Martin Galvin
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Martin Galvin is an Irish American lawyer and Irish republican political activist.
[edit] Background
Galvin was born on January 8, 1950, and was raised in New York City, although he may have been born in the Republic of Ireland as he once, during an interview with 60 Minutes, referred to the "partition of the country of my birth". He attended Catholic schools, Fordham University and Fordham University School of Law.[citation needed]
He was of counsel to the New York City Department of Sanitation until he left to pursue his political activities and started his own practice.
[edit] Political activism
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Galvin was the publicity director for the New York-based NORAID, an Irish American group fund-raising organization which raised money for the families of Irish republican prisoners, but was also accused by the American, British, and Irish governments to be a front for the supply of weapons to the Provisional IRA[1][2][3]. He was also the publisher of The Irish People (The Voice of Irish Republicanism in America), the American version of An Phoblacht.
Galvin was close to Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA for many years, but like Michael Flannery, one of Noraid's founders, and Pat O'Connell, he gradually drifted away from Sinn Féin following the end of the party's policy of abstention from the Irish and British parliaments. He resigned from his positions at NORAID and The Irish People following the Provisional IRA's declared cease-fire in August 1994 (which resumed in February 1996 until a new ceasefire was declared in 1997).
He announced his opposition to the Good Friday Agreement, which was designed to end political violence in Northern Ireland, because he does not believe the GFA can fulfill the core republican goal of reuniting Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland.
In 1998, Galvin aligned himself with the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, a splinter group made up of Sinn Féin members who opposed the Provisional IRA's second ceasefire in July 1997 and the negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. The 32 County Sovereignty Committee was the political arm of the Real IRA. The two groups were reportedly led by Galvin's friends, Michael McKevitt, the Provisional IRA's former Quartermaster General, and Bernadette Sands McKevitt, the younger sister of republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, a Provisional IRA volunteer who died on hunger strike in a prison infirmary in Northern Ireland in 1981. Galvin attended Michael McKevitt and Bernadette Sands' wedding in Dundalk.
When the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the Omagh bombing in August 1998, the worst single bombing of the thirty year conflict, Galvin refused to condemn the bombing which reportedly had been planned by McKevitt. Instead, he declared, "There were a number of specific and accurate warnings given to the British authorities. The purpose of these warnings was to prevent the loss of life. I have deep sympathy for those who died, but we have to keep in mind the real cause of suffering in Ireland, which is the continuation of British rule."
Galvin's private practice is on the Grand Concourse in The Bronx, New York. He represented Brian Pearson, a former PIRA member (volunteer), in his bid for asylum and relief from deportation. Pearson won asylum and relief from Immigration Judge Phillip T. Williams in 1997. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (now Department of Homeland Security) appealed the judge's decision.
In 2000, Bill Clinton's government indefinitely suspended the ongoing deportation/removal proceedings against Pearson and several other men in the interests of the "peace process". Pearson and the other men live and work in the U.S. but the government will not issue them "green cards" (permanent residency visas).
Galvin was reported to have separated from his wife, Carmel (a native of Daingean, County Offaly).
