Ministers linked to flag-burning Facebook account

CONCERNS were raised last night after it emerged that senior SNP politicians, including two cabinet ministers, were members of the extremist Scottish Resistance Facebook account.

Hyslop: member for 12 months. Picture: Andrew Cowan

Education Secretary Angela Constance and Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop are among the SNP parliamentarians to have joined the account, which celebrates burning the Union Flag, has included anti-Semitic attacks and suggests Westminster should be burned down with the MPs inside.

Another member of the Facebook page was Edinburgh Southern MSP Jim Eadie, who employed the disgraced Edinburgh South candidate Neil Hay – who was exposed during the election as a cybernat who claimed pensioners should not be allowed to vote and compared pro-UK supporters in Scotland to Nazi collaborators – and West Fife and Dunfermline MP Douglas Chapman, who is one of the party’s defence spokespeople at Westminster.

A spokeswoman for the SNP told Scotland on Sunday that the four politicians and their offices were “not aware” they were members of the Facebook site and had since removed themselves from it.

However, Facebook rules mean that order to join a closed site, invitations, such as those sent to Hyslop and Chapman, have to be accepted. In the case of Constance and ­Eadie, who were added to the site, that can only happen if they are already Facebook “friends” with the site’s administrator, James Scott.

Both Hyslop and Constance were members for at least 12 months, while Eadie and Chapman were members for at least five months, during which time they would have received regular message updates from Scottish Resistance. These would have included videos and pictures of the Union Flag being burned, descriptions of ex-prime minister Gordon Brown as “a blind auld treacherous fool” and a “traitor” whose “head should be on a spike” and should be “executed”.

One poster on the site also described Scottish Secretary David Mundell as “a the treacherous Tory wee shite”.

Last night a spokesman for Scottish Labour said: “The SNP like to portray themselves as a modern political party yet here we have Scottish ministers, including the minister for culture, and the First Minister’s parliamentary aide subscribing to a Facebook page that celebrates extremist views. Is this yet another thing the First Minister will claim to be unaware of?”

When Scotland on Sunday first approached SNP about the story a spokeswoman claimed that people can be added to Facebook pages without their permission. Later she said: “None of them or their offices were aware of being members of this site. They receive hundreds of requests and accept many of them.“They have now removed themselves from this list.”