By Red-wing

The Fuel Protests have ended for the most part. There are very few strains of the movement that are still continuing at this stage, some in local areas where a dozen or two small farmers continue to organise in the countryside with the fallback plan of slow marches through rural towns, and then there have been some calls to assemble at Leinster House in Dublin, which seem to be more hardcore right-wingers and conservatives still fanning that particular flame for their own gains. But none of this is descriptive of a meaningful movement. The "thunder" has been well and truly heard by everyone in the country. 

At its height, these protests could have been described as the most important insurrectionary moment seen in Ireland since the foundation of the Free State. It was certainly the most important working-class offensive since the Water Charges and, even with that more reserved outlook, deserve to be analysed by Irish revolutionaries for a long time going forward in order to best prepare for the next time such an opportunity arises. Revolutionaries were not prepared to do anything this time, nobody on the left was, and that is very much an issue worth talking about. 

In this text I plan to address the need to act quickly, thus the title of "The Time Between Lightning and Thunder", an analogy designed to describe how when such opportunities arise we must dive in head first or risk being too late to intervene at all, as is the case with this latest movement. The "lightning" is the movement commencing, and should be a signal for comrades to move quickly. We cannot know in advance how far away the "thunder" is, but by the time we hear it, it will be too late, the moment will be gone and we will have nothing left but regret and analysis to work off of. I would much rather be assisting in an ongoing movement right now instead of writing a text describing the importance of one, that's for sure.

While the Fuel Protests were still ongoing a text by Cillian O'Riain was published on Aontacht titled "Strike While the Iron is Hot". This gave a brief argument for students, republicans, workers and anti-imperialists to get involved as quickly as possible. By the time many of these groups sent out texts of solidarity towards the protests, we were already 3 or 4 days into the movement, and very few, even by that late stage, did anything material to help with them. 

Texts describing how, in theory, a group, organisation or union is figuratively, abstractly standing in solidarity with a movement is next to useless unless members are explicitly given the mandates to join the protests. I read many such texts during those few, key days, none of which offered a place, a time or a method for members of any groups to intervene in the Fuel Protests. 

Perhaps this was by design. After having seen Paul Murphy of PBP attempt outreach on O'Connell Street and being forced to retreat by a handful of far-right bigots perhaps groups were fearful of sending their members into the dark, potentially giving the far-right easy propaganda. Unknowing of what may happen, and wanting to avoid a potential scandal the rest of the left could use against them, words of limped solidarity were chosen over material action. 

Such timidness and caution may have been considered a wise choice at the time, but I would be surprised if any group describing itself as revolutionary does not now regret not acting more decisively. I do not blame comrades for such outlooks, Ireland is not known for these types of spontaneous movements, we are still learning how to navigate such waters. They are, however, more prevalent in Europe and we would do well to not only study the Fuel Protests but also look abroad to similar instances of revolt, and here I would like to rely on my own experiences. 

November 17, 2018, France. This was the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement in France, the closest a western nation has come to revolution in the decades preceding it, or the near-decade since. Months had been spent building up to this day online, months of opportunity for unions and revolutionary organizations to announce they would join the protests from the beginning, but on the day of November 17th 2018 any members of such organizations present with us on roundabouts were there as individuals or small affinity collectives with no mandates coming from large organizations with actual organizing or mobilisation power.

As someone who witnessed this movement first hand, I can tell you that myself and many other comrades were disappointed in the lack of a proactive approach that the left needed to take in order to seize the moment. However we went into the movement anyway, sometimes you must march with what you have, rather than wait for the cavalry, just in case it is enough. 

In the first few weeks of the Yellow Vests, as anyone who followed the events even online will know, there was a huge level of energy invested into trying to topple Macron and his new regime. For over one glorious month leading up to Christmas, revolution more than felt achievable, it was within sight. The gates of the Élysée Palace were broken through with diggers, and Macron was evacuated by helicopter. We felt at the time as though with enough of a push, we could truly go all the way to a more just society. 

