Gerard Adams Jr. may have been snubbed by some key figures in Washington during his St. Patrick’s Day visit to America, but he received a warm welcome from the Transit Workers Union Local 100 at its Quill-Connolly Day Celebration in Manhattan last night.

Marching into a large union hall festooned with green, white, and orange balloons, to the beat of the Transit Pride Pipe and Drum Band, Mr. Adams received a standing ovation at the event honoring two of the TWU’s founders, Michael Quill and James Connolly, who both were leaders of the Irish republican movement.

“Gerry” Adams is president of Sinn Fein, the political party associated with that movement and with the Irish Republican Army, a nationalist paramilitary group outlawed in Northern Ireland. While Mr. Adams has maintained that Sinn Fein’s political activity is separate from the violence perpetrated by the IRA, on February 20 the Irish government declared Mr. Adams – along with his deputy, Martin McGuinness (a past keynote speaker at the Quill-Connolly celebration), and another Sinn Fein leader, Martin Ferris – part of the IRA’s seven-member army council.

At the TWU celebration, the union’s president, Roger Toussaint, and the president of the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, praised Mr. Adams and expressed their support, and their organizations’, for his efforts and his cause.

“As long as the Irish people are struggling for unity, freedom, and independence, we will continue to be right here for them, and with them,” Mr. Toussaint said.

Mr. Adams thanked the unions for their support but called on their assembled members to “do extra in support of the Irish cause.” He pointed to the history and principles shared by Irish republicanism and the labor movement, directing his audience to the American Friends of Sinn Fein.

Mr. Adams also spoke about the challenges his party faces. “There is a huge avalanche of abuse being heaped upon Sinn Fein at this time,” Mr. Adams said, referring to the backlash against the party and the IRA following outbreaks of violence and criminality in Northern Ireland. Mr. Adams attributed that disapproval to elements that oppose equality in Ireland and consider Sinn Fein a threat to their authority. “Most of these problems are created because Sinn Fein is being successful … not because it is failing,” Mr. Adams said.

Sinn Fein’s president also outlined his ambitions for Northern Ireland, which included “decent health care” and affordable housing. Also, “We want to see the peace process become a permanent feature of our lives,” Mr. Adams said. “We want – and we make no apologies for it – the type of republic James Connolly and Michael Quill fought for,” he added. At several points during the event, Connolly was praised as an “Irish patriot,” “trade unionist,” and “socialist.”

Mr. Adams also expressed confidence that his efforts would be successful. “The revenge we will have will be in the laughter of Irish children,” he said.

Few are laughing at the IRA’s antics in Northern Ireland, however, as recent events appear to have set back the peace process between Catholic republicans, who want Ireland’s 32 counties united under one state, and the Protestant Unionists, whose ambition it is to keep the six northern counties under British rule. In December, the IRA looted $50 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast, in the largest robbery in Irish history. In January, a Catholic supporter of Sinn Fein, Robert McCartney, was brutally stabbed by IRA members following an argument with a republican leader in a Belfast pub.

Those incidents led President Bush to deny Mr. Adams and other Northern Irish leaders an invitation to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day. It is the first time since 1995 that Mr. Adams is not being asked to the White House. Senator Kennedy, too, has declined to meet with Mr. Adams, for the first time since the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Mr. Adams will, however, meet with New York’s Rep. Peter King, a longtime supporter. The Long Island GOP veteran told The New York Sun yesterday that he still maintains a “good relationship” with Mr. Adams, that the Sinn Fein president is welcome in New York, and that “over the last 10 years, Gerry Adams has done as much as anyone, more than most, to bring about peace in Northern Ireland.” At the same time, Mr. King is calling on the IRA to disarm and disband.

At a speech yesterday morning at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Adams said he was “disappointed” by the presidential snub, the Associated Press reported. A spokesman for the TWU who acted as a liaison between the union and Mr. Adams, John Samuelsen, said the union had extended its invitation to Mr. Adams “about six months ago,” before the violent incidents of December and January. When asked why the union did not rescind its invitation to Mr. Adams – an IRA commander since the mid-1970s who was prohibited from even entering America until 1994 – Mr. Samuelsen said: “Gerry Adams stands in solidarity with New York City transit workers, and New York City transit workers stand in solidarity with Sinn Fein.”

Mr. Samuelsen said Mr. Adams was not paid by the union to deliver the keynote address at the Quill-Connolly celebration, and added that Mr. Adams had forsworn fundraising during his week-long St. Patrick’s Day American tour.