Family of Scottish soldiers killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland are demanding John Swinney’s resignation after he claimed people should ‘move on’ from Sinn Fein’s IRA links.

The First Minister wants to work with other nationalist parties as part of the SNP’s bid to break up Britain - but has been accused of ‘insulting’ relatives of those who lost loved ones in the IRA atrocities.

On Thursday, victims’ families and campaigners will stage a rally at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh with planned banners including one aimed at the First Minister which asks: ‘Are Scottish soldiers and their families an embarrassment to you?’

They warned Mr Swinney has ‘underestimated the damage his remarks have made’ and accused him of ‘gross naivety’ over his lack of understanding of Irish politics and Sinn Fein’s history as the political wing of the IRA.

Last night David McCaughey, 58, of Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, whose cousin Dougald was one of three Scottish soldiers murdered in Ligoniel, Belfast, in 1971, told the Mail: ‘John Swinney is nothing more than a snake oil salesman.

‘He does not live in the real world and has never had terrorism come to his door - he should be making an apology and then resigning.

‘Our families have scars that will never heal - what Swinney said was morally wrong.’

Despite Sinn Fein’s historic links to the IRA and decades of mass murder and bombings in Ulster and the UK mainland, Mr Swinney said in the election he would ‘enjoy’ working with the party to ‘change the dynamics’ of the UK ‘irreversibly’.

He spoke to Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill within hours of the Holyrood election about working with Welsh First Minister Rhun ap Iorweth.

In an interview with The Herald newspaper last week, Mr Swinney was asked about Northern Ireland’s bloody history.

He said: ‘I know that my dialogue with Sinn Fein caused a media consternation in Scotland.

‘I really do think people have got to move on.’

Dougald McCaughey, 23, was off duty in Belfast 55 years ago alongside fellow Scottish soldiers John and Joseph McCaig, aged 17 and 18.

The Royal Highland Fusiliers had been drinking in a city centre pub when they were lured to their deaths by the IRA.

The three soldiers were promised a meeting with girls but were then lured to a Belfast bar and driven to a remote location and shot.

It was the first time the IRA had targeted off-duty soldiers and prompted tens of thousands to take to the streets in protest.

The incident led to the minimum age for serving in the British Army to be raised to 18.

In 2017, former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon apologised to the McCaughey family after John Mason, an ex-SNP MSP, suggested the men who murdered Dougald could be seen as ‘freedom fighters’.

On Thursday, (MAY 21), military veterans of the Troubles and bereaved family representatives will join with the South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) victims and survivors support organisation outside Holyrood to ‘register opposition and concern following recent remarks made by Scotland’s First Minister’.

SEFF’s director Kenny Donaldson said: ‘Over the last week, we have heard directly from many former Scottish soldiers and from families who had loved ones murdered as a consequence of the Troubles, murdered through the actions of Provisional IRA terrorism, and they are deeply hurt and insulted by what the SNP leader John Swinney has stated.

‘Mr Swinney has grossly underestimated the damage his remarks have made, in the short term but also potentially in the medium term.

‘How does the SNP leader believe his representatives will be received when they stand at cenotaphs across Scotland at Armistice?

‘To flippantly suggest that the horrors of the Troubles need to be moved on from illustrates his gross naivety on these issues.’

Other banners planned for the event will have slogans such as ‘First Minister: Apologise for your crass and hurtful comments’, ‘End the stonewalling, engage with your own citizens’, and ‘Victims and survivors of The Northern Ireland Troubles haven’t gone away, you know’.

Alex Blair, whose brother Lance Corporal Donald Blair died in a bomb attack in Warrenpoint in 1979, described the SNP leader’s comments as ‘deeply hurtful’ and demanded a public apology.

He said his family still live with the trauma of Donald’s death every single day.

Mr Blair told The Herald on Sunday: ‘My mother died virtually three years to the day after it.

‘John Swinney has got three children. If one of them came back in a box in bits and pieces, would he move on?

‘You don’t need to think of that answer, so why is he asking us to do it?’

Writing in today’s Mail, Scottish Tory MP John Cooper said: ‘The Troubles are over, but the shockwaves reverberate, and false narratives - such as that we should simply “move on” - abound.

‘Too many here see the IRA and their ilk as rogues, not terrorists who would burn people to death in napalm attacks, maim people in kneecappings, disappear mothers from their children, and tie bombs around the necks of civilians.’

Scottish Tory deputy leader Rachael Hamilton said: ‘John Swinney should apologise for his disgusting remarks about Sinn Fein’s links to the IRA.

‘During the Troubles, Scottish families lost loved ones at the hands of these bloodthirsty terrorists – but John Swinney wants them to forget and move on so he can work with Sinn Fein to further his independence obsession.

‘We will always stand up to John Swinney’s shameful attempts to team up with the political wing of the IRA.’

Sinn Fein is now the largest party in Northern Ireland but has historical links to the IRA during the Troubles, which lasted from the late 1960s until 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

The conflict between Irish republicans and Ulster loyalists was fought over the status of Northern Ireland and thousands were killed on both sides.

In 2022, Ms O’Neill, who is now the First Minister of Northern Ireland and vice-president of Sinn Fein, said there was ‘no alternative’ to the IRA’s armed campaign during the 30-year period.

Approximately 3,500 people were killed during the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland, including 140 Scottish soldiers.

The Scottish Government referred our enquiries to the SNP.

An SNP spokesman did not offer an apology and pointed to Mr Swinney’s interview with The Herald, where he said: ‘If you had said to me in 1986… that Northern Ireland would be able to deliver the Good Friday Agreement, signed off by Ian Paisley as the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and Gerry Adams as the President of Sinn Fein, supported by the British and Irish [governments], I would have been pretty sceptical about that, but it happened.’