Speaking with people about this movement in Ireland as I have over the last number of years has shown me there is a level of misunderstanding with how the movement was from within. I am often asked "but were fascists and the far-right not also involved with it?" In a sense, yes. Elements of the far-right were present, especially in the beginning. But they were quickly pushed out by anti-fascist comrades in the streets. 

One such instance I recall happened in Nantes. A group of us were hanging out in the middle of the afternoon after having been marching and battling cops all morning. A young man in bloc gear was beside my group, a friend and comrade of mine speaking to him about the actions of the morning. From my understanding, my comrade was listening intently to the guy's words, about why he was present. Eventually the lad felt comfortable enough with my friend to veer towards immigration as a root issue for him marching with us that day, as we were all white under our black snoods and hoods and his own group had gone to Paris that day. 

My friend asked the man straight away "so, you're a faf"? Faf being the acronym for 'France aux français', used to describe militant ethno-nationalists, fascists and everything in between. 

"Bah oui, pas vous ?" He replied. 

We battered him like starving dogs on a lost chicken. Not only us, but the wider protest too. In fact it was an anti-fascist who picked him up, took his phone, papers (so we could identify him later) and chucked him up the road to the applause of the crowd, telling him ‘fafs’ would be treated the same anytime they showed up again in our blocs. They never did. 

Nobody wants to march with Nazis, even the apolitical understand this. If you fall on them like a sack of bricks as soon as they try to embed themselves in such a movement, and you are organized enough with comrades to do so, you can very quickly get rid of any and all organised fascism within the movement. 

We marched on Paris and every other major metropole in the country in a tsunami of yellow and black. We did not question who was beside us in the streets, only that we were all on the same side. If fascists were present, they kept themselves to themselves, knowing the blocs were filled with revolutionary anti-fascists. The far-right could not impose itself openly, and the general public backed us in cleaning shop when we needed to. 

The only ones stopping us were the ones dismembering our comrades with grenades filled with TNT, taking their eyes with rubber bullets aimed illegally at our heads, attempting to break our resolve with baton and water cannon and ferocious state-sponsored violence. 

This moment unfortunately did not last. By the end of the year, a deal was announced with an unofficial hierarchy who did not represent the movement. The SMIC (minimum wage) was to be raised by 100€ a month, along with some other minor trimmings to appease the energy of the movement. 

This deal did not end the movement, which continued in many ways right up until Covid, but it did enough to blunt the sharp end of the spear aimed at Macron and the French State. Over 4000 cases of people, many of them union members, losing hands, feet and eyes were recorded during the Yellow Vest movement, which lasted from November 2018 to March 2020. The price, paid in comrades' body and blood in the hopes of reigniting the movement, should not be ignored.

As time went on, more and more unions and left-wing organizations joined the protests, brought more organizing apparatus and streamlined the way we organized, but it was too little too late. The yellow "thunder" had already been heard. The energy spent, the moment had come and gone to achieve anything meaningful. 

Ask any comrade in France, from union organizer to member of an autonomous revolutionary collective what they learned from this movement and they will all tell you, the biggest regret is not having intervened and brought their organizing skills into the movement more quickly. They now know, in retrospect, that had the left involved itself from the beginning that the movement may well have achieved a much more meaningful, revolutionary, historic victory.

During the Irish Fuel Protests it is widely assumed that the Free State government was taking counsel from Brussels. I have no doubt in my mind that there would have been a clear and precise line given by the French : give them a deal as quickly as possible, before more organized forces can begin to intervene, or else you risk the perfect storm of fervent, revolutionary energy being harnessed and directed by people with the ambition to topple you. 

Towards the end of the Fuel Protests we were seeing left-wing involvement begin to enter the fray, particularly in Dublin, as well as the movement beginning to spread across the border into the North. With all of this in mind, the government announced a deal, knowing that if they waited or dragged their feet much longer things would become much more serious. 

