THE DECLARATION OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST ROWLING

This particular text is primarily intended for those involved in the media. Read it if you have time to spare and interest enough. Please do not write to us complaining about how long and tedious it is and all the rest of it. Nobody has a gun to your head to make you read it. Good luck and thanks for reading thus far.

Surprisingly, only a few of the comments we received so far to our last post have been openly racist. Most were reactions from idolaters who cannot bear the notion that their idol may have feet of clay. The most common knee-jerk reaction was inevitable;  in so many words – “Aw come off it! Why would you take so long to come out with this rubbish!” In other words, “do you really think we are that dumb?” Well, we don’t actually. At least not quite as dumb as Rowling and her buddies seemingly believe you are. For those of you therefore in either of these quandaries let us explain.

William is not a man to seek the limelight. Of the three of us he is least likely to put himself at the front of anything. As he says: “Why on earth would I want to put myself in the dock to have my character impugned by people of very dubious character and my ‘sanity’ questioned by people who are likely a whole lot crazier than I?”

What took him so long is simple for those of you who know anything about us. In 1994 we embarked on a project that was well under way by the time J.K. Rowling published her first book in the Harry Potter series. This project – a series of large-scale murals that we call The People’s Gallery - was not finished until July 2008. It was a mighty vision, a vital service to our community in the Bogside, a tribute and and a visual record of what we all  had lived through for over thirty years. To us nothing was more important that finishing it. I will repeat; NOTHING WAS MORE IMPORTANT TO US, not even MONEY. William is one of us, in case you didn’t know. One of the trio known as The Bogside Artists. We enjoy high esteem in the world and the global art community…. because we have earned it. Now, if you are still with us, let us cut to the chase:

The gallery expresses the experiences of a predominantly Irish Nationalist community. Their feelings towards England have never been friendly for reasons that are too easy to understand and which we need not elaborate upon here. At the core of that feeling was the firm collective conviction that justice was not to be found in England. The Birmingham Six, the Hunger Strikes and the bogus Widgery Tribunal that fully exonerated soldiers guilty of the Bloody Sunday massacre in the Bogside, to name just a few, meant simply that with regards to justice from England – forget it! And woe betide the man or woman from the Bogside who went there to find it! The Bloody Sunday Committee did just that because they had no choice and have spent years and years waiting for a result and are still waiting.

We, on the other had a choice. Given then this distrust against England’s self-serving notions of ‘justice’ on what grounds exactly was William to expect to win a case of plagiarism against J.K. Rowling in an English court assuming he would live long enough to get a verdict? And had he lost, which we took to be a virtual certainty, irrespective of what evidence he had, what would have become of our mission….our gallery? Our own reputations as credible artists and the high regard our murals are held in worldwide would have been wiped out overnight if only because we were dumb enough to seek justice in an English court against their literary champion, the flag-bearing J.K. Rowling. We chose to leave well enough alone… until we had finished our gallery.

Once our gallery was completed and inaugurated by Bishop Edward Daly and Nobel Laureate John Hume we decided immediately to publish TRAVELS WITH LI PO, at our own expense, if only to let the world know where the story came from. It is a story about an orphaned boy who doesn’t know he is a wizard heading off to a school for sorcerers in a parallel world where he is to be tutored by an old achemist in seeking the prize of immortality called The Philosopher’s Stone. Why at our own expense? Because no other publisher would have taken it on after Rowling’s version hit the shelves without being hauled into court by her for stealing  ‘her’ work. The so-called similarities are too obvious for words. Moreover, Rowling has established swift and merciless retribution as the ‘norm’ with regards to anybody infringing ‘her’ copyright. Attack, being the best form of defence and all that.

William knew well enough that once he had mapped out his plans for a series of seven books describing the adventures of his boy-hero Owen Muldoon he had created something of profound and global significance that would be a huge commercial success for anyone who took it on. He was understandably very wary of having his ideas stolen. Therefore, he sent the manuscript first to AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL where, alas, J.K. Rowling was working at the time.  She co-incidentally, an unknown writer, was working feverishly, we are to believe, on a story about an orphaned boy who doesn’t know he is a wizard heading off to a school for sorcerers in a parallel world where he is to be tutored by an old achemist in seeking the prize of immortality called The Philosopher’s Stone.

