Leading Sinn Féin man joins UK by-election campaign

Leading Sinn Féin member Gerry Kelly was hitting the election trail in London today – supporting a candidate in the Brent East by-election whose brother was murdered by British soldiers in Belfast.

He was also meeting MPs to press his party’s demand for swift British government action to set a date for elections to resurrect the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly.

Kelly McBride from North Belfast is standing in the by-election to highlight her family’s continuing campaign to have Scots Guardsmen Mark Wright and John Fisher thrown out of the army.

The men were convicted of murdering Ms McBride’s teenage brother Peter who was shot in the back in Belfast in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1995.

Three years later they were freed and rejoined their unit.

Ahead of his visit Mr Kelly said: “The McBride family have fought a long, determined and dignified campaign to get justice for Peter McBride. Sinn Féin support their campaign for justice.”

Mr Kelly, who was Sinn Féin representative for North Belfast in the now suspended Stormont Assembly, is due to join a lunchtime protest outside the UK Ministry of Defence which has been organised by the Kelly McBride campaign.

Later, he is set to brief MPs on the state of the political situation in Northern Ireland and press his party’s case for early Assembly elections.

Elections were a matter of political principle he said, but setting a date was not in itself enough.

“We have to remember the last time Mr Blair slapped republicans and the Taoiseach in the face by cancelling elections.

“This has created a deep well of anger and frustration.”

The British government is trying to engineer a scenario under which elections will take place and republicans will carry out the “acts of completion”, including decommissioning, which have been demanded of them for so long.

But Mr Kelly said the cancellation of elections in the spring had created a “deep well of anger and frustration” and warned that “even with an election date there is no guarantee of future initiatives from republicans”.