Sinn Féin has suspended one of its MPs from party duties for three months over a video he tweeted that appeared to mock an IRA atrocity.
Barry McElduff, the MP for West Tyrone, was told by the party’s leadership that he would not be allowed carry out party work although he will still be on full pay.
McElduff posted footage showing a loaf of Kingsmill bread on his head on the 42nd anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre in Northern Ireland last Friday. Ten Protestant workers had been lined up and shot dead by the IRA in South Armagh in 1976 in the atrocity.
Barrie Halliday, a Protestant clergyman who has worked with the families and sole survivor of the murders, called over the weekend for McElduff to resign his Westminster seat. Halliday, who led the prayers for the Kingsmill dead, called the Sinn Féin MP’s position “untenable”.
On Monday evening, Sinn Féin responded to mounting criticism of its MP. Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, apologised to the victims of the Kingsmill massacre and said that the video was not what was expected of a party member. But O’Neill said that McElduff’s actions were not “malicious or intended to cause the hurt or pain which they did”.
In the tweeted video McElduff walks around a shop with the Kingsmill loaf on his head. Below he tweeted: “I’m in the Classic Service Station here, but I’m just wondering – where does McCullough’s keep the bread?”
Following a meeting at Sinn Féin’s Belfast headquarters on Monday afternoon, McElduff said he accepted the three-month suspension. He repeated the apology he first issued on Saturday, and offered a “deep and sincere apology” for the “unintended hurt” he had caused.
