Martin Galvin’s arrest
Posted by Jim on July 9, 2025
Martin Galvin’s arrest ‘staged at request of Martin McGuinness’
Former Noraid leader was banned from north and Britain
Martin Galvin with Martin McGuinness in Derry.
By Connla Young, Crime and Security Correspondent
July 09, 2025 at 6:00am BST
The arrest of Martin Galvin in 1989 was staged at the request of former Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, it has been claimed.
The former Noraid director of publicity, who was banned from entering the north and Britain in 1984, was detained while taking part in a stage-managed tour of the Bogside area of Derry five years later.
Mr Galvin, who is now the chair of the Freedom For All Ireland committee with Ancient Order of Hibernians in the US, has recently taken part in a new documentary about the history of Irish Northern Aid, more commonly known as Noraid.
The high-profile group raised millions of dollars cash for the republican movement during the Troubles.
Mr Galvin’s profile was at its height in the mid-1980s when the British government issued an exclusion order banning the New York based lawyer from entering the north and Britain.
In 1984 the Noraid leader was secretly brought across the border by republicans and attended an anti-internment anniversary rally in west Belfast in defiance of the British ban.
As Mr Galvin took to a platform outside Sinn Féin offices in Andersonstown RUC officers moved in to arrest him.
During the police operation 22-year-old Sean Downes was struck by a plastic bullet and died, while Mr Galvin was spirited away from the area.
A year later the Noraid official appeared at the funeral of IRA man Charles English in Derry and carried his coffin along with Martin McGuinness – again in defiance of the ban.
Mr Galvin has now revealed that solicitor Pat Finucane, who was killed by loyalists in 1989, had advised him that the British ban was illegal.
Mr Galvin believes the exclusion order was intended to “undermine Irish Northern Aid” in a bid “to stop the support that was coming in from America”.
Speaking to The Irish News, the prominent Irish American said republicans told him it was necessary to defy it.
“And when the ban was announced…my people in Sinn Féin, noted republicans, they said ‘it’s very important that you not allow this to happen, it’s very important that you come to the north and defy the ban, it’s very important that we not allow the British to get away with undermining American support by a censorship ban against you,” he said.
“So, I was in a position where I felt I couldn’t hold my head up, I couldn’t go back to the north If I didn’t agree to do it.
“So, that’s how it began.”
Mr Galvin reveals he was brought across the border from Co Donegal on foot before he attended the west Belfast rally, at which self-confessed informer Denis Donaldson was a steward.
Donaldson was later sent by the leadership of the Provisional movement to the US to work with Noraid in the years before the IRA ceasefire.
“We couldn’t believe that they would attack a peaceful demonstration in the way they did in front of all the cameras of the world,” he said.
“No-one expected or believed or anticipated that.
“Denis Donaldson was a steward, he would have known that there would have been a peaceful event.”
Mr Galvin explains how he returned to the north in subsequent years.
“That was important, they came back again the next year and it was important to show the British that attacking peaceful demonstrations…would not work and eventually Martin McGuinness had me come over, get arrested and the British after that admitted that they couldn’t do anything and withdrew it (the ban) after I had spent a couple of days in Strand Road (RUC Station).
He said Mr McGuiness, who died in 2017, had asked him several times to allow himself to be captured.
“Martin McGuiness, he had actually asked me to do this for several years,” Mr Galvin said.
“He used to send Pat Doherty, who was respected a lot and who I was good friends with, and asked me to this.
“He had asked me to do this in 87 and 88 and I initially declined.”
Mr Galvin said some republicans advised him against handing himself over.
“I had people in Ireland, Tyrone particularly, telling me ‘look, your claim to fame is you can get away, the British can’t catch you, now you’re going to walk in’.
“But I gradually agreed to do it.
“We were walking around Derry, you can hear newscast ‘Martin Galvin’s now walking around the Bogside in defiance of an exclusion order with Martin McGuinness and other members of Sinn Féin’.
“The idea is Martin McGuinness’s idea, was to test the ban, I was arrested.”
The Irish American said Mr McGuiness believed that if he was arrested British authorities would have to drop the ban.
“They won’t be able to do anything and that was his attitude, and he thought it would make a point,” he said.
Mr Galvin was later taken to Strand Road RUC Station, where he sang the well-known rebel tune, The Foggy Dew, before being brought to London and flown back to the US.
“Tom Hartley had told me one time years before ‘you are a high profile republican, if you ever get caught by them act like one, don’t let us down’,” he said.
“That’s what was going through my mind, so that’s why I marched out singing The Foggy Dew.”
Noraid: Irish America and the IRA is on RTÉ One on Wednesday at 9.35pm.