Noraid: ‘They started to run it down from the early 1990s – They said I had an image as an IRA supporter'

Irish Times

3 days ago

Ernie O'Malley's pub on East 27th Street in Manhattan, between Lexington and Third, is where those of Irish birth or lineage gather to watch GAA matches from a place many still call 'home'.
Next Wednesday, July 9th, however, the pub will be crowded not to watch GAA, but for
RTE's
latest documentary,
Noraid
: Irish America and the IRA, the story of Republican fundraising in the United States during the Troubles.
Now ageing, the group will include Martin Galvin, Noraid's public face for decades; New York cab-driver, newspaper editor and radio presenter John McDonagh; and Father Pat Moloney, jailed for four years for a 1993 Brinks Mat heist, which he still denies.
The documentary, directed by Kevin Brannigan, evocatively captures New York in the 1970s and 1980s, and the controversies surrounding an organisation blamed by the Irish and British governments, and by Washington, for raising money for IRA weapons.
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Throughout the two-part documentary, the organisation's members agree on a few points – the proper title of the organisation was never Noraid but, rather, Irish Northern Aid and it never bought IRA guns.
Irish-American members of Noraid protesting in New York in the 1980s
Few outside the organisation have ever, or will ever, call it Irish Northern Aid, however, while few among two generations of Irish, British and US police and intelligence figures will ever accept its denials about weapons.
Galvin adamantly rejects the allegations, however, pointing out that it was investigated repeatedly by the FBI and others: 'I would have been put in jail, if that was the case,' he tells The Irish Times.
Equally, British intelligence had its own eyes inside Noraid since Sinn Féin figure, Denis Donaldson, outed nearly two decades later as a British informer, worked with it in New York in the early 1990s.
Martin Galvin in New York in 2024. Photograph: Faolan Carey
'[He] had our books open. If we were sending money back, or it was being diverted to IRA, that would have been passed on,' Galvin goes on, insisting that the money raised went, as it always said it did, to families of those affected by the Troubles.
IRA figures involved in buying US weaponry, such as Gabriel Megahey or John 'The Yank' Crawley – who was later jailed for the foiled 1984 arms smuggling attempt on board the Marita Ann trawler – agree. If anything, they were told to stay away from Noraid because it would bring them to attention.
Donaldson, killed later at a cottage in Donegal by people unknown, features frequently in conversation with Galvin: 'I complained about him. I could see even then that he was an informer. But I was told he had impeccable credentials.'
Galvin had quickly suspected him: 'He told people I was a particular target. Then, he'd disappear for a few days and try to undermine anybody associated with me. Then, he was seen drinking with FBI people.'
The first episode traces how 1920s anti-Treaty IRA men who quit, or fled, Ireland after the Civil War infused New York's Irish-American community with strong Republican feelings brought to life later with The Troubles.
Remembering people such as Michael Flannery, who fought in 1916, John McDonagh says: 'Their hatred of the Free State knew no bounds. It was always, 'Free State', and 'bastards' wasn't long after it.'
The second episode traces the impact of the 1981 hunger-strikes and Noraid-organised visits of Irish-Americans to Northern Ireland in the mid-1980s that radicalised opinion across Irish-America.
Graphic for RTE documentary on Noraid
It tracks, too, Sinn Féin's entry into the top strata of US politics, including White House visits – a process that was first pressed by Noraid calls for a Northern special envoy and a visa for then party leader Gerry Adams.
It also maps the volleys of criticism from Garret FitzGerald, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and others on both side of the Atlantic and in the press, with Noraid supporters often labelled as misguided, deluded or simply supporting evil.
'We always got a fair shot from The Irish Times and [the newspaper's Washington Correspondent until 1992] Sean Cronin [who was the IRA's Chief of Staff during part of the 1950s Border Campaign],' Galvin says.
Today, Noraid is a pale shadow of its former self. People still give it 'money in their wills', says Galvin, which is used for a few student bursaries and to help anyone 'being victimised today because of their involvement in the struggle'.
Blacklisted for years, Galvin and others now get invited to official Irish Government events hosted by the Irish Consulate-General in Manhattan and get briefings from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
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If, however, relations with 'official' Ireland have warmed, ties with Sinn Féin have gone in the other direction – with Noraid pushed into the background and replaced by its New York-headquartered Friends of Sinn Féin.
Galvin tries not to sound hurt but it is clear that he is: 'They started to run it down from the early 1990s. I was told that I was to stand back. 'We want to go in a different direction,' they said.
'They told me that I had an image as a supporter of the IRA, which I had, and that they wanted to go in a different direction,' he says. 'It was actually more difficult to step back than it had been to step forward.
'No individual is that important,' he says, with a shrug.
Looking back, one senses regret in Galvin, not in his interest in Northern Ireland, his support for the IRA or his involvement in Noraid since the 1970s but, rather, at the cost it inflicted on his own life.
He had joined Noraid hoping that he would not attract 'a lot of publicity' because he was then 'an assistant district attorney, a prosecutor, if you will'.
He goes on: 'That was a path to a judgeship. That's what I wanted to do.'
If Galvin is diplomatic, John McDonagh is not. For years, he interviewed Sinn Féin figures on his New York radio show when they were not allowed on the airwaves in the Republic of Ireland or the UK, along with editing The Irish People newspaper.
One of the first signs of changing winds from Ireland came, he says, when Sinn Féin ordered an Irish pipe band in Philadelphia who had long worn berets, black ties and black jackets that they could not 'dress like that any more'.
'Sinn Féin came over, shut down everything. They traded in Irish Republicans in New York for Wall Street Republicans. They're the only Republicans that Sinn Féin want to hear about. They don't want to hear about Irish Republicans.'
People who had 'carried the movement during good and hard times in New York were just jettisoned right off the bat', says McDonagh, who speaks with humour in his voice but the bitterness underneath is palpable.
Neither is convinced that a United Ireland is coming soon or, perhaps, at all. Galvin wants a referendum but not one in 2030, while the British now just 'smile indulgently as if this is something that is never going to happen'.
If it does, Galvin is not convinced that it would be fairly fought, believing that nationalist voters would be threatened with the loss of pension benefits and other losses if they vote for unity.
Typically, McDonagh is blunter.
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'Listen, I've been listening to bulls**t in New York since the 1990s. Joe Cahill [the late IRA chief of staff] told me personally: 'We're getting the prisoners out and we're going to have a united Ireland in about five, 10 years.' He came and went.
'Then, Martin McGuinness said: 'We're going to have it in the next 10 years.' That went nowhere. Then, Gerry Adams said it would be in 2016, on the 100th anniversary of the Rising. That didn't happen.
'Now, we've Mary Lou coming out. Now, it's not a United Ireland because the tone has changed. It's a shared or an agreed Ireland. That's the semantics and the wording now. Everything's getting very fuzzy.
'The one thing I have found out is you can't defeat human nature. The people who get into power turn exactly into the people they just turfed out.'
So, would he do it all again if he had the chance to roll the clock back 50 years? Just for a moment, he pauses, before recalling a conversation with senior IRA bomber and hunger-striker, the late Brendan 'Dark' Hughes.
'I asked him the same question as you have. 'Brendan, would you have got involved knowing how it ended?' He said, 'I wouldn't have got out of bed'.
'There are a lot of people who feel that way,' he goes on.
Do Noraid people meet up now? 'At a freaking funeral home on Queens Boulevard, when they die. They're the only meetings you're going to get,' he replies, drily.
Bar Ernie O'Malley's on Wednesday.
Noraid: Irish America & the IRA begins Wednesday, July 9th, 9.35pm on RTÉ One