Where in fact this story really came from and the reasons for writing it in the first place are fully clarfied at ; http://www.travelswithlipo.com. 

There is a time and place for everything. The place was the conflicted grief-filled streets of the Bogside, Derry, N.Ireland. Streets, let it be said, full of men, women and children whose sense of abandonment was palapable. The place it wasn’t….. a train to London. What it was … a character and story born of a father’s experience of rearing kids in a war-torn situation, his time spent teaching and working with children, and his life as a down-at-heel political artist. What it wasn’t …..  an “idea”…. on  train to London. 

After telling him that Amnesty would not be publishing his book, a third party, who might be interested in publishing it, was suggested to him by Rowling. We must assume this was a saintly act on Rowling’s part as she was selflessly helping another to the utter detriment of her own effort and its chances of publication. The publisher wrote to say she would indeed publish his work and her husband elicited from William, an aspiring author, confidential information about the character he had created, the philosophy behind his story and two new chapters of the second volume, one entitled “The Trial” where the hero gets tried and is sent to jail for kssing the red-haired girl who is too smart for her own good and the other called “The Town of the Academics” where is situated the College for Sorcerers. The town is entirely given over to ancient books, tomes, papyri and magical alchemical texts. It’s purpose is to serve the college and nothing else. He also sent him a complete breakdown of the main character “Owen Muldoon” that you can find on the Similarities Complete link on the Li Po website. “… to my eternal regret”, says William. “I was at the end of  my tether. I believed they were publishing my book. I took a chance.” This publisher directed William to the internet where he was to find a contract form and send it off to him. Soon afterwards he received a letter from the man’s wife saying she had a “terminal illness” that he assumed to be cancer and would not be proceeding with the publication but had sent his book on to Christopher Little who “would know what to do with it.” He also received a very formal and cryptic letter from her husband telling him he was not to try to publish his work anywhere else. This woman is alive and well. She knows who she is.

Prior to our publication of Travels with Li Po in the winter of 2008 William, who knew what had happened to his book, took leave to send a letter to this ‘third party’ who, he is convinced, is very much involved in the pillaging of his work. She received his letter and immediately ran off with it  to Christopher Little whose legal hound Neil Blair replied with a swift “shut-up or else” letter to William at his home in Australia. That letter meant solely for her, let it be noted, and which has since been cited as potential grounds for defamation is reproduced below exactly as it was, word for word. 

          Frightening…. threatening ? Or just what it is, a simple and candid statement of intent with adequate furnishing for the reasons why?  Depends who you are. You decide.

 Oct 1st/2008

Dear  ……,
               I feel impelled to write to you . I sent you  the manuscript of a book I wrote for children many years ago about a boy who doesn’t know as yet that he is a sorcerer and is being trained into this realization by a bird, a magical bird, a Puffin  called Li Po. I shied away from calling my book after it’s hero Owen Muldoon and simply called it TRAVELS WITH LI PO. You wrote to tell me you would publish it. You wrote later to tell me you had cancer and would not be able to. You did send my book and the two extra chapters of Book Two to a “colleague” in London because you knew as I knew that it would be a smash hit whoever published it.

             What you may not have known at the time was that Joanna Rowling had already read my book. You have only to ask her to verify this.  I sent it to Amnesty International in 1990/91. Rowling wrote to me asking me all sorts of questions about the hero and the plot etc. Foolishly, I told her all she needed to know  just  as  I foolishly  told you and your husband. I always had fears that my book would be ripped off which is how and why it ended up on your desk to begin with, in Scotland.  English-Irish relationships were at an all-time low during those years. I trusted you after you told me you would publish it.  I had no reason not to.

              “Travels With Li Po”, that, I am certain, became transmogrified into ‘Harry Potter’, was born out of the abysmal sufferings of my community in Derry in the North of Ireland during The Troubles.  Now  I know , better than most, that it is a big  wicked world etc, etc, and no mercy is shown to anyone who naively trusts strangers and “to the victor belongs the spoils “and all the rest  of  that vile nonsense. My book was ripped off by people who think like that. Harry Potter is a crime against The Holy Spirit, to put it bluntly. Compared to my original, it is exploitative rubbish.

              I am writing to tell you that my book will be published soon by myself and the whole saga of this will be in the preface.  Now, I am telling it like it is; unless you, your husband or Rowling, have a good reason why I should not.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

    Regards, William Kelly.