THE first bomb attack in London by the Provisional IRA was a response to attempts by the then Labour government to bring about an internal political solution in Northern Ireland. The specific proposal which prompted the attack was a referendum in Northern Ireland on whether the electorate wished to remain part of the United Kingdom or have a united Ireland.
Gerry Kelly, aged only 19, was in a group of young IRA members from west Belfast who were hastily prepared and dispatched by the IRA leaders through Dublin with explosives and money in March 1973.
They chose four targets: the Law Courts at the Old Bailey, an army recruiting office, New Scotland Yard and the headquarters of the British Forces Broadcasting Organisation.
Two of the car bombs exploded, at the Old Bailey and the forces broadcasting offices, injuring 250 people. An elderly man died of a heart attack after being injured outside the Old Bailey.
The bombers had no proper escape plan. Within hours of the explosions, Kelly and nine others were arrested as they tried to pass through Heathrow Airport, in a group, using false identification. All were caught and all but one were convicted of the bombings and sentenced to life imprisonment later that year.
Kelly and Marion and Dolours Price, daughters of the veteran Belfast republican, Albert Price, were prime movers and received double life sentences.
After their convictions the sisters, Kelly and Hugh Feeney, also from Belfast, embarked on a hunger strike which became a cause ceIebre among nationalists in Ireland. They were force-fed for 205 days before the British Home Secretary relented and agreed to transfer them to the Maze Prison outside Belfast in June 1974.
Two other IRA prisoners in England, Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan had died on hunger strike. The Labour government could not countenance the prospect of two young Belfast women succumbing to a similar fate in a British prison.
KELLY and Feeney were returned to the republican compounds in what was then the Long Kesh detention camp.
Kelly's time in prison fits the classical republican felon tradition, with a hunger strike, repeated escape attempts - three unsuccessful and two successful - and involvement in protracted protests, including the "dirty" protest at Long Kesh (later renamed the Maze Prison) which preceded the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes.
Before his capture in London, Kelly had escaped from St Patrick's Institution for young offenders in Dublin after he was arrested for robbing a bank in Omeath, Co Louth, in 1972.
Years later, in an affidavit to a court in Amsterdam where he was contesting extradition proceedings after being caught with an IRA arms shipment, he said he had joined the IRA after the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972.
Kelly grew up in the Whiterock area of west Belfast, one of a family of 11. His mother died when he was young and the family was raised by his father and eldest sister.
The IRA group he joined, in Ballymurphy, included Mr Gerry Adams. The Ballymurphy IRA was the first to engage the British army and provided the revolutionary urban guerrilla model on which the subsequent 25-year Provisional IRA campaign was based.
Kelly made two unsuccessful attempts to escape from Long Kesh after his transfer. He finally succeeded, along with 18 other men, in the mass break-out of September, 1983.
He was on the run for 21/2 years and was eventually captured with another escaper, Brendan McFarlane, in a flat outside Amsterdam in 1986.
The two were on an arms-buying expedition. A large sum of IRA money, reputed to be about £900,000, and a container-load of arms were seized.
The Dutch authorities agreed to his extradition only on the grounds that the life sentence imposed for the London bombings was not further implemented. The court in Amsterdam was clearly impressed by his account of the mistreatment of prisoners in the Maze and wished to ensure that he was not subjected to any retribution or further lengthy sentencing. HE British authorities agreed. On his return to Belfast he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for escaping from unlawful custody. He was acquitted of attempting to murder prison officers during the 1983 break-out. He was released in 1989.
It is unlikely, after such a length of time, that Kelly became reinvolved in IRA activity after his release. He was, however, a highly-valued member of the movement and his counsel is highly regarded in the IRA.
He accompanied Martin McGuinness in the secret talks, between 1,992 and 1993, with a senior British intelligence officer which laid the foundations for the IRA ceasefire in 1994. He also took part in the talks between Sinn Fein and Northern Ireland Office officials at Stormont after the ceasefire. But this could hardly have been a taxing experience for him, given the role he had previously played.
His exact role in the ceasefire period is not known but he would almost certainly have provided a good barometer of feeling in the republican movement during the subsequent, protracted negotiations.
Years in prison and his overt involvement in IRA activity have precluded him from becoming a prominent political figure in Sinn Fein as it pursued a policy of distancing itself from the "military" wing of the republican movement.
One of the immediate casualties of the ending of the ceasefire, however, has been the image of Sinn Fein as a significant body independent of the IRA structure. There is considerable media and other speculation that, since the latest spate of attacks on London, Kelly may be emerging as one of the new substantial figures in the republican movement.