The deal announced is not generous. It is designed to give many people an excuse to go home, to break the momentum and energy of the movement. Once such a deal is announced, no matter how good or bad it is, unless you already have in place an apparatus to relay why such a deal is not good enough, people will make decisions as individuals, thinking of their families and warm beds, rather than what could be achieved if we continue. 

Revolutionary organizations should have been involved from the first moment in order to prevent such a breaking of ranks when, inevitably, the deal came. The lesson we must learn from this movement is the same that our comrades learned in France: if we are to achieve anything resembling progression towards a more just and equal society then we need to mix the opportunity of such spontaneous energy with political organizing only the left is capable of wielding. 

We must learn to strike while our iron is hot. 

We must learn to trap our lightning in bottles. 

_________________

This first text was aimed at the question of why it is important to act swiftly as revolutionaries in such moments of potential history making. In the coming days I will continue with a second article describing my personal view on how we may look to intervene in such moments in the future. It is not enough to identify the failings, we must now begin the hard conversations around how we need, how we must prepare to counter them going forward.

Today I am going to tell you a tale of four protests and a meeting that came, incidentally, to shape the whole scenario we are now facing as a broad left with everything from immigration to the fuel protests. Of course, when ringing the alarm bells back in 2023, I wasn't taken seriously by my colleagues in the rest of the left when I privately contacted people in other parties to voice my concerns over some information I will go into shortly. It is understandable why: a new outfit (Roots) attempting rural and deprived regional towns organising with no prior experience, no funding, and basically nothing but a sense of urgency and a collection of characters. I don't, for the record, blame the people I contacted for not taking the information seriously. Ye might now, though.

Part 1: The Gresham House Deal/Forestry Protests and the Missed Opportunity

Protestors from various groups including one of ours at the Gresham House Deal Protest

On January 26th, 2023, I and a handful of others from Roots as well as an assortment of environmentalists, farmers & rural people attended a protest outside the Dáil that was attended by a good but not huge coalition of the people against our land and forestry being sold off to a City of London investment fund. The protest was preceded by a Sinn Féin motion to try to block the deal. At the same time, there was a small anti-trans protest at the opposite side of the Dáil gates, it being the early days of Enoch Burke discourse. Richard Boyd Barrett addressed us all on the forestry protest in unison as a united front against the selling off of our resources while the anti-trans crowd with their big sound system tried to drown us out and shout us down. Partway through his address, we were mobbed by a few full of aggro with heavy Dublin accents calling PBP paedos, some incoherent anti-trans nonsense, and loudly shouting that "Paul Murphy was run out of Tallaght." They were fucked off back to their own side of the gates by a couple of mine, as well as some Leitrim and Clare farmers who were having none of it and were told Boyd Barrett was there with us, supporting us, and who did they think they were by the same. They tried a few times, and eventually the guards stepped in and put them back where they were. That was a very different time, when there was potential for sectoral unity, especially in the poorer rural areas after a succession of bad years that have only gotten worse. This is the point, in my opinion, where things really started to go awry. We started specifically in this era because we could see the threat looming of the country being lost to the left if unity between environmental protection and rural communities couldn't be found, and that it would take a structural change in how we manage the environment while being amenable to the needs of rural communities—hence our stance of agroecology. Enough of blowing our own trumpet, however, because all of us have failed to avert the current situation; we just became closer witnesses to the unravelling due to lack of organisation, divides, and absolutely no funding to drive traction. A tale familiar to the whole lot of us on the left. This is about introspection as much as it is about finger-pointing. As the cliché goes, when you point the finger at someone, three of your own are pointing back at you.

