The trouble with being a self-styled “joker” is that a lot of people just think you are a pain in the arse.
So…Barry McElduff MP for West Tyrone. He is either a funny man or a pain in the arse. I have always gone with the latter version.
A Sinn Féin MP doesn’t really have a big job. Basically the entire job consists of getting elected. And doing nothing (the seven MPs are abstentionist and like to put two fingers up to Westminster because they apparently have principles). His entire job consists of doing nothing and he couldn’t even get that right.
Over forty years ago this month, the IRA murdered ten Protestant workmen in a blatantly sectarian act at Kingsmill in County Armagh. It was an atrocity.
Of course there were a lot of atrocities during the Troubles…the Shankill Butchers, the Glenanne Gang (loyalist), Ballymurphy , Bloody Sunday (British Army). Claudy. La Mon (IRA).
Odd that Barry should tweet a video of himself with a loaf of Kingsmill bread on his head. It was coincidence in this anniversary week. But now he has been suspended for three months by Sinn Féin which means that he wont be able to attend any Party meetings. Just what the man who doesn’t have to do anything really needs….do even less.
Of course there was the usual qualified apology…
It is easy to slam McElduff. That is why Slugger O’Toole and Belfast Telegraph are doing it. And it is why I am doing it.
Most people in Norn Iron. We are not all sectarian. But most of us are tribal. We have all seen the graffiti “Paras 13 Derry 0” (Bloody Sunday). We have all seen the graffiti “IRA 22 Paras 0” (Warrenpoint). We have seen the murals commemorating sectarian killers, flags on lampposts to mark out territory and other flags and election posters on bonfires to show contempt.
Sinn Féin has apparently a “Respect” agenda. Demanding that DUP politicians like Gregory “Curry My Yogurt” Campbell respect nationalist and republican values. Barry McElduff has certainly let DUP backwoodsmen off the hook.
The Tribalism dictated that Sinn Féin circled their wagons in defence of McElduff. Pragmatism dictated that by the weekend, senior Sinn Féin figures were distancing themselves from him. And by yesterday afternoon at a special meeting, Tribalism and Pragmatism combined to suspend Barry McElduff from Sinn Féin for three months.
Welcome to the Real Norn Iron.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
The electorate get the representatives that they deserve and vote for. Mr McElduff has been a clown for a very long time and now we now a little more about the bleak content of his character. The sad reality is that if there was another GE in June & he stood on a SF ticket, he would still win. Too much of our politics and the commentary on it is both crude and infantile – although we are of course not unique in that. The retweeting and “liking” by that other sophisticated chancer, Mr O’Muilleoir, is equally depressing.
To be fair to Barry McElduff he has a hard patch out there in Tyrone. He is deeply rooted there and his humour is quite local based and probably sometimes misunderstood by some from outside his locality.
He has in fact written a useful book about political use of social media here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sustain-Flame-Reflections-Facebook-Twitter/dp/0956806945
Deborah,
I know Tyrone pretty well and it is not a “hard patch”.
And I would say that few locals would see his disgusting video as “humour” and would be outraged that anyone would think that it is representative of the sense of humour there.
That would imply that the folks in West Tyrone are insensitive to the suffering already suffered by the Kingsmill families and compounded by McElduff.
It was shameful and to their credit his constituents see it as shameful.