American IRA figure calls for end to dissident republican armed struggle

Martin Galvin, centre, at a dissident republican commemoration in Derry to mark the 93rd anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, in 2009. Photograph: George Sweeney/Rex

A hardline Irish-American backer of the IRA, who was once banned from Northern Ireland by Margaret Thatchers government, has said the conditions no longer exist for dissident republicans to continue their armed struggle.

Martin Galvin, a co-founder of Noraid and later a bitter critic of Sinn Fins peace strategy, is the latest voice within dissident republicanism to call into question the use of violence by the new IRA and other anti-ceasefire paramilitaries.

The New York-based lawyer said he was an unapologetic supporter of Provisional IRA violence during the Troubles. But Galvin the public face of the Provisionals in the US for several decades said there was a lack of support for armed struggle within the republican community at present.

You would need a sufficient popular acceptance or acquiescence in the use of force in nationalist areas, or at minimum in republican heartlands. You will not get such support until political alternatives fail and are seen to have failed, he said in an interview with the Guardian.

You must have the personnel, resources and support network to sustain a campaign. There must be a well-developed political strategy in which armed struggle is only one part. Republicans had the capacity to sustain a long campaign across the north [of Ireland] which could not have been done without meeting these conditions.

I have no inside information about any armed group and do not pretend to have any special knowledge or expertise in this area. I am making a personal judgment based upon information publicly available. It does not seem that these conditions exist today.

In 1997 the Provisional IRA split with a minority faction opposed to further political compromises, which broke away to form the Real IRA. At the time Galvin broke with Sinn Fin and openly supported Real IRA figures including its founder, Michael McKevitt.

The former spokesman for Noraid also admitted there was a debate going on within the armed anti-ceasefire groups about the efficacy of using violence. I would expect and believe that the leaders of any armed republican group are evaluating their own capabilities in relation to these same conditions and making a pragmatic as well as moral judgment on whether their campaigns are advancing the objective of ending British rule and uniting Ireland.

The recent election of independent republican candidates to local councils in Northern Ireland was an encouraging sign, Galvin said. The issues are there to be raised. The unionists have Jim Allister as the Traditional Unionist Voice tail that wags the Democratic Unionist party dog. Could independent republicans do the same?

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American IRA figure calls for end to dissident republican armed struggle

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