SINN FÉIN MP Barry McElduff was recently captured in a video which showed him balancing a packet of Kingsmill-branded bread on his head in a supermarket.
The video was posted online on the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre in 1976, whereby ten Protestant men were murdered by the Republican movement, however, McElduff has denied that he was making a mockery of the murders.
In the since-deleted footage posted to his social media, the MP for West Tyrone was seen walking around the supermarket with the bread on his head, asking workers where they kept their bread for sale.
The video incurred outrage from many of the MP followers on social media, dubbing the video tasteless and disrespectful however screenshots from the post are circulating online.
The politician has since apologised on Twitter, saying "Have deleted video post. Had not realised or imagined for a second any possible link between product brand name and Kingsmill Anniversary."
Have deleted video post. Had not realised or imagined for a second any possible link between product brand name and Kingsmill Anniversary.
— Barry McElduff MP (@BarryMcElduff) January 6, 2018
Word of the video has spread to the families of the 10 men killed by the Republicans, who are not satisfied with the apology McElduff has supplied.
May Quinn, the sister to Bobby Walker who was murdered on that night in 1976, spoke of her anger at the mockery being made of the anniversary of Bobby's death.
Speaking to Belfast Telegraph, Quinn said she was appalled at the behaviour of the Tyrone MP and would give him a piece of her mind: "I would meet him, and he would take whatever I would say to him. And it wouldn't be very nice I can tell you that. I don’t know what sort of a person he is at all, making jokes about the dead."
She said it brings fresh pain to the death of her brother, whose killer was never charged: "They never did apologise, and we know all the names."
Willie Frazer, whose father was killed by the IRA in 1975 said the conditions under which the offending video was posted is too suspicious to be innocuous: "[McElduff] He would need to be not just apologising for the loaf of bread on his head, but apologising for the actions on the night. Because he’s never done that...
He said the video was intending to mock the anniversary: "This is no accident, what Barry McElduff done. This has been doing the circuit for quite a while. We had actually mentioned it yesterday [during the memorial service] about the Kingsmill bread. He can fool some of the people but it can’t fool us."
