Everyone accepts that Ned Kelly committed crimes, and for most people that means he was a criminal, and nothing else. However, his supporters claim his crimes were motivated by a sense of justice, that he was driven to commit them by a campaign of police harassment and persecution of his family, and even if his […]
Month: May 2019
Persecution Myth : Part V
The argument that Ned Kelly should be remembered as an Australian hero and an icon, rather than as a thief and police murderer, is based on the idea that what he did was a principled stand taken in defence of his family against harassment and persecution by corrupt police. It was a theme he mentioned […]
McQuiltons Case for Kelly Clan Persecution is Collapsing
Make no mistake: the MOST important finding made by the 1881 Royal Commission into the Kelly Outbreak, was that it did NOT result from police harassment and persecution of the Kelly clan. This finding is the opposite of what Ned Kelly and his supporters have always claimed, it exposes Ned Kelly as a liar and […]
Critique: McQuiltons case for Police Persecution as a cause of the Kelly Outbreak : Part One
In the first part of this series of Posts about the contribution of Professor John McQuilton to the Kelly story I pointed out that in an ABC documentary about Ned Kelly, some of the important claims he made were wrong, and they helped support a false narrative about the role of police in the outbreak. […]