SDLP mayors to boycott NI minister Spellar

The SDLP mayors of Belfast and Derry have announced plans to boycott events involving a Northern Ireland government minister.

The SDLP mayors of Belfast and Derry, Martin Morgan and Shaun Gallagher, are snubbing all public functions involving John Spellar in a row over the British army’s refusal to dismiss two Scots Guards convicted of killing a Belfast teenager.

Mr Spellar is being singled out because he sat on a British army board which retained Scots Guardsmen James Fisher and Mark Wright, who were jailed for shooting dead Peter McBride in 1992.

The anger of Mr McBride’s family and nationalist politicians was further fuelled last week by the rejection of calls for the soldiers’ dismissal.

Mr McBride was shot in the back after he was stopped by a British army patrol in Belfast’s New Lodge area in 1992.

Guardsmen Fisher and Wright said they believed he was carrying a bomb.

The pair were jailed life for his murder in 1995 but were released three years later and were allowed to rejoin their regiment.

Mr McBride’s family and nationalists have contrasted the treatment of the Scots Guards to that of Major Charles Ingram who was kicked out of the British army for cheating on the ITV quiz show, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?