Sinn Féin MP apologises for loaf tweet on Kingsmill massacre anniversary

A Sinn Féin MP has been forced to apologise after posting a video tweet showing him with a Kingsmill loaf on his head on the 42nd anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre in Northern Ireland.

Barry McElduff has deleted the tweet, posted on Friday, and apologised following condemnation from unionist politicians and victims’ campaigners.

Ten Protestant workers were lined up and shot dead by the IRA near the village of Kingsmill in South Armagh on 5 January 1976.

A Protestant clergyman who has worked with the families and sole survivor of the multiple IRA murders called on McElduff to resign his Westminster seat.

Pastor Barrie Halliday, who led prayers for the Kingsmill dead at a service on Friday, said the Sinn Féin MP’s position was “untenable”.

In the video, McElduff walks around a shop with the Kingsmill loaf on his head.

Below, he wrote: “I’m in the Classic Service Station here, but I’m just wondering – where does McCullough’s keep the bread?”

McElduff said it was never his “intention to offend anyone who has suffered previously”.

The West Tyrone MP said he had “not realised or imagined for a second any possible link between the product brand name and Kingsmill anniversary”.

The 10 men murdered at Kingsmill were killed by members of the IRA’s South Armagh brigade, though the organisation has never publicly admitted its role in the atrocity.

It is believed to have been carried out in retaliation for a number of sectarian murders of Catholics by Ulster loyalist paramilitaries in Armagh in the same period.

The workmen were taken out of their minibus and shot dead. Their Catholic colleague was spared because he told the gunmen his religion.

The historical enquiries team – the police unit tasked with investigating unsolved past crimes from Northern Ireland’s Troubles – has officially laid the blame for the massacre at the IRA’s door.

No one has ever been convicted over the 10 murders but an inquest into the atrocity is still running at a court in Belfast.

Last year the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland announced that a man whose palm print was found on the suspected getaway vehicle would not be prosecuted. The PPS said it could not pursue the case against the man because of insufficient evidence.