Richard Greene (born 1950) is a political activist from Dublin, focusing on conservative family values campaigns, and formerly on opposing extradition to the United Kingdom.
[1] He got a degree in English literature from Trinity College Dublin, worked a year in France and became a secondary-school teacher, and subsequently a careers guidance counsellor.
[citation needed] Greene developed an interest in politics during the 1981 hunger strikes, and campaigned on behalf of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six.
[4] Greene was expelled from his cumann of Fianna Fáil on 3 October 1988 for "conduct unbecoming a member",[5][6] reinstated two weeks later on appeal to the Dáil constituency Comhairle,[6] and re-expelled by the national executive on 15 December.
[7] In January 1990, Greene was elected to the founding executive of the Irish National Congress, a newly formed lobby campaigning for "a British withdrawal from Ireland".
[12][13] He was Public Relations Officer of Right-to-Life Ireland, an umbrella group of anti-abortion organisations opposed to the Maastricht Treaty which campaigned for a No-vote in the ratification referendum.
[15] Unusually among independent members of Dublin County Council, Greene supported all the rezoning motions at the July 1993 meeting.
[21] In the ensuing referendum campaign, Muintir's Emmanuel Sweeney suggested that then government minister Mervyn Taylor and TD Alan Shatter might not understand Christian marriage.
[24] In the run-up to the 1996 referendum on restricting the right to bail, Greene wrote to the United Nations asking for election monitoring of the government's campaign.
He complained that an RTÉ Television documentary about "political dynasties" broadcast before the poll gave an unfair advantage to featured candidates.
[30] On 20 November 2008, he led a three-person delegation from Cóir appearing at meeting of the Oireachtas sub-committee on Ireland's Future in the EU.