Sinn Fein MP set to face party leaders over Kingsmill video
An under-pressure Sinn Fein MP is set for a crunch meeting with party leaders to explain an online video showing him with a Kingsmill-branded loaf on his head on the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre.
Barry Mcelduff has been summoned to meet the Sinn Fein leadership today.
The furore around the West Tyrone MP’S social media post is threatening to further disrupt faltering efforts to re-establish a powersharing executive at Stormont.
Mr Mcelduff has apologised for Friday’s post, insisting it was not meant as a reference to the republican murders of ten Protestant workmen in 1976. He has offered to meet relatives of the sectarian out- rage but a number of them, including the only survivor of the gun attack, Alan Black, have rejected the invitation.
Yesterday evening a Sinn Fein spokesman said: “The party leadership will be meeting with Barry Mcelduff tomorrow.”
The Police Service of Northern Ireland is examining the video, while the Parliamentary Commissioner for Stand- ards at Westminster has also been alerted.
The well-known Kingsmill brand of bread shares a name with the south Armagh village that witnessed one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles when gunmen stopped a van carrying textile workers on their way home, identified the Protestant occupants, lined them up at the side of the road and shot them.