John Kelly

John Kelly died on 7 November 2026. News of his death brought immediate tributes across Derry. SDLP Foyle MP Colum Eastwood said it was a very sad day for the city, remembered Kelly as a familiar face who connected with people from all walks of life, and said he had done his brother Michael proud through decades of campaigning with the Bloody Sunday families, the Bloody Sunday Trust and the Museum of Free Derry. No specific medical cause of death had been made public in early tributes. Funeral and memorial arrangements had not yet been widely announced.

John Kelly grew up in Derry's Bogside, in a family from Dunmore Gardens that included nine sisters and two brothers. His younger brother Michael was seventeen when he joined a civil rights march on 30 January 1972, his first such demonstration. Michael was shot dead near Glenfada Park on Rossville Street, alongside other young men at a rubble barricade, when soldiers of the British Army's Parachute Regiment opened fire. Thirteen people were killed outright that day; another died later of wounds. John, then about twenty three, began a lifelong campaign for truth about what had happened to Michael and the others.

In 1992, on the twentieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Kelly helped found the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign and later chaired it. He worked with the Bloody Sunday Trust from its early years, supporting families through the Saville Inquiry and the long pursuit of accountability. From the mid 2000s he served as an education and outreach officer at the Museum of Free Derry in Glenfada Park, guiding visitors through the personal histories the museum was created to preserve. He retired in summer 2024 after nearly thirty years with the Trust and almost twenty with the museum, and was honoured with a civic reception hosted by Mayor Lilian Seenoi-Barr at the Guildhall.

Kelly remained closely tied to Derry and to the circle of Bloody Sunday relatives who worked with the Trust and the museum, including Tony Doherty, whose father Paddy was killed on Bloody Sunday, and Jean Hegarty, whose brother Kevin McElhinney was killed at seventeen. In public remarks around his retirement he spoke of the comfort of knowing younger colleagues and other relatives would carry the story forward. Wider details of his private family life, including any spouse or children, have not been set out in major news profiles and are not confirmed here.

Kelly's campaigning helped keep Bloody Sunday at the centre of public memory in Derry and beyond, from the push that led to the Saville Inquiry's 2010 finding that those killed and wounded had been innocent, through the difficult years of attempted prosecutions. At the museum his voice and guidance shaped how visitors encountered the Bogside's history. Eastwood and others said his example would inspire people to carry that work forward, and that he leaves a lasting legacy in the city he served.