Press Calls R.F.K. Son ‘Chip Off Nastiest Block’ : Ulster Protestant Chiefs Snub Kennedy

Hard-line Protestant political leaders today snubbed Rep. Joseph Kennedy, on a fact-finding tour of Ulster, and a British newspaper called him “a chip off the nastiest block in America.”

“We felt there was no point in wasting our time when he had been tripping around West Belfast like Joey the Parrot, coming out with all the IRA and Republican propaganda,” said a spokesman for the Democratic Unionist Party, in a reference to the Irish Republican Army and efforts to make Northern Ireland part of the Republic of Ireland.

The party, staunch supporters of British rule in the north, abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting between deputy leader Peter Robinson and the 35-year-old Massachusetts Democrat, son of assassinated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Kennedy traded insults on Tuesday with a British soldier who searched his car at a checkpoint in West Belfast.

The soldier told Kennedy to “sod off” (get lost) and go back to his own country. Kennedy retorted “You go back to yours.”

British newspapers were quick to take up the cudgels today. The tabloid Sun led the attack by calling Kennedy “a chip off the nastiest block in America.”

“Big Teddy Kennedy (Joseph’s uncle, the senator) has tried for years to make political capital out of the Irish tragedy. His nephew is following in his shameful footsteps.”

It accused him of “a show of petulance because soldiers do their job and check his car for bombs.

“It does not take the language of Shakespeare and Milton to dispose of this meddling political midget.”

The Daily Express said Britons do not need to be told by Kennedy of U.S. Catholics’ concern about Northern Ireland.

“We know that only too well. Some of their money buys the guns and bombs with which the IRA slaughters British citizens,” it said.