Part 2: The Meeting

Not long after the forestry protests, in February 2023, I was invited to what was supposed to be an open grassroots meeting of farmers and country people. It was supposed to be about rural Ireland, and I accidentally got invited to help organise it because they seemed to mistake what I was due to a horse contact of mine being involved and was well used to me arguing about various organisations and the government in the horse groups on Facebook. What it was, however, was the single biggest astroturfing event I have ever witnessed. A huge number of ordinary people arrived, were met by the entire chocolate box of the emerging far right playing their "concerns" drum integrated in the audience, and we heard from everyone from slibhín independents to FF backbenchers, to outright fascists, including some fella with black sunglasses and an entourage whose name was never given and who had to flee Romania of all places due to his political views, which were never expanded upon fully. At the time this was terrifying, and it has unfortunately become more mundane. To say that I was distressed would be an understatement.

POV: Me sitting by the door helping a right-wing breakaway republican collect the money.

So then came the intermission, the tea break. I was outside having a smoke, trying to figure out how the hell do I leave? I arrived by public transport and walked out to the hotel where it was held. Out comes the lad who was on the door with me, followed by a bunch having a sidebar meeting. In the confusion, two different crowds thought I was with the other crowd, and I became privy to a meeting of the rural and immigration takeover plans of the entire right. Which can be summarised as the following: "We need to take down Sinn Féin or we do not have a hope of gaining traction for right nationalism," and "Between the immigration and the farmers, our time is now." There were more specific details of the time regarding specific plans, but essentially it was that their key to take deprived urban areas was immigration, and it was rural discontent with the behaviour of the Greens in the rural areas. At this point now, none of this is news. Also, they have been arming themselves since at least then, especially in West Cork—that may be of news to a lot of ye. During the tea break, three-quarters of those in attendance got the heebie-jeebies and ran. I didn't know what to do, so I pretended I needed the loo when the chat had died down into banter and ended up then with some woman from the now-defunct Identity Ireland trying to be besties with me. I locked myself in a stall and texted my lads. I was the only one there because it was in Athlone, and we are all in a ribbon along the south of the country, Munster and south Leinster. We decided I had no choice but to clap at the right time, smile like a gobshite, and wait to leave. If I called my boyfriend to come with the car, he would be hours, and he would have started a riot. Then one of them recognised me from the forestry protests, and I could see some of them—they were waiting too. As luck would have it, I knew a man there. He looked equally uncomfortable; he was there with his small organic business for the advertising opportunity. As he thought. I went up to him and said, "What do you think of all this?" to feel him out in case he had turned. He responded, "It's all a bit extreme," feeling me out. Long story short, we decided I would pretend that he asked me to help pack up his van, that he needed to go somewhere, and he would get me out of there with him, to the backdrop of thinly veiled ranting from the National Party pretending to be audience members. I got into his van, and he peeled out of the car park, and we both unloaded in stress at each other about how mad it all was and what we had both experienced.

He wanted to drive me further back the country and wasn't happy about leaving me out on my own, but I would have found it more difficult to get out of the area he was from by public transport; I would have had to stay the night, and I didn't want to tell my family what was wrong yet and panic them. I stupidly asked to be dropped to the station. From there, I hid amongst a group of students and thought I was safe until, in the queue for the Galway train, I felt an arm around my shoulders and a voice saying, "Hello, with any luck we might get sitting together."

Long story short, it was a fella from one of the groups (not the parties) who guided me up the train and put me sitting inside him on a two-seat back row with few around, and told me, "Tell me about this party of yours." And I did. There was no point in bullshitting him, whatever hope I had at five foot two on my own. He listened away, and I was told he saw potential, was given a phone number, and an offer of being a front party in return for support and funding. This was the first of two times I would be made such an offer; the other was just before the 2024 election, when, if I agreed, I would have been given full funding and canvassers. Both of which I turned down. I will not reveal the who & what finer detail of either unless I am forced to, because it both sounds fanciful & would have repercussions. Rest assured though, I’m not the only person with the details. 

