In October 2005, a socialist political party called People Before Profit was founded. It operates in Northern Ireland as well as the Republic of Ireland.
Members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a Trotskyist organisation linked with the International Socialist Tendency, founded PBP in 2005 as the People Before Profit Alliance (IST).
Joan Collins, an anti–bin tax campaigner and former member of the Socialist Party, was the party’s first elected delegate when the Community &Workers Action Group (CWAG) in south Dublin entered the alliance in 2007.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was renamed the Socialist Workers Network (SWN) in February 2018 to reflect a “determination to focus on growing People Before Profit, but within that to win and teach as many members as possible in revolutionary socialist politics.”
Socialist Environmental Alliance: The Political Party
The Socialist Environmental Alliance (SEA) was a major political party centred mostly in the city of Derry in Northern Ireland.
In the Northern Ireland Assembly election of 2003, the SEA ran in the East Londonderry and Foyle seats (representing the party’s Derry stronghold).
In East Londonderry, Marion Baur received only 137 first preference votes (0.4 percent of the total), while Eamonn McCann received 2,257 first preference votes in Foyle (5.5 percent of the total).
They also ran a candidate for the European Parliament elections in 2004, Eamonn McCann. He received 9,172 first-place votes, or 1.6 percent of the total votes cast.
McCann then ran for the Foyle constituency in the 2005 general election, winning 3.6 percent of the vote.
Republic of Ireland
In the 2007 Assembly election in Foyle, McCann ran for the organisation once more.
In 2008, the organisation was disbanded, with the majority of its members joining the People Before Profit Alliance.
Richard Boyd Barrett, the PBP candidate in the Dun Laoghaire constituency, almost missed a seat on the 10th &final count by 7,890 votes to 9,910.
When the Lisbon Treaty was placed to the public in May 2008, PBP began a campaign asking for a No vote.
PBP fielded twelve candidates in the Republic’s 2009 local elections, including 10 in Dublin County. Three of Dublin’s four councils gave it five seats.
Joan Collins &Pat Dunne of the CWAG ran in Dublin, while Donnie Fell (a former Waterford Crystal employee and trade union official) ran in Waterford, in addition to 10 members of the SWP.
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People Before Profit and United Left Alliance
Richard Boyd Barrett and Joan Collins were elected to Dáil Éireann as TDs (deputies) in the Republic’s 2011 general election, running under the People Before Profit and United Left Alliance banners.
Joan Collins, a TD, and Pat Dunne, a councillor, quit the organisation in April 2013 to join United Left, a political party with former Socialist Party TD Clare Daly.
PBP gained 14 seats in the May 2014 local elections, including two seats on the Sligo &Wexford County Councils outside of Dublin.
In August 2015, the Anti-Austerity Alliance and I discussed the possibility of forging a new political organisation.
The two parties declared on September 17, 2015, that they have formally registered as a unified political party for election reasons. The Anti-Austerity Alliance–People Before Profit was the name of the new group.
General Election for 2016
Boyd Barrett was re-elected in the general election of 2016. Gino Kenny and Brad Smith, both of the PBP, joined him.
In 2016, Councillor Sonya Stapleton, who represented Pembroke–South Dock on Dublin City Council, left the party, as did Councillor Ruth Nolan, who represented Lucan on South Dublin County Council.
Due to disagreements with the party’s leadership, Dublin City Councillor John Lyons resigned in January 2019.
Following that, Cllr Lyons became a key figure in the formation of the Independent Left.
“Solidarity and People Before Profit are the most similar to us, but they have a hierarchical, highly controlled internal life that is not suited for the objective of socialist transformation,”he said of his former party.
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The Irish General Election of 2020
In the Irish general election in 2020, the party kept all three of its TDs.
People Before Profit backed Debenhams Ireland employees during their strike in 2020.
RISE, a democratic socialist party that separated from Solidarity in 2019, joined with People Before Profit on February 28, 2021. In the process, Paul Murphy became the party’s fourth member of the House of Commons. It operates as an internal organisation and maintains its media.
Hugh Lewis, a Dn Laoghaire–Rathdown County Councillor, resigned from the party on May 10, 2021, following an internal disciplinary procedure.
