Echo Issue Outline: copyright Echo Education Services
First published in The Echo news digest and newspaper sources index.
Issue outline by J M McInerney
Should Ned Kelly be regarded as an Australian national hero?
Ned Kelly and how he ought be regarded have attracted a certain measure of media attention.
Ned Kelly was executed on November 11, 1880. The anniversary of his death typically attracts a measure of attention. This year, on October 24, the most recent book by Ned Kelly specialist, Ian Jones, was published. It is titled, Ned Kelly: A Short Life.
The book argues, as Mr Jones has on previous occasions, that Ned Kelly was not merely a criminal, instead he was a political rebel, intent upon establishing a republic in north eastern Victoria.
Such claims have opened up the whole issue of how Ned Kelly ought be regarded, with both the chief commissioner of Victoria Police and the secretary of the Police Association objecting to Ned Kelly being viewed as a national hero.
Background
Ned Kelly's father was transported from Ireland for stealing two pigs in 1841.
By the time the Kelly family were established in Benalla in north eastern Victoria, they were apparently regarded as being a criminal group. At 11, Ned Kelly already had a record for assault, indecent behaviour and receiving stolen goods.
Claims have been made that at least some of the charges levelled by the police at the Kellys were inaccurate. This apparently applies particularly to the jailing of Ned Kelly's mother, Ellen, in 1878.
In the same year, 1878, Ned Kelly was involved in a gun fight with police which resulted in his killing three police officers at Stringybark Creek.
Ned Kelly then led his gang on a series of bank robberies that ended with his last stand at Glenrowan where he was severely wounded before being taken into custody.
He was tried before judge Sir Redmond Barry in a special sitting of the Central Criminal Court in Melbourne.
The jury found him guilty of murder and on November 11, 1880, he was hung.
Arguments opposing the view that Ned Kelly be regarded as an Australian national hero.
Those who dispute the view that Ned Kelly be regarded as a national hero stress that he was primarily a criminal. Those who hold this view emphasise the three murders he committed and the robberies he led.
According to this argument the lives he took and the distress he caused to the families of those he killed should deprive Ned Kelly of any claim to hero status.
There are also those who are concerned that any tendency to alleviate Ned Kelly will merely encourage crime within Australia.
The chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Mr Neil Comrie, has observed, `I've always found it disturbing that our community gives hero status to a person who was executed for the murder of three police officers.'
Commissioner Comrie appears to be concerned that any community which holds in high regard someone who committed serious crimes has insufficient respect for the law.
The same view has been expressed by the secretary of the Police Association, Mr Danny Walsh, who has suggested that Victoria would only achieve maturity as a community once it recognised that Ned Kelly was no more than an armed robber and a murderer.
Mr Walsh's remarks were made at the unveiling of a memorial wall to the 27 Victorian police officers killed since 1855.
The implication of Mr Walsh's comments appears to be that to give someone with Ned Kelly's background the status of hero is to devalue the sacrifice of all Victorian police officers who have died in order to maintain the law.
A further implication which might be drawn is that to lionize a law-breaker like Ned Kelly prompts a general disrespect for the law which could lead to further police deaths.
The various positive qualities that have been imputed to Ned Kelly by supporters have also been challenged.
It has been claimed that Ned Kelly was no Australian Robin Hood, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Rather, it has been suggested, that the only others to share the monies Ned Kelly stole were his family, friends and supporters.
Ned Kelly's supposed nobility of character has also been disputed. Ned Kelly has been said to have been impressed and moved by the dying words of Sergeant Kelly, one of the three police officers he shot at Stringybark Creek. Sergeant Kelly is said to have spoken of his great love for his family. If Kelly were indeed impressed, it has been suggested that it was churlish to then go through the dead man's pockets and steal his gold watch as Ned Kelly is claimed to have done. (The watch was ultimately returned to Sergeant Kennedy's death three years after Ned Kelly was executed.)
Finally, the validity of the sources upon which the notion of Ned Kelly as a national hero is based, have been disputed.
It has been suggested that the principal claims made for Ned Kelly as a politically inspired rebel and early Australian republican are based on oral history which is in part myth and which is the product of partisan or biased sources.
It has been noted in this regard, that the declaration of an independent republic in north-eastern Victoria supposedly produced by Kelly is currently not available and that the copy of such a document, supposedly sighted by Melbourne journalist and critic, Mr Leonard Radic, in 1962, in London, has since disappeared.
Arguments supporting the view that Ned Kelly be regarded as an Australian national hero.
Those who support the view that Ned Kelly be regarded as an Australian national hero tend to emphasise both his positive qualities and his supposed political intent. According to this line of argument Ned Kelly was not merely a thief and then a murderer who fought the police as they attempted to apprehend him. Rather , it is claimed, he was a rebel, seeking to establish an independent republic in north eastern Victoria.
This particular view of Ned Kelly has been developed and popularised by Ned Kelly researcher and historian, Mr Ian Jones.
