Old Bailey bombed by IRA 8th March , 1973.

From an Old Bailey bomber to Northern Ireland minister

By IAN DRURY
Daily Mail online  04 April 2007

An IRA bomber has been rewarded with a ministerial post in Northern Ireland's new government.
Gerry Kelly was found guilty of bombing the Old Bailey 34 years ago, an attack which left one person dead and 180 injured.
He is one of three convicted IRA members who will become Sinn Fein ministers when power sharing returns to Stormont next month.
The other two are Martin McGuinness, who will be the executive's Deputy First Minister, and Conor Murphy.

The Old Bailey blast was caused when a bomb inside a parked car exploded on the afternoon of March 8, 1973. It hurled nearby vehicles into the air, wrecked a pub and smashed hundreds of windows.

 

Horror: Barrister James Crespi after the bombing in 1973

One of the injured was barrister James Crespi, 45, who was pictured being led away by a rescue worker.

The image came to symbolise the horror of the attack.

The bombers chose a day when thousands of commuters were forced to drive into central London because strikes had hit public transport services.

Miraculously only one man - Frederick Milton, a 60-year-old caretaker from Surrey - was killed. But scores of office workers were cut down by flying glass or hit by falling bricks.

The blast and the screams of the wounded alerted staff from nearby St Bartholomew's Hospital, who ran to the scene to attend to the injured.

Kelly, 54, was convicted of causing explosions and conspiracy to cause explosions after he planted four car bombs in London in March 1973.
He received two life sentences plus 20 years and went on hunger strike for 205 days.
In 1983, he led an escape by Provisional IRA members from the notorious Maze prison - the biggest breakout in Europe since the the Second World War.
During the escape a prison officer was stabbed and later died of a heart attack. Kelly was on the run for three years until he was recaptured in Amsterdam.
He was suspected of playing a role in the IRA's terror campaign aimed at British Army bases in mainland Europe.
At the time of his arrest, Dutch police found maps, fake passports and the keys to a storage container holding 14 rifles, 100,000 rounds of ammunition and substances which could be used to make explosives.
Following his release from prison in 1989, he became a senior member of Sinn Fein.
During the party's first talks with the Government more than a decade ago, he was said to be the IRA's "adjutant general".
He has been the party's police and justice spokesman and is tipped to be a junior minister in the Executive's Office of First and Deputy First Ministers.
Kelly's post is expected to be confirmed when power sharing resumes on May 8.
Lord Tebbit, who was seriously injured when the IRA blew up Brighton's Grand Hotel during the 1984 Tory Party conference, said the appointment cast a shadow over the executive.
The former Conservative Party chairman - whose wife Margaret was permanently disabled in the blast - added: "If you talk to people who think there should be a commitment to the normal values of a democratic country, then obviously they would think this brings the executive into disrepute.
"It is probably the first time in this country's history that a man with such a conviction has held such a high office.
"I don't think it comes as a great surprise. If you put the IRA/Sinn Fein into office, naturally they will bring their friends along."
During the assembly election, the spectre of Mr Kelly taking charge of a policing and justice ministry at Stormont was used as a scare tactic by unionist parties. However, these powers will remain under the control of Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.
Conor Murphy served five years for possession of weapons and membership of the Provisional IRA, while Martin McGuinness has admitted being an IRA leader at the time of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972.
Among the other Sinn Fein ministers will be Michelle Gildernew, MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, who sparked anger recently by insisting that if she had information about republican weapons dumps she would not pass it to police.
The final Sinn Fein minister will be Caitriona Ruane, 44, who led the Bring Them Home campaign for three men found guilty of teaching IRA combat techniques to guerillas in Colombia.
Sinn Fein has chosen to oversee the education, regional development and agriculture ministries.
First Minister Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party selected finance, economy, environment and culture.