06.11.2025
Unity for what?
Catherine Connolly’s 63.4% election landslide is undoubtedly a symbolic blow against the mainstream establishment and a victory for the coalition of socialist, centre-left parties and progressives who ran her campaign. However, Anne McShane questions the goal of a coalition government being pursued by People Before Profit
F or the leadership of People Before Profit - the main left group in Irish politics and closely linked to the Socialist Workers Party in Britain - there is no doubt that Catherine Connolly’s election as president marks a political sea change. PBP leaders encouraged her to stand and then threw their membership into the campaign to ensure she won both the nomination and the election. PBP claims it provided the majority of forces on the ground.
The comrades worked together with Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, the Greens and the Social Democrats, organising a 32-county campaign, despite the fact that people in the Six Counties are, of course, ineligible to vote south of the border. This emphasised Connolly’s commitment to a united Ireland. True, her social media campaign was unceasing, repetitive and unimaginative ... but it worked. The question now, of course, what next for the socialist left?
Like current president Michael D Higgins (referred to in Ireland simply as Michael D), Connolly describes herself as a socialist and a pacifist, deeply committed to Irish neutrality. It is a ‘social justice’ kind of socialism, of course, rather than a revolutionary one. Connolly and Michael D had a close collaboration in the Galway Labour Party until 2006, when she resigned in disgust at the refusal of the party leadership to allow her to run on a joint slate with Higgins in the 2007 general election.
Independents
After an unsuccessful Dáil campaign in 2011, Connolly benefited from the trouncing of her former party in the 2016 election and became an independent TD. On her election to the Dáil she positioned herself close to the left, supporting Richard Boyd Barrett of PBP in the bid for the position of taoiseach, and joining the Dáil group, Independents 4 Change, with Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. She used her position to criticise the government over its failures on housing, institutional abuse and its links with Nato. Controversially, she travelled to Syria with Daly and Wallace in 2018, where they visited a Palestinian refugee camp - a matter of great controversy in the election campaign, when she was accused of giving support to the Assad regime.
Connolly campaigned for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum on gay marriage in 2015 and for abortion rights in 2018. She opposes the scapegoating of migrants, speaking out during her election campaign against claims that Ireland is full, and describing such assertions as palpably false and deeply disturbing. She has also been a long-time supporter of Palestine. In an interview with Radio Ulster on September 23, she stated that, while she condemned the initial Hamas attack, it was important to note that “history did not start on October 7”.
Connolly’s vote almost certainly benefited from the collapse of Fianna Fáil’s campaign. Its candidate, Jim Gavin, handpicked by party leader Micheal Martin, was forced to withdraw at the 11th hour because of revelations that he had been dishonest in his dealings with former tenants, to whom he still owed money. His departure was so late in the day that his name remained on the ballot paper, triggering confusion and resentment among FF voters, 103,568 of whom refused to obey the leadership’s directive to vote for Heather Humphries of Fine Gael, and still gave Gavin their number 1 vote.
Even greater numbers refused to vote for any of the candidates, with 213,738, or 13%, participating in an organised boycott. Most of the boycotters wrote the name of Maria Steen, a far-right candidate who had failed to overcome various obstacles to get on the ballot. These boycotters made their point clear - there was nobody to speak on their behalf.
The highest number of spoilt ballots were in poor working class areas - those in Dublin constituencies often recording around 20%. In three there were more spoilt ballots than first-preference votes for Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys. Such high numbers are unprecedented and show the depth of resentment and marginalisation among sections of the working class.
The far-right Independent Ireland is now playing the democracy card, calling the nomination process “an affront”, and have drafted a bill to make things more accessible.Meanwhile attacks on hotels and direct provision centres housing asylum-seekers continue. Even second-generation migrant populations, those who were born here, are being targeted and, ridiculous as it sounds, told to ‘go home’.
PBP and election
As the election results rolled in, Paul Murphy TD, leader of the PBP Rise faction, spoke to the media, calling for a united conference of leftwing parties to be held next year, adding that private discussions should take place with other leftwing parties to explore possible cooperation ahead of the next general election.1
He followed up with a piece in Rupture, Rise’s publication, where he set out his position in more detail. For him the election was a “watershed moment” - “the first time that the left has won a majority of votes in a national election.”2 This victory had been despite a concerted smear campaign from Fine Gael and its friends in the media, and the repeated attempts of its candidate, Heather Humphries, to undermine and tarnish Connolly’s reputation. Paul Murphy has announced elsewhere that he is instigating defamation proceedings against Humphries because of claims she made in an election debate that he was involved in criminal activities during the water charges campaign in 2015. In fact he and other protestors were found not guilty of any wrongdoing by a jury in 2017.
