just how much truth there is in this image of Ned being a de facto head of the house. In any event, though modern sympathisers like to gush and sentimentalise Ned’s role in the household, there was nothing especially remarkable about it.

I was prompted to think a little more about Ned Kelly’s devotion to his mother and his family after my last post, wherein I quoted Nicolson’s famous line about endeavouring to convict “whenever they commit any paltry crime”.

Immediately before this statement, Nicolson describes visiting the Kelly household as:

“... an old wooden hut with a large bark roof. The dwelling was divided into five apartments by partitions of blanketing, rugs etc. There were no men in the house, only children and two girls of about 14 years of age said to be her daughters. They all appeared to be existing in poverty and squalor.”

Now this was in 1877, when Ned was 22 and at the end of several years in which he was supposed to have been going straight, working at a sawmill (among other places). But now he was engaged in what was evidently a very lucrative trade – his self-declared “wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing”.

He had been part of the so called “Greta Mob”, who were known for their “flashness”, their fine horses, their larrikin behaviour and their trendy clothing. Indeed, Ned Kelly was always reported to be wearing tailor made boots and fine clothes. In A New View of Ned Kelly, Ian Jones wrote, “He dressed well – he was proud of his personal appearance”.

Contrast Ned Kelly's glamorous well-dressed life in 1877 with that of his mother and sisters – he was living it up, not at home doing the much needed hard yards on his mother's  selection. But rather travelling the countryside with mates, stealing horses and cattle and dressing (and no doubt eating and drinking) well, while his mother and sisters were living in squalor in an old hut on a selection that only Ellen was working on.

In fact, because insufficient work was being done to improve the selection, according to Dr. Doug Morrissey, Ellen Kelly came close to losing it that year, prompting Ned to finally do something by building a better place for her in the summer of 1877-78. But this act was not performed out of devotion to his mother, rather her desperation. Ian Jones wrote that in early 1878, after the house was built, “With Ned indulging his habit for gambling, he and Joe enjoyed a few footloose months of vagabonding – across the Riverina, up to the Murrumbidgee Valley and Wagga Wagga, where one of Joe's uncles had settled, and then on to the Darling”.

With a mother and sisters living in poverty and squalor, this is hardly the behaviour of a devoted elder son. So whilst Ned Kelly may have claimed to be dedicated to his mother and family, as with many of his claims, his actions provide little evidence of these intentions. Actions speak much louder than words – another myth bites the dust!

The Origins of Modern Kelly Mythology

The moon landings are more recent than the Symposium that gave rise to the book “Ned Kelly Man and Myth” ! That’s how very long ago Ian Jones “New View of Ned Kelly” was first expounded – close to half a century ago – so it would be fair to say those views are not “new” anymore. In fact those “new views” have become the orthodoxy of Kelly legend and have remained at the centre of the Kelly Myth ever since, unchallenged until only very recently.

Its ironic that the Symposium claimed to be an attempt “to remove the layers of myth and legend, lies and innuendoes, half remembered truths and remembered half truths” because what the Book that resulted from it mostly contains are renewed myths, recycled lies and innuendo, and half truths, the very things the Symposium was supposed to be  sweeping away.  Its hard to find anywhere in that book a “myth” that is identified and then rejected. Rather, the myths are assumed as truths, and elaborated and expanded, nowhere more blatantly than in  the exposition of  Ian Jones “new view” . He presented his interpretation so persuasively that it has become the modern Kelly sympathisers “truth”, but in fact, it is almost pure myth. Jones creates his myth by confusing time-lines, by mixing up events which came late and proposing they influenced things that happened earlier, by simply asserting things which are untrue or unprovable, and by ignoring the actual behavior and the writings of Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang.

Heres a very simple example of a myth being created to hide the truth: Jones writes “He was justifiably proud of his boxing ability” – casting Ned in a favorable light as an accomplished sportsman. But in the Jerilderie Letter Ned Kelly wrote “I had a pair of arms and a bunch of fives on the end of them that never failed to peg out anything they came in contact with” and in several other places boasted again about his ability to brawl and fight. During the Mc Cormick incident for example when questioned by Constable Hall Ned freely admitted to hitting McCormick because he accused him of stealing a horse, then said “ And I will do the same to you if you challenge me”.

This reality, this glimpse of the actual man rather than the myth, shows him to be a big powerful man who, if he was decent and of good character would not use his “boxing ability” to intimidate and assault people who said and did things he didn’t like.  But thats what Ned Kelly did – he bashed and intimidated people who disagreed with him. This is UNDENIABLE FACT!  And he was very successful at it too. But this was not justifiable pride in a sporting ability, as Jones tries to make out, but loud mouth boasting by an unsportsmanlike bully. So here’s your man and Myth moment: the man was a thug; the myth is a sporting hero: take your pick – the inconvenient truth or a convenient myth?

But what was Ian Jones “new view’? 

Essentially Jones  “new view” was a view which many now think of as a central truth of the Kelly story:  that because of Police persecution, Ned Kelly was engaged in a “personal rebellion” against the authorities and the grievance was about Land. Jones creatively discusses his view of the political instability of the time, of the uncertainty of financial markets, and the effect of seasonal variation and drought to paint a picture of seething volatility and disquiet among the Selectors of the North West.  This disquiet, according to Jones, was finding a voice in Ned Kelly whose personal rebellion merged with the selectors one.

Ultimately, according to the “new view” Glenrowan was Ned Kellys attempt to resolve this mess and declare some part of the North East a Republic.  Without such a lofty justification, Glenrowan was “madness” according to Ian Jones, ruthless and brutal, yes, “but it wasn’t a criminal act”. It was an act of war!

