Artifact 4: Gerry Adams: “Wear an Easter Lilly“
A photo of Gerry Adams (right) and Mary Lou McDonald (third from right) with other Sinn Fein colleagues at the Ireland Institute in Dublin, Ireland (2014).
The fourth artifact in this exhibit is the above photo of Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald as well as Adams’ essay on his Léargas blog promoting SF’s “Wear an Easter Lily” campaign. In the article, Adams (2014) describes how the flower symbolizing remembrance for the Irish Republicans who died or were killed during the 1916 Easter Rising. He argues that all Nationalists should “wear an Easter Lily with pride, mindful not only of the past but of the promise of a brighter future” (Adams, 2014). However, in his recounting of the history of the Easter Lily, he neglects to mention the contention between the Official and Provisional IRA over the symbol. When the IRA split in 1970, both organizations continued to use a paper version of the Easter Lily. The Official IRA wore a version with an adhesive backing and became colloquially known as “the Stickies”, and the Provisional IRA supporters who secured theirs with a pin became “the Pinheads” (Melaugh, 2023). This campaign can then be interpreted as a subtle expression of unity with all Republican movements, as there is no mention of pinning or sticking, only an expression of support for the symbol itself.
McGarry and O’Leary (1995) describe the various flavors of Nationalism, and the extremist factions can largely be categorized into the two sections of ethnic militants and civic militants. The authors argue that the latter is simply a “political posture of the IRA”(pg. 18), but Adams’ essay and Sinn Fein’s overall trend of moderation in turning away from the ‘bullets and the ballot box’ strategy weakens that argument. If “the choice between armed and unarmed struggle is a matter of strategy not of principle” (pg. 18) as McGarry and O’Leary allege is the case for Sinn Fein, that choice has nevertheless been definitively made. The sacrifice of dissident Republican support was freely made by Sinn Fein and Adams to cement the support of the moderate Nationalists and the tolerance of Unionists and the British Government.
