The Irish embassy, at 17 Grosvenor Place in London, is a short distance from Buckingham Palace. Inside the front door, to the left, there is a large room which, later this year, after it is spruced up, will become the permanent home of Colin Davidson’s portrait of Edna O’Brien.

When talks were taking place between the British and Irish governments, the DUP and Sinn Féin before power-sharing at Stormont was restored in 2007, a Sinn Féin delegation briefly set up camp in that same room.  

At one stage during down-time in daylight hours, Gerry Kelly stretched out and napped on the floor. In his time as an active IRA member, on the run, unsure of his next address, Kelly developed a capacity to rest and recharge when required.

He turned 68 last April. In some ways, he is the last of the old brigade.  

His friend Bobby Storey died last year. Martin McGuinness passed away in 2017. 72-year-old Gerry Adams is retired. Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, who was arrested with him in the Netherlands in 1986, keeps a low profile nowadays and the singing gigs he liked doing in pubs were stopped by Covid.

Kelly always keeps himself fit and lean. For 23 unbroken years, he has served as Assembly member for North Belfast.  

He would be the last person to seek recognition for it, but he has been involved consistently in some of the most important heavy lifting as the republican movement switched its focus to an exclusively political role.

If he has an ego, he is very successful at disguising it. The project and the party come before GK.  

In 2004 I saw him suffer a broken arm as he risked his life to protect British Army paratroopers.

Once, when someone close to him abruptly lost their role and salary in Sinn Féin, Kelly didn’t complain. 

He was given a Junior Minister role for four years (2007-2011) when Martin McGuinness was Deputy First Minister but that was as far as he got up the public ladder.  

For the good of the party, he contents himself with the role of discreet heavy lifter, particularly on policing and justice issues.

Recently, he was elected Sinn Féin chairman in the North. (Republicans never use the tag Northern Ireland.) Earlier this year, he oversaw the study of the party’s performance in Derry that recommended the sidelining of Martina Anderson and her colleague, Karen Mullen. Once more, Sinn Féin had asked Gerry Kelly to put on his work overalls and wade in.

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In 2004 I saw him suffer a broken arm as he risked his life to protect British Army paratroopers.

It was during summer rioting in Ardoyne in North Belfast. The British Army still had a reduced presence in Northern Ireland. Three young soldiers were surrounded alongside their vehicle and under attack from a large, angry crowd.

It was mayhem. I was with an RTÉ cameraman, filming the scenes. The squaddies seemed terrified. It was impossible to avoid memories of the images when frightened British soldiers pulled a gun after they strayed into an IRA funeral in 1988 and were dragged from their car and killed.

That August afternoon in North Belfast, Kelly put himself between the crowds and the frightened British soldiers. He avoided a repetition of killing. Thanks to his intervention, a gap opened up and the fortified British Army vehicle with the soldiers inside made its escape.

In another Ardoyne incident when blood was up, I saw Kelly, with Bobby Storey and Eddie Copeland alongside him, stand in the way of large numbers of nationalists and argue with them about proceeding up the street to fight with their loyalist neighbours.

“Your time has passed, old men” was the shout from one of those in the crowd. The withering look that followed turned the cat-caller into a very small boy.

The crowd halted its journey.

It is forty-eight years since Gerry Kelly and the Price sisters, Marian and Dolours, were among the eight IRA members convicted in relation to bombing offences in London. 

Two devices were defused that March 1973 day. But the one at the Old Bailey and a second outside the Ministry of Agriculture in Whitehall exploded. A 60-year-old civilian, Frederick Milton, died of a heart attack and over 200 people were injured.

Members of the jailed gang began a campaign to be repatriated. They went on hunger strike – in Kelly’s case for 205 days – and were force-fed to be kept alive. In 1975 they were transferred to serve out their sentences in Northern Ireland.  

After two failed attempts to escape from The Maze, in September 1983, Gerry Kelly was successful, along with 37 other prisoners, in the largest break-out in UK prison history.

In January 1986, Kelly and two fellow Maze escapees, Anthony Kelly and Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, were arrested in an Amsterdam apartment where guns, ammunition, false passports and money were discovered.   

Three years later he was released from prison. It was reported at the time that arrangement was in keeping with the extradition conditions agreed with the Dutch authorities three years before.

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On Tuesday last, the Northern Ireland Assembly convened to allow all the main Assembly parties give their views about the British government’s contentious proposal to introduce a statute of limitations on crimes committed during The Troubles.

Gerry Kelly was one of the main Sinn Féin speakers. He was also prominent when victims groups gathered outside the Stormont building to express their anger about the plans of the Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, and his boss, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Consistently, for many years, he has made the case that the British government must be held accountable for the “dirty war” it waged in Northern Ireland.  

But for the political opponents who respect him and acknowledge the work he has done to help stop the killing and grow the fragile peace, there are holes in his stance.

Gerry Kelly was 19 when he was dispatched to London on a bombing campaign. For a time, he was moving in the same circles as very active IRA members, including those associated with the disappearing of individuals like Jean McConville.

Some of those with him who broke out of the Maze in September 1983 were linked to the kidnapping of Don Tidey two months later. When the Quinnsworth executive was freed in Co Leitrim woodlands the following month, a trainee Garda, Gary Sheehan, and an Irish soldier, Private Patrick Kelly, died in an exchange of fire.

When Gerry Kelly was arrested in Amsterdam in 1986, keys to a container were found and it contained rifles, 100,000 rounds of ammunition and bomb-making equipment.

It is highly unlikely that republicans like Gerry Kelly will ever give a full account of what they know about the IRA’s campaign during The Troubles. Nor is there ever likely to be full disclosure about some of the controversies that caused trouble for the republican movement in the years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement during the journey towards an exclusively political future.

Was there tension in the republican movement before and after the Northern Bank Robbery in December 2004? Did any members of the Sinn Féin leadership, who were also on the IRA’s Army Council, have any sense the bank raid was planned?  

Was there a push for the release of those sentenced for the murder of Garda Detective Gerry McCabe as the IRA shaped up (but pulled back from) the decommissioning of its weapons in October 2003?  

There is little expectation, north of the border, that the different participants in the recent bloody decades will ever tell the full truth.  

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In Northern Ireland election after election, voters have given a mandate to Sinn Féin, Gerry Kelly included, knowing the nature of the republican movement’s history. 

There is growing evidence that the very same phenomenon is now happening south of the border – support for Sinn Féin continues to grow, backed by voters, the majority of whom are aware of the party’s past.

The peace process has coincided with Sinn Féin’s increasing presence in Dáil Éireann. When Gerry Adams decided to cross the border and contest a Louth Dáil seat in 2011, the party had five TDs, one of whom was stepping aside.   

A decade on, it seems within touching distance of government participation in the south.  

The next general election could see it emerge as the only political party on the island in government in Dublin as well as Belfast.

Sinn Féin may indeed be in sight of a new level of influence and power. The transformation would involve the challenge of delivering on promises made and addressing the problems once highlighted by the party from the opposition benches.

If Drew Harris is still in post when such a Sinn Féin lift occurs, the serving Garda Commissioner could find himself working alongside a political party where some of its associates know more about the circumstances in which his RUC officer father was murdered than he does.