Again what we see here is pure Mythmaking.  Take the notion that the Kellys were persecuted, that, as Kelly said the Police drove him to madness, that all this came about because of Police mistreatment and harassment. Ian Jones develops this argument around the well known  instruction from Nicolson: “Without oppressing the people or worrying them in any way you should endeavor whenever they commit any paltry crime to bring them to Justice and send them to Pentridge. Even on a paltry sentence”

But this directive was issued in 1877, by which time Ned Kelly, his mother and two brothers  and many other members of their extended family and associates had been in trouble with the law, had been before the courts and served time in Prison.  It was the time when Ned Kelly admitted that he was himself engaged in “wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing” , meaning criminal stock theft.  To quote this statement of Nicolson as if it was issued when the Kellys were innocent law abiding country folk, and as evidence of Police persecution is entirely wrong. Such a directive was in fact a perfectly legitimate Police response to the threats to law and order that the Greta mob and the Kellys  known behaviours represented. It came well AFTER   Ned Kelly had turned to crime and can’t in any legitimate way be implicated in the causation of his criminal career.

And another thing : if the Myth was true, that all his life the innocent Ned Kelly was persecuted by the Police, why did they stop persecuting him in his so called “Quiet years” between 1874 and 1877 when he was supposed to be going straight? If he WAS going straight, and we know there was hardly any Police interest in him during that time, then doesn’t this explode the Myth, that Police persecuted him even when he was innocent?  Don’t the facts instead show that when he was “straight” the Police left him alone, but once he reengaged with the criminal world, he was once again of interest to them?

So what we actually KNOW is that when going straight, Kelly was NOT hounded by the Police, and that Police interest came AFTER the Kellys had criminal records and not before. That is the truth. The opposite idea, that Kelly was a Police-made criminal is the myth. So what are you going to believe? The inconvenient truth, that the Police had a legitimate interest in Kelly because he was a known criminal and criminal associate, or a convenient myth that ignores Kellys own admissions about being a thief, and a bully, and portrays Kelly as a victim?

The actual reality of what Ned Kelly planned for Glenrowan was an apalling violent , personal revengeful criminal act, but  clearly such behavior doesn’t fit with the image of Ned Kelly as some sort of  folk hero and visionary  leader. The Myth about Glenrowan, that it was “an act  of war” and a prelude to a Declaration of the republic of North east Victoria – or some such political event - is a blatant fabrication, an interpretation elaborated by Ian Jones to enable him to avoid the obvious truth, that it was indeed “madness’ and “criminal”.  In proposing this model, reference is always made to Ned Kellys statement in the Jerilderie letter about his being “compelled to show some colonial stratagem “. The precise meaning of this short phrase is not at all clear, but it is the ONLY statement recorded of Ned Kellys anywhere which might possibly be a reference to something like the  Glenrowan  campaign, and so in desperation Jones and all the Kelly republican believers load it up with meaning and significance that is completlely unsustainable. In fact, if this IS a reference to Glenrowan Kelly makes it pretty clear that the motivation for it was revenge for the imprisonment of his mother and others following the “Fitzpatrick incident” :

“It will pay the Government to give those people who are suffering innocence justice and liberty. If not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will open the eyes of not only the Victorian police and inhabitants but also the whole British army and now doubt they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump and that Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than St Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland”

The only way anyone can regard this statement of Ned Kellys as in some way a hint that a political stratagem was afoot to declare the North East a Republic is by completely ignoring the logical meaning of it. Clearly, Ned Kelly is referring here to the Fitzpatrick incident, and his mother and others – those suffering innocence – and threatening violence if they are not given “justice and liberty”. This is most emphatically NOT a political campaign that he is preoccupied with in February 1879, but Jones ignores the inconvenient and obvious meaning, and states, quite inaccurately  “ But the fact is indisputable that by the beginning of 1880 the rebellion was taking shape” . 

The facts are that neither Ned Kelly or any other person involved in the Outbreak EVER said a single word about a rebellion, about a Declaration, about a Republic or an uprising or any sort of Political movement or lobby group – not one word!  And yet throughout this time there was considerable public discussion in the press about the politics of land reform, about Government  policy and about leadership and governance. But within the Kelly sympathizer ranks : no interest  was ever demonstrated. I mentioned in a Post on the Kelly republic last year one of the most absurd arguments put by Ian Jones in support of his thesis, and its worth repeating :

Ian Jones – and Kelly Republicans generally – claim it took a Century to uncover this truth because the idea of a Republic was treasonous, the penalty was death and so the whole plot was “carefully concealed”.   In fact, according to Jones it was so well concealed that “One Police agent broke the inner circle of sympathizers and heard about the armor being made though he failed to learn of the republic”. What we have here is Jones failing to find evidence of the republican Plot even from spies who infiltrated the “inner circle” but instead of accepting that as counting against the possibility that there was ever a Republican plot, he turns it upside down and says he has found proof of how incredibly secret it all was. This is approaching conspiracy theory madness – the lack of evidence for something is proof that it exists and has been suppressed by powerful enemies!  Utter and complete nonsense! The simplest explanation of why it was that the spy didn’t hear about a Republic, is that no-one was talking about it – a Republican plot was NOT on their agenda; if it had been, it would have been front and center of everything they were doing and talking about.

So here we are at another Man or Myth moment. Are you going to accept the evidence at face value, the inconvenient truth that Ned Kelly was never on about anything other than a personal mission of revenge, or do you prefer the convenient Myth that has nothing to support it, and that flies in the face of the actual evidence, that Ned Kelly was the brave leader of a movement that wanted to right wrongs and set the innocent free?