There’s been outrage at the minimum suspension sentence given to Sinn Fein MP Barry McElduff over a video he posted on Twitter.
The Sinn Fein MP for West Tyrone has been suspended from the party for three months following the posting of a video of himself seemingly mocking the Kingsmill Massacre of Protestant workmen in 1976.
Barry McElduff had posted a video of himself with a Kingsmill Bread loaf on his head while ironically posing the question about the whereabouts of bread in a service station.
The name of the bread coupled with the fact that is was posted on the 42nd anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre and by a Northern Ireland Sinn Fein MP has drawn criticism from the families of the victims, the lone survivor as well as nationalist and unionist politicians.
McElduff claims he did not intend to cause any harm and that the video was never intended to relate to the massacre in anyway.
The massacre itself, which took place on January 5th,1976, was the crescendo of a series of tit for tat sectarian killings in South Armagh. Just the night before loyalist gunmen murdered six Catholics in the area, the UVF claimed responsibility for the killings.
However, the IRA denied involvement in the Kingsmill massacre and responsibility for the atrocity was claimed by the “South Armagh Republican Action Force”, a cover name for Provisional IRA members acting without the sanction of the group’s leadership.