I know full well it wasn't a coincidence. He arrived by car with another man from the same area and passed out what should have been his stop to talk to me. I then left the Galway train in Galway and ran into Supermac's to await the bus to Limerick. On the bus, because there was basically no one on it barring me and some foreign students going back to Limerick after the weekend, I rang the only person I could think of: an older man I knew in the North who was involved in the trade unions and antifascism back in the day. He advised me who to go to down here with it in the left-wing parties, and I did. PBP never answered me—I think they just thought I was cracked. Sinn Féin did. The Sinn Féin man I spoke to believed me, but I don't think it progressed up the line to be dealt with much further than him. I gave full details to Sinn Féin. I haven't spoken of this publicly, out in the open in detail, before because I had hoped someone beyond me might have dealt with it by now, and I am an easy target. I was also afraid of being considered a lunatic. At this juncture, however, I do not have a choice.

Bonus footnote: The Ireland For All March

On, I believe, it was the 3rd of March 2023, we attended the Ireland for All March. It was after this that all attendees of the Ireland for All march became essentially a list of targets by the forces from my earlier entries. This became a pivotal moment where the right began systematically targeting every organisation that attended that march, my own included. It was one of the last times that a united left would march on the streets of Dublin unopposed. It was tainted by the inclusion of the main government parties, and there will be more on this and the overall immigration situation in another related article in the near future, as analysis of this period and what surrounded the march requires much more singular attention.

The Interval Period (March 2023 – January 2025)

This was marked by many events that I will cover at another time, specifically pertaining to the urban working class, which requires its own analysis. This article specifically pertains to the lead-up to the present moment, the fuel prices protests. It was, however, in this period that the new bussed-around, hypermobile, well-funded far-right front started to be brought around to cross-pollinate with, frighten, and mobilise communities around the country in the dying villages and failing regional towns where the majority of the IPAS centres would go up. This would go with gritted teeth and very little action from the left, as we were forced into a position of constantly reacting rather than acting. It was inside this strategic experiment that a new reality emerged: an inverse intersectional solidarity. Groups of people aligned against their own interests by the right, diametrically opposed to one another and the right in regards to interests, emerged. Drug addicts standing beside pioneers. Single mothers standing alongside both men with domestic abuse records and religious traditionalists. Rural campaigners and urban disadvantaged community campaigners standing alongside lads who by night break into their garages. That's nothing to say of people claiming to be Irish patriots standing alongside Orangemen and loyalist paramilitaries.

Part 3: The Mercosur Protests in Athlone

This was the final turnabout on the road.

On the 10th of January 2025, I attended the anti-Mercosur protests in Athlone with a handful from Roots, and we were joined by, outside of Sinn Féin speakers, what can best be described as the Sinn Féin Junior B team. Not that we were anything better of a showing, but we are a decimal point of their size. The most shocking part? Opposition to Mercosur in Ireland was Sinn Féin's baby that they just let Independent Ireland rob and lead. I cannot fathom why. Sinn Féin has opposed Mercosur for longer than most of our readership has been alive. Even in the lead-up to this, they held a series of public informational meetings about essentially the dangers of Mercosur from the moment that the Catherine Connolly campaign was over. Bar us, however, who by comparison have been around a wet week, paradoxically Sinn Féin, who are mostly liberals, were the only left opposition to the single most destructive trade deal to reach us in a generation. It has everything.

For the environmentalists: Incentivising the burning of the Amazon, the lungs of the world, so that the German industrial powerhouse can pollute more in order to sell more polluting vehicles to South America.

For the anti-colonialists, Palestine, and anti-war movements: Argentina is displacing the native Mapuche people from their Patagonian homeland and even trying to lay the blame on them, claiming they are burning themselves out of their own land, so that the land can be sold for a pittance, highly devalued, to Israeli settlers to establish ranches to take advantage of Mercosur export to Europe.

For the trade unionists: Offshoring food processing labour to areas with poorer workers' rights and often collusion between organised crime and the bosses.

For the health conscious: Multiple endocrine disruptors and carcinogens banned here are legal in Mercosur countries.

For all of us: This unsafe, ultra-destructive meat will be sold cheaply in volume to the poorest, especially because they will not be able to afford better, especially when farms go under and our own meat becomes a luxury product. As usual, health and food safety is becoming the sole preserve of the wealthy.

