page_title: Ned Kelly
section_title: Political revolutionary
hierarchical_section_title: Ned Kelly / Legacy / Political revolutionary
caption_attribution_description: English: Our Rulers; political cartoon depicting Ned Kelly, Graham Berry, and a personification of The Age newspaper dancing around a communist flag.
context_page_description: Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police murderer. One of the last bushrangers, and by far the most famous, he is best known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
  Kelly was born in the then-British colony of Victoria as the third of eight children to Irish parents. His father, a transported convict, died shortly after serving a six-month prison sentence, leaving Kelly, then aged 12, as the eldest male of the household. The Kellys were a poor selector family who saw themselves as downtrodden by the Squattocracy and as victims of persecution by the Victoria Police. While a teenager, Kelly was arrested for associating with bushranger Harry Power, and served two prison terms for a variety of offences, the longest stretch being from 1871 to 1874 on a conviction of receiving a stolen horse. He later joined the "Greta mob", a group of bush larrikins known for stock theft. A violent confrontation with a policeman occurred at the Kelly family's home in 1878, and Kelly was indicted for his attempted murder.
context_section_description: In the time since his execution, Kelly has been mythologised into a "Robin Hood" character, a political icon and a figure of Irish Catholic and working-class resistance to the establishment and British colonial ties. In the Jerilderie Letter, Kelly demands that wealthy squatters share their land with, and redistribute their wealth to, the rural poor, for "it will always pay a rich man to be liberal with the poor ... if the poor is on his side he shall lose nothing by it". For some contemporary commentators, the letter is almost akin to a Communist Manifesto for poor Australian colonists, while reading it has been likened to listening to a radio broadcast by revolutionary Che Guevara. Favourable accounts of Kelly from his captives, and his "public performances" of burning mortgage documents at Euroa and Jerilderie, contributed to his reputation as a man of the people. Even Superintendent Hare flattered Kelly and his gang for their treatment of women and the poor, noting that "they weaved a certain halo of romance and rough chivalry around themselves, which was worth a good deal to them".
caption: An 1879 political cartoon titled "Our Rulers", published in Melbourne Punch, depicts Kelly, Premier Graham Berry, and a personification of The Age dancing around the flag of communism.
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