Something of a crisis has arisen within what has been the majority tendency of People Before Profit. This matters, even for the Irish bourgeoisie: besides a string of councillors PBP has two high-profile members of the Dáil and one member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Socialist Workers Network is the Irish affiliate of the International Socialist Tendency, led, of course, by the SWP in Britain.1 The SWN was the main initiator of PBP in 2005, and has been its leading force, not least on the six-strong officer board. But now it has lost its dominant position due to the resignation of 15 members, including Dublin Central councillor Conor Reddy, national organiser Aislinn Shanahan Daly and Dublin organisers Damian Kelly and Farah Parvazi. TD Richard Boyd Barrett is now the sole SWNer.
Rumours of conflicts amongst the Cliffites have been circulating for months, but only became public knowledge with the leaking of the resignation letter of the 15 to The Irish Times. It published the gist of it on August 26.2 Disgracefully, the comrades declined to make an open declaration in the workers’ press, so it was the bourgeoisie’s paper of record which first publicly announced the split.
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