My mother is a breast cancer survivor. In her honour, and all the women who have suffered the same, this was my sign on the day:

I know full well why the left haven't moved on this. It's liberal aestheticism, let's be honest. There is absolutely no other reason, and this horseshit is the death of the left globally. It's not Insta story discourse-friendly. So nearly thirty years of republican opposition to Mercosur and similar neoliberal trade deals got dropped like a hot pan and handed to Independent Ireland. That's liberalism for you. Who was in attendance? A few of the various Dublin "Says No" crowds. You see, lads, funnily, Athlone isn't Antarctica, and the train or bus goes both ways. They were stepped around on the march and largely ignored with the kind of quintessentially Irish "half nod, avert gaze, head down" politeness that we are all familiar with when passing the local troublemaker. But they were there, and they loudly proclaimed their support regardless.

So just for a summary: the largest protest ever to occur outside of Dublin—that was attended by people from all over the country, status quo voters finally feeling the pinch, not exclusively farmers mind, there were many from the broader foods sector, some of whom attended in their work uniforms—was attended by a small showing from a party most of our contributors and readership consider liberals (Sinn Féin), who had done the donkey work on the issue for years and couldn't properly rally their base for the final furlong, having gone arse over head at the final fence to be pipped by a fifty-to-one rank outsider… and one of the smallest, least organised, most spread out, most geographically and financially challenged socialist outfits in the entire country. This was the left's contribution. We pre-emptively handed the far right our lunch and hid behind the bike shed.

It's not only that we should have had a stronger showing regardless of who put on the party. It was that we should have, collectively, been putting on the party.

To summarise the numbers: there were at least 20,000 people attending. I would estimate thirty or so assorted leftists, perhaps more from what I saw. A few Sinn Féin speakers, a speaker from the Co-op Association, the usual Aontú and Independent Ireland lineup, about thirty to fifty "X place says no." None of the trade unions representing the food factory workers. And I had to listen to Richard O'Donoghue give a speech about solidarity. Seemingly after I left, they finished up with "Ireland's Call." You can probably hear in my tone I'm still mortified for us collectively.

Part 4: The Fuel Protests. The crescendo in a symphony of our own failure.

Crowds amassed on O’Connell Bridge

I would like to start this off by giving a big thank you to Paul Murphy and the less aesthetically concerned amongst PBP, along with AIA, CPI, Sinn Féin, and others. The fuel protests seem to have collectively woken us up a little. Regarding the Dublin protest, also some of the student groups, including the Trinity Students' Union, as well. I cannot begin to say how proud I am of every leftist that answered the call and showed up. As we all know, it wasn't easy. For most of us it was dangerous, and we had to endure both bullshittery and aspersions from the armchair left and outright abuse from our usual opposition.

I arrived in Dublin at 9 a.m. the first day (the Tuesday) because I was asked up by a comrade of my own to help set up and organise things. We were joined by a good few from Aontacht. So the status at day one, 9 a.m., of what would go on to be the biggest protest in a generation was: truckers, farmers, some Palestine people, some independent leftists, Roots, Aontacht, a triple Roots-IWW-Aontacht member, and I believe Granddads against Racism. Not a far-right enforcer yet. Gavin Pepper showed up a little later.

By midday we were joined by a few more leftists. Gavin Pepper still around, some po-faced middle-aged Karens that came with Pepper or the right-wing media, then on came Dwyer the dog-kicker and his bicycle brigade with their mobile phones strapped to them like shitty bodycams. The enforcers were here. They were all furious that we were there at all, let alone ahead of them and helping. They started abusing an older Kurdish man who was there in solidarity and support, draped in an Irish flag, because of course the fuel prices are the Western material effect of a geopolitical reality he was born into and lived his whole life in the midst of. Of course—and I would like any Eastern Europeans who think they can have solidarity with these cretins to realise—they started also abusing the Eastern Europeans there amongst the left. They at one stage demanded a Russian comrade of mine, who hasn't been in Russia since he was a child and opposes the war in Ukraine, to go back to his own country and fight for it. They called them every name under the sun. Ye are not equal to them in their mind, although they may put on the pretence of it when ye are useful. Please remember that.

We stood firm, and they continued riding their bicycles around trying to intimidate us and all other leftists in the area. I put up a post looking for any reinforcements in the area, and others of the left texted their friends the same. Some did come from various republican groups and, I believe, CPI.

By the time of the speeches and talks, they had assembled a thin bottle-blonde line about midway back the crowd, interspersed to shout at the speakers from Sinn Féin to make it look on their livestreams like a much larger crowd reaction than it was, with shouts of "traitors." They were well organised, now have better tactics and operations than we have, and they show in numbers. We had that a decade ago. We do not anymore. I am thirty-five years of age. I remember the discourse that surrounded PEGIDA being run out of Dublin. I remember when Irish antifascists were organised, disciplined, and when, if you were in trouble and being threatened by far-right thugs, you could call on them. That generation of antifascists emigrated, got burned out, or settled down since, and were never replaced.

To make it worse, the liberalism has gone so bad that I got eviscerated by a younger leftist—in spite of their social media support of the protests—in a spineless vaguepost for looking for backup and intervention while it was early enough for us to be able to do something. Stating, amongst other things, that I didn't have "the right" to dictate who could be at a protest, even when the person I was objecting to specifically targets the community of the person who was having a go at me. Supporting the protests in public, admonishing me—a syndicalist, you know, anarchist-adjacent, antifascist, anti-apparatus of the state—for alerting antifascists to one of the worst characters we have in the country trying to capture a protest, trying to alert the protestors (who the government had actively threatened with the army hours before) about the movements of the army when I passed them on the road. It's not that I am perfect. I have gotten things wrong and done things wrong at different stages; we all have. But this spontaneous self-consumption needs to stop. I wouldn't do it to anybody, and, TBH, trying to help people do better while not publicly stoning them has often caused problems for me. This is not about the specific person—in the past they had been a good friend—it is about the thousands of different little things and the liberal capture of the left that led to that. If anyone does incidentally recognise who I am talking about, just leave them alone. They are a person with their own shit to go through and aren't always too well. It's the trend I want recognised, not the individual or those they associate with.

At this juncture I would like to make something very clear. When people such as myself call on the rest of the left to turn up somewhere to oppose the far right on the ground, if you are unwell, disabled, a visible minority, visibly queer, or otherwise vulnerable and especially targetable, we are not talking about you. It can be hard not to take that personally. Mostly because it is the most vulnerable who do the most work, and that is something that, in my opinion, is a disgrace on all of us. We have legions of people who are in far less danger that will not step outside the door, and those who have the most against us acting as pack donkeys carrying the whole left on their backs. While they hide behind you—or us—claiming to be protecting you or us, the reality is they have neither the strength nor the spine to do what needs to be done, because they aren't as personally affected. This needs to be acknowledged, and it needs to stop. How you "protect" your vulnerable comrades is you get off their shoulders, get out from behind them, and fight for them.

Wednesday, I wasn't in Dublin. Only one of my comrades was. Unfortunately, Wednesday would turn out to be the worst affair in the whole thing up there. After having had to endure being in roughly equal numbers with the left on Tuesday, and the embarrassment of Gavin Pepper having to speak out of a speaker bicycle chained to a lorry covered in Palestine Action stickers, they pulled people out of wherever they possibly could. They thronged the place. This is where my journey so far in this article gets to come to its full circle. On the Wednesday, Paul Murphy turned up and received the same level—and worse—of dog's abuse from the same people we got it from on Tuesday, but now much greater in number. The Muslim Sisters of Éire would later in the day be attacked for trying to feed our homeless for us. I would like to break this down a little.

Firstly, on the Paul Murphy incident: Paul Murphy turned up with a small number of supporters. I would like to address this bullet point to the PBP grassroots directly. I have absolutely no