Mr Jones has claimed to have had access to privileged, personal sources of information about Ned Kelly. Mr Jones claims to have spoken to a number of those who either knew Ned Kelly or had relatives who did so.
Those who support Mr Jones view of Ned Kelly tend to suggest that his detailed knowledge of his subject and his unique access to previously untapped sources of information add to the strength of his view of Kelly as a national hero.
On the question of Ned Kelly as a republican and rebel it has been claimed that Ned Kelly's ultimate intention was to set up an independent republic in north eastern Victoria.
Mr Jones claims to have knowledge of a document held in private hands which is the original of the Declaration of the Republic of North Eastern Victoria, said to have been written by Ned Kelly. While theatre critic, Leonard Radic, claims to have seen a copy of the declaration on display in London in 1962.
Ian Jones further claims that the battle at Glenrowan was meant to be the first stage of a much larger movement which was to ultimately have involved all Kelly's many supporters in the area and which was to have lead to `open guerilla warfare with the authorities.'
Kelly and his supporters were supposed to have developed their plan for a republic out of a profound distrust of the then government and the police who acted for it.
This distrust is supposed to have been in part that of the Irish for the English and of the poor, small landowner for the large landowner and the institutions, such as the police, which supported him.
It has also been claimed that Kelly's sense of grievance grew out of genuine mistreatment of his family at the hands of the police.
The most notable instance of this is said to be the treatment of his mother, Ellen Kelly, who was jailed with hard labour in 1878, just days after giving birth. The charges against Mrs Kelly appear to have been false.
Apart from Ned Kelly's supposed political intentions his personal qualities and his physical strength have led to claims that he is a fitting national hero.
Ian Jones has stated, `Ned is the personification of all that Australians have held themselves to be because he epitomises courage, endurance, strength and loyalty to mates.'
On the question of personal courage and physical strength, Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan has passed into Australian folklore.
Mr Jones claims that on Ned Kelly's part, this fight was `impossible by normal standards'.
`[Ned Kelly] was suffering from numerous bullet wounds, he had lost a litre of blood from just one of them and he was in an advanced state of shock yet he was able to stack on a half=hour gun fight with the police in freezing conditions while burdened by 50 kilograms of armour.'
Further implications
Ned Kelly is clearly able to be appropriated by those seeking to have Australia declare itself a republic.
The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, a prominent supporter of Australia's becoming a republic, has stressed the importance of the copy of Ned Kelly's supposed Declaration of a Republic of North Eastern Victoria which Melbourne critic Leonard Radic claims to have seen in London in 1962.
The Prime Minister has urged any private collector currently in possession of this document to restore it to the Australian Government. Mr Keating would appear to see in any declaration of a republic penned by Ned Kelly a powerful symbol around which to focus the current movement toward Australia becoming a republic.
After Ned Kelly was apprehended, tried and hung a Royal Commission was established the following year to investigate the conduct of the police during the Kelly era. The commissioner found the police guilty of indolence, incompetence and `arrant cowardice'.
Mr Ian Jones has suggested that part of the lasting legacy of Ned Kelly is that out of the 1881 Royal Commission was created in the Victorian police force `a tradition of self-examination and public examinations which still exists today.'
Whatever the factual validity of the view which elevates Ned Kelly to hero status, it would appear that popular perceptions of the man have been positive and lasting and may have done a significant amount to shape Australians' impression of themselves as strong, loyal and non-conformist.
Sources
The Age
10/10/95 page 5 analysis by John Lahey, `How a republic was killed at Glenrowan'
10/10/95 page 11 analysis by John Lahey, `Ned Kelly revised'
17/10/95 page 7 news item by Tim Winkler, `Kelly was a killer, says police chief'
22/10/95 page 14 comment by Terry Lane, `Police are there to protect lives, too'
25/10/95 page 4 news item by John Lahey, `Long arm of the law gives Ned a hand'
The Australian
25/10/95 page 7 news item by Chip Le Grand, `Bushranger republican: New image for an old enigma'
The Bulletin
14/11/95 pages 47 and 48 analysis by Damien Murphy, `Our first republican'
The Herald Sun
20/8/95 pages 4 and 5 (Encore section) analysis by Karen Murphy, `Jury still out on Kelly's last stand' (Included as background reading. Note source dates from pre September 1, 1995.)
8/10/95 page 31 news item by Phil McGuire, `Wild colonial republic'
21/10/95 page 18 comment by Paul Grey, `Rebel gave us a cause'
25/10/95 page 9 news item by Lainie Barnes, `Kelly book unmasks unconventional hero'
What they said ...
`I've always found it disturbing that our community gives hero status to a person who was executed for the murder of three police officers'
Mr Neil Comrie, chief commissioner of Victoria Police
`Ned is the personification of all that Australians have held themselves to be because he epitomises courage, endurance, strength and loyalty to mates'
Mr Ian Jones, Ned Kelly researcher and author