Northern Ireland

Claire Hanna hits out at SDLP party members who sided with Sinn Féin to retain name of Raymond McCreesh play park

SDLP MLA Claire Hanna has hit out at party members after they sided with Sinn Féin in a Newry council to vote to keep a play park named after an IRA hunger striker. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire
SDLP MLA Claire Hanna has hit out at party members after they sided with Sinn Féin in a Newry council to vote to keep a play park named after an IRA hunger striker. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire SDLP MLA Claire Hanna has hit out at party members after they sided with Sinn Féin in a Newry council to vote to keep a play park named after an IRA hunger striker. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire

SDLP MLA Claire Hanna has hit out at party members after they sided with Sinn Féin in a Newry council vote to keep a play park named after an IRA hunger striker

Unionist councillors stormed out of a Newry, Mourne and Down District Council meeting last night after a motion to change the name of the Raymond McCreesh play park was rejected. 

Hanna said: "Particularly in week reflecting on the [Good Friday] Agreement and celebrating the values in it, saddened by the vote in Newry. This wasn’t a time for whataboutery & rushing to repeat mistakes of the past. It was & is wrong to name a kids playground for anyone linked to Kingsmill." 

Councillors instead agreed to pass an amendment to wait until a public consultation option, agreed in December, had concluded.

The play park was named after McCreesh in 2001 and has been the subject of intense political and legal wrangling over the last decade.

When arrested in 1976, McCreesh was reportedly in possession of a rifle used in the Kingsmill Massacre, in which ten Protestant men were murdered as they were returning from work. McCreesh died on hunger strike in prison in 1981.

The last unionist motion to re-name the playground was rejected in December. On that occasion, 13 SDLP councillors voted with 10 Sinn Féin councillors to choose the public consultation option, saying they did so to "avoid stoking tensions".

UUP councillor David Taylor said he was "extremely angry and disappointed" that the motion had been voted down.

Councillor Taylor said: "Faced with a straight choice between doing the right thing on this matter, to search their consciences and take a moral stand against the naming of a public facility after a convicted terrorist, they failed.

"This is a very sorry situation we now find ourselves in. It is quite clear that republican and nationalist representatives on Newry, Mourne and Down District Council have no desire to sign up to the concept of a truly shared society and that is a damning indictment on them and the council itself," he added.

The motion appears to have put the SDLP party leadership once again at odds with its local councillors.

At its conference at the weekend the party passed a motion to oppose "in the strongest possible terms" the naming of public places after individuals involved in Troubles-related violence.

The SDLP council group leader in Newry, Mourne and Down, Gary Stokes, could not be reached for comment.