Back to the left government discussion. Murphy’s argument is that the success of the alliance in the presidential campaign provides a lesson on the effectiveness of unity. It shows that “if the left unites and seeks to mobilise people, it can win”. Such unity could “raise people’s sights for the possibility of a left government for the first time in the history of the state”. To further the process, PBP is proposing “a major conference of the left in the new year to discuss how left cooperation can be deepened, with a view to presenting a clear choice in the next general election: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and those who would prop them up, versus a left government.”
The commitment to fighting for this alternative government - something which has been promoted by Connolly herself - comes despite the fact that it will undoubtedly be to the right of PBP: “We are ... open to participating in this dynamic towards a left government, including committing to vote to allow this government to be formed, despite the very significant limitations of the likely programme.” He stated that PBP will “retain our right to independence, to put forward our own ecosocialist position, and continue strengthening our connections with communities to mobilise the power of people from below”. Also, because PBP understands that the capitalist system cannot deliver for the working class, it “will only enter a government that commits to a people-power strategy of mobilising from below to overcome the opposition of the powerful capitalist class and deliver ecosocialist change”.
At a Rise meeting on November 1, I asked whether the socialist left would be invited to participate in the planned conference. Paul Murphy replied that creating a mass audience for Marxist ideas “was not about getting the existing left together”. Instead it was about uniting with substantial forces to the right of PBP, and being the voice of socialism within such a formation. Jess Spears agreed and said that having a conference with the Socialist Party and Militant Left would effectively be one with “nobody”. There was talk from Murphy and Spears about the “miserablist left” who were happy to stay on the sidelines, isolated in small meetings and writing their critical arguments in papers that nobody reads. Instead Rise, as part of PBP, was bringing their Marxism to the masses.
Migration
Murphy also spoke about the need to address the concerns of those sections of the working class which feel disenfranchised and have turned to the right. I raised in that context the fact SF is peddling a populist and dangerous line to the right of the government on migration. In an effort to win voters, its spokesperson on migration, Matt Carthy, continually presses for harsher action against those served with deportation orders. He wants them arrested and removed more quickly. He rails against the fact that thousands of unidentified illegal migrants remain in Irish society. His is the language of the far right - SF’s version of the “migrant bogie man” who threatens your wives and daughters, and frightens your children. SF is determined to win their voters back from Independent Ireland. They are keenly aware that polls show SF voters in the republic as far more negative about migration than their counterparts in the north. SF therefore responds with different policies, speaking out of both sides of its mouth.
Murphy responded by agreeing that SF has an abysmal record on this question. Nevertheless this did not put it outside of the left government project, as PBP could intervene to win its members over.
The major problem, of course, is that of government. We have seen the disasters of Syriza and other attempts of the left to manage capitalism. And in this case, it is not even the socialist left that PBP wants unity with. The best that can be said about PBP’s potential partners in a governmental coalition is that they are ‘left of centre’ - with the exception of SF, which is populist, always chasing the vote. Labour and the Green Party have been in government before as junior partners to FF and FG, and have proved to be just as assiduous in their implementation of austerity measures as their partners. The Social Democrats have not yet been tested in government, but a cursory glance at their policies will leave you in no doubt - they describe themselves as standing for “equality”, “social justice” and “progressive politics”. Based on their voting record, there is certainly no reason to expect the SDs to behave any differently in essence to FF and FG. Capitalism, not least through the famed markets, imposes its own discipline on those in government.
The November 3 PBP meeting to launch the campaign for a conference failed to meet expectations. Jeremy Corbyn was invited, but did not show, sending a brief message instead, while Luke Ming Flanagan, a left independent MEP, also failed to attend. PBP were left to speak to themselves and a couple of Connolly supporters.
It was, though, Richard Boyd Barrett’s first meeting after a long battle with throat cancer. He was rightly warmly welcomed. He expressed his full agreement with Murphy on the enormous potential of a left government alliance. PBP “is not the same as the others” and will act as “a leftwing pressure” within the alliance. It would not adopt the policies of the other parties: “We will not drop our principles. We have no truck with scapegoating migrants.”
The most interesting speaker was a journalist, Aoife-Grace Moore, a Connolly supporter. She stated that, based on her long experience as a political reporter, she would have a lot of concerns about the other parties PBP wanted to go into coalition with. All of them were “really only interested in votes”, for which they would be willing to throw the likes of PBP “under the bus”. There would also be a lot of egos to contend with and clashing priorities. She believed that there could not be any unity with parties who were willing to scapegoat migrants - clearly a reference to SF.
Meanwhile the Socialist Party, the Red Network, Militant Left, Socialist Democracy and Connolly Youth have been putting forward their analyses and criticisms of the Connolly campaign, PBP and its left government strategy. It is these forces that the PBP leadership is determined to ignore or belittle in its headlong rush to get into government with the big boys and girls.