Top Issue 1-2024

22 April 2004 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

Easter Lily in Royal Avenue

BY JIM GIBNEY

Alex Maskey promotes this year's Easter Lily campaign

Alex Maskey promotes this year's Easter Lily campaign

Belfast Sinn Féin Councillor Tom Hartley often tells the story of what life was like for himself as a young teenager walking through the streets of Belfast in the early '60s.

In those days, Tom said that nationalists were vulnerable to verbal or physical attack if they were seen openly displaying the Irish News walking along Royal Avenue. By that, he meant a person quite innocently carrying a rolled up Irish News under their arm with the masthead facing outwards as they strolled along the street could be attacked for such outrageous behaviour.

Today, of course, Belfast is an entirely different city. It is no longer a unionist city in terms of the City Council, where Sinn Féin has 14 councillors and is the largest party.

And today young nationalists have no inhibitions about carrying their emblems. However, there are those who wish it was like the old days, as the following story illustrates.

On Easter Tuesday, a man in his early 40s was walking along Royal Avenue sporting an Easter lily in his lapel. A member of the PSNI stopped him outside a Primark shop and asked him to remove the lily on the grounds that an Orange Order march was passing along and the lily could give offence to those on the march.

The man firmly refused and said he could argue but wouldn't that the presence of the Orange Order was offensive to him and they should be re-routed from Belfast's main thoroughfare.

He was detained outside Primark while other members of the PSNI were sent for. An elderly woman saw the altercation and promptly joined him. She was also wearing an Easter Lily and refused to remove it when asked by the PSNI officer.

Within minutes, both were surrounded by several members of the PSNI, who placed a human cordon around them and refused to let them go about their lawful business.

They held them in against Primark and made sure that their lilies were blocked from view as the Orange march went unhindered down Royal Avenue.

When the march had passed by, they were released and continued on their business, proudly wearing their lilies.

Changed times for some, but not the PSNI.


An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland