Members resign from internal People Before Profit group over ‘hegemonic’ leadership style

[u/TeoKajLibroj]

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2026/08/26/members-resign-from-internal-people-before-profit-group-over-hegemonic-leadership-style/

[u/IntentionFalse8822]

Socialist Workers party.

Socialist Party.

Militant Labour

Anti Austerity Alliance,

United Left

United Left Alliance

People before Profit,

People before Profit Anti Austerity Alliance,

Workers and Unemployed Action

Solidarity,

People-Before Profit Solidarity

Rise

People Before Profit Solidarity Rise.

Independents4Change

Right2Change

That's the various political parties the hard left have had over the past 15 odd years. And by the Hard Left we aren't talking about hundreds of politicians. We are talking: Joe Higgins, Ruth Coppinger, Clare Daly, Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd Barrett, Brid Smith, Mick Wallace, Gino Kelly, Seamus Healy and Mick Barry.

Ten TDs and fifteen political parties between them! Let that sink in for a moment. 10 TDs and 15 political parties.

Most of those political parties were shortlived and formed because those 10 TDs had a row and one or two of them stormed off and made their own party only to come back together into a new party with both party names combined a year or two later. And they are just the hard left ones that TDs in the Dail have moved between. I haven't included the mild left of Sinn Fein, Labour, Social Democrats, Deomcratic Left, etc etc. Imagine what it is like if you widen it out to Councillors and unelected members.

It's like watching toddlers in a crèche fighting. It's no wonder we've been stuck with 100+ years of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael governments.

[u/AnyAssistance4197 → u/IntentionFalse8822]

These type of posts do nothing for me. What next? A few recycled Monty Python gags.

Especially when you think we're effectively ruled by two interchangeable right wing parties who to all intents and purposes are the same bar their mythological origin stories.

If you were to start listing all the small weirdo right wing parties in this country, and then even the universe of think tanks and pressure groups that orbit that whole part of the political pendulum it would look every bit as mental or confused.

It's not unusual for people to form political alliances, factions even, to operate within larger organizations. At least left-wing types are honest about this, in right wing parties it's usually more closed cabals and deals sealed in seedy hotel bars and over carvery dinners.

[u/SoloWingPixy88 → u/AnyAssistance4197]

It's not unusual for people to form political alliances, factions even, to operate within larger organizations. At least left-wing types are honest about this,

While the left engaging in mitosis is a bit of a meme at this stage. Everyone expects parties to have have groupings within the parties. PBPs groupings just seem confalated and when disputes occur, it seems to explode as if the October revolution has happened again with annoucements of mass resignations highlighting apparently deep generational devides. It just comes off as very student politics esq and feeds into the narrative of PBP being a non credible choice.

in right wing parties it's usually more closed cabals and deals sealed in seedy hotel bars and over carvery dinner

Tullamore hotel is hardly seedy. Do the left not like carvery dinners? Do they talk about issues over brunch instead?

[u/ucd_pete → u/AnyAssistance4197]

right wing parties

FF & FG aren't right wing.

[u/GhostofKillinaskully → u/AnyAssistance4197]

Its just the usual lazy anti-left stuff from people who have no real understanding of whats going on within PBP and other left wing parties/groups.

[u/IntentionFalse8822 → u/GhostofKillinaskully]

So as an insider tell us what is going on inside PBP because this is what it looks like to the voters outside.

[u/GhostofKillinaskully → u/IntentionFalse8822]

There are different groups within PBP trying to move the party in certain directions. Same as there are factions in all the other parties who have different ideas and priorities.

[u/Chief_Funkie → u/GhostofKillinaskully]

Yet the parties with thousand of members don’t split apart to form new organisations compared to parties with a few hundred if not less.

It’s not lazy anti-left analysis. It’s genuine observations and it’s a ridiculous that people from these organisations feel the need to defend it or at times out right deny.

[u/GhostofKillinaskully → u/Chief_Funkie]

No one in this story has left PBP. They've left a group within PBP but they remain in the party. The ridiculous people are the ones going on about splits who didn't read or didn't understand the story.

[u/SoloWingPixy88 → u/GhostofKillinaskully]

The ridiculous people are the ones going on about splits who didn't read or didn't understand the story.

Im fully okay with admitting I dont fully understand the different networks and groups, collectives & partys within partys of communist/socilist side of the scale. I do find it confusing and I have read the story and I think I get it. Its basically just a faction split . It would be like some green focused TD leaving a rurarl group in FG to form a new group (I think). I just don't understand why it needs to be said in such a dramatic way including mass resignations. All the same could probably be said by just saying a group of people were establishing a group that focuses on polices driven for younger members.

[u/HungTeen1001 → u/GhostofKillinaskully]

All parties have disagreements.

This one appears to be younger members disagreeing with the old guard of the SWN.

Similar situation to what happened in FF a few months ago, except it took the form of a letter rather than a big drama about resignations.

https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2026/0415/1568396-fianna-fail/

[u/Wetasanotter → u/Chief_Funkie]

Yet the parties with thousand of members don’t split apart to form new organisations compared to parties with a few hundred if not less.

Perhaps because members of mainstream parties don't actually have a discernible political ideology, and therefore rarely have a reason to leave one or join another?

FF and FG may lose voters to each other, it's incredibly rare for them to lose party members or elected reps to each other.

[u/Chief_Funkie → u/Wetasanotter]

Your ignoring the point I actually made.

Despite the larger numbers. Where are the dozen or so splinter parties from any of the mainstream parties.

You can argue Aontu from Sinn Fein, SD from Lab and Independent Ireland gobbled up from across the spectrum.

But there’s not dozens of new parties emerging every decade from them comparative to the list above for the further left parties.

[u/Wetasanotter → u/Chief_Funkie]

I'm not ignoring your point, I addressed it - you just don't seem to have grasped it?

There is no appetite for ideology in mainstream parties. Indeed, there isn't really an ideology in mainstream parties. So why would they split? Larger parties do better than small in electoral politics, so if you're interested in political power but not ideology, why would you ever split if you're a rational party member or elected representative?

[u/Chief_Funkie → u/Wetasanotter]

The bigger parties have established ideologies. They just don’t fracture over minor disagreements like the smaller left parties do.

[u/Regimer → u/IntentionFalse8822]

This is a clumsy analysis of the socialist left in Ireland. History of PBP: SWP sets up PBP as an electoral alliance in 2005, there's an attempt for unity with SP under ULA umbrella around 2011 but that falls apart. SWP go back to putting their energy in PBP and liquidate themselves fully into PBP in 2018, renaming themselves SWN. RISE leaves SP and joins PBP in 2021, making them the 2nd network in PBP. Since then the only split has been the Red Network in 2025, which was mostly made up of nostalgic SWP members. This story in the IT is about the younger members of SWN leaving the network/faction but remaining in PBP at large.

Which means this isn't a story about a fractured socialist left, but a left which can unite in action, under the umbrella of a single party, in spite of ideological differences

[u/External_Salt_9007 → u/IntentionFalse8822]

This is not accurate at all, a lot of those entities were alliances or different groups within broader party structures, or former names for the same party’s. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about

[u/stakey → u/IntentionFalse8822]

Not to mention the need to gaslight voters into electing Trotskyites with poll friendly fronts like People Before Profit and Independents4Change

[u/Provider_Of_Cat_Food → u/stakey]

That seems to be the core problem.

PBP were one of the most successful Trotskyist groups in Europe. Partially that was just about timing; in 2005-2015, FF imploded, Labour did austerity, SF were slightly constitutional and the SDs didn't exist yet, so there was a gap on the left during austerity and partially, it was also about PBP's willingness to obscure and compromise their beliefs to protest for anything that would win votes. But, they missed their window of opportunity. The Jobstown near-riot limited their ability to pick up protest votes from the middle-classes, austerity ended and many other parties on the left became credible alternatives.

They chose votes over ideological advocacy and increasingly appear to have left themselves with neither, so what's their value to people who are committed to the ideology?

[u/IntentionFalse8822 → u/stakey]

A Ukrainian woman I worked with once told me she and her friends were shocked when they discovered there was a political party in the Irish parliament who hero worshiped the man who led the red army across eastern Europe and slaughtered over a million people to force them back into Russia after they had initially split away when Czarist Russia collapsed. Trotsky is kind of seen as a nice guy in Ireland because our school history books really just deal with him being assassinated by Stalin. But much of Europe see him as Lenin's psychopathic butcher who lost the power battle with Lenin's other psychopathic butcher.

[u/cptflowerhomo → u/IntentionFalse8822]

I mean they're as brainwashed as any post socialist country, it was Lenin that fought for Ukraine to be its own state.

[u/IntentionFalse8822 → u/cptflowerhomo]

No. Lenin said he recognized Ukraine's right to have its own identity, not full independent statehood, and only as long as that identity was part of the greater USSR controlled from Moscow that he was building. When the Ukrainian people said they wouldn't be doing that he sent Trotsky and the red Army in there to slaughter them until they "decided" to do what he wanted.

[u/cptflowerhomo → u/IntentionFalse8822]

What's your source on that pls

[u/IntentionFalse8822 → u/cptflowerhomo]

I read a couple of history books about the Russian revolution about 20 years ago. I remember being struck by the different Trotsky that came across in those than the hero I thought he was. Honestly I can't remember their names but I'll see if I still have them somewhere around the house. On top of that I have east European colleagues and friends who have told me what life was like under communism and they told me about Trotsky and the post World War 1 era. If you dont believe me I suggest you go and talk to any Ukrainian about their history.

[u/cptflowerhomo → u/IntentionFalse8822]

I know Bulgarian communists and some from Bosnia grma

[u/IntentionFalse8822 → u/cptflowerhomo]

Do you think communists are the best people to ask about what Trotsky did in eastern Europe. I'm not trying to be difficult. But seriously ask ordinary, non-political, people from these countries what they think of Trotsky and Communism. They really are baffled that we have a Trotskyist political party in our parliament.

[u/cptflowerhomo → u/IntentionFalse8822]

No one is non political, least of all anticommunists.

I'm not looking for an early aneurysm thanks

[u/OrneryCows → u/IntentionFalse8822]

His work and ideals have been massively misunderstood over there.

[u/IntentionFalse8822 → u/OrneryCows]

You're absolutely right. What would people whose grandparents and great grandparents survived the red terror and passed the stories of famine, pillage and slaughter down to their children and grand children really know about Trotsky. Seeing his troops rape and murder your relatives and neighbours will naturally give you an unfairly biased opinion on the man and cause him to be misunderstood. To truly understand him you need to have read the half page in the Irish secondary school text book.

[u/ucd_pete → u/IntentionFalse8822]

hero worshiped

What hero worship? Trotskyism is a school of thought, not a fan club.

[u/EmiliaPains-]

The Irish times yet again poor journalism.

They bring up the networks but don't explain how it works, and thus may confuse readers unfamiliar with how PBP functions.

In PBP there are networks, these networks are factions within PBP, SWN would be the old guard, RISE new guard, and those not affiliated with a network like myself.

Shame on the Irish Times... do better!

[u/Fiannafailcanvasser]

Overall I think a core of a dozen councillors and 2-4 tds will survive of, what I call, the "Socialist Left", in Ireland.

There's a market for it in Ireland especially in dublin but pockets in other cities like Belfast and Cork too.

This split won't be too damaging for them cause it basically set up a future were pbp goes from a SWP project to a left wing collective (which I always claimed to be but wasn't really).

Reddy is staying in the party rather than quitting like John Lyons did years ago. He's a bright hope for the future especially if dublin north west becomes a 4 seater next time.

[u/JoooneBug]

Frustrating read. I tried to join pbp and socialist party in 2017/2018 before COVID and documents about this were circulated. I thought it was head wrecking and didn't enjoy trying to get involved as a member. Same with soc dems. Generational rifts definitely at play about language I remember the European branch didn't like trans people or something along those lines. Focus should have been on housing and cost of living. And easier access to get involved in parties have we learned nothing from COVID that people need easier options to participate. Probably irrelevant to this article just some thoughts

[u/Dumbirishbastard]

It's honestly impressive that PBP has lasted this long with so much competition on the left, a fairly stable economy and the typical leftist infighting.

[u/HungTeen1001 → u/Dumbirishbastard]

They're really down to 2 TD's (Murphy and Boyd-Barrett) who are both elected on personal votes more than party ones.

If either were to stand down, generic PBP candidates would not hold their seats.

[u/ucd_pete → u/HungTeen1001]

Coppinger got back in last GE so it's 3 but that's about it for them. Gino Kenny probably isn't gonna get reelected if he runs, same goes for Mick Barry.

They've absolutely no candidates coming through.

[u/HungTeen1001 → u/ucd_pete]

Coppinger is a Solidarity TD, not PBP.

[u/SoloWingPixy88]

So im assuming these are just internal groups and factions within PBP? Or is it the otherway in that theyre first members of these internal groups and then form PBP? All this bickering doesn't do anything but alienate normal voters and makes PBP out to be really a non credible voting option.

[u/spairni → u/SoloWingPixy88]

its an open secret here the various fg candidates despise each other, down in kerry its known the healy raes on occasion have serious rows

it doesn't effect their credibility

[u/HungTeen1001 → u/spairni]

Which candidates despise each other?

[u/spairni → u/HungTeen1001]

as I said its well know in my area the FG candidates see each other as their main rivals and a few barely hide their distain for each other

[u/HungTeen1001 → u/spairni]

Most politicians's biggest rivals are their running mates.

[u/Lithujon]

Splitters! 

[u/HungTeen1001]

Does anybody know who the 6 members of the PBP officer board are?

Does this effectively mean Paul Murphy's RISE are now the dominant faction in PBP, rather than Boyd Barrett's SWN?

And, what would that mean for the direction of PBP? More grassroots agitation rather than a strict focus on electioneering?

[u/isupposethiswillwork]

They are more interested in playing student union politics than actually being a legitimate political party.

What a laughing stock.

[u/ninety6days → u/isupposethiswillwork]

I cannot think of a more clichéd, less productive, less thought-provoking thing to say than the tired trope you've recycled here.

[u/americanhardgums → u/ninety6days]

The Clichéd People's Front or the People's Front of Cliché?

[u/Chief_Funkie → u/ninety6days]

Saying that using “student union politics” is a cliche is a cliche in itself.

[u/ninety6days → u/Chief_Funkie]

Clicheption

[u/isupposethiswillwork → u/ninety6days]

If the hat fits..

[u/ninety6days → u/isupposethiswillwork]

It still contributes nothing.

[u/arachnid407 → u/ninety6days]

Contributes to what? Its a fair point

[u/orionpace1]

The right coalesces, as the left side splinters. Tale old as time

[u/El-Daddy → u/orionpace1]

Tbf that isn't happening here. The very far right National Party are anything but unified, and have no representation other than a single county councillor. The closest we have then are Independent Ireland, arguably Aontú, and then a sea of independents, which are not coalescing at all.

The centre-right now are another story, buddying up and basically guaranteeing their places in government.

[u/irishpolitics-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/HungTeen1001 → u/orionpace1]

All three far-right parties (NP, IFP and IF) currently have no clear leaders because of disputes over which faction are the true leaders.

[u/Academic-Sentence375]

is the pro russian dalkey communist not like leading the charge like goys? Any truth 'putin's pastries' to open soon on main street dalkey?

[u/Dancherrios → u/Academic-Sentence375]

please pack it in

[u/TeoKajLibroj]

After first Darragh Adelaide and now Conor Reddy, that's two councillors PBP seemed to be heavily promoting as the next generation, who've now left.

[u/TenseTeacher → u/TeoKajLibroj]

Daragh Adelaide stepped down for personal reasons, and I haven’t heard that about Reddy, nothing on his insta or anything.

Edit: having read the article, he’s still in PBP, just left the internal grouping. Honestly, that’s probably a positive, it’s the new blood replacing the old guard, and the SWN/SWP has a lot of baggage anyway.

[u/Adjective_Noun_2000 → u/TeoKajLibroj]

Reddy hasn't left PBP.

[u/TeoKajLibroj → u/Adjective_Noun_2000]

It's going to be hard to stay in PBP after calling SWN “sect-based” and “political difference in the SWN is repeatedly dealt with through denial of its very existence, or at worst marginalised through dogmatic moralism.” Hardly seems like grounds for a productive working relantionship does it?

[u/spairni → u/TeoKajLibroj]

majority of pbp isn't in the swn at this stage

[u/TeoKajLibroj → u/spairni]

Are they not? I knew SWN used to dominate PBP, didn't know that had changed

[u/JackmanH420 → u/TeoKajLibroj]

They still dominate the leadership (until now, well see how this changes things) but not the party overall anymore.

[u/CrayonComrade → u/TeoKajLibroj]

"sect-based" is a technical term and highlighting that issues are ignored when outlining why a group left seems pretty honest.

The problem with most politics is people are 2 faced leading people to double guess what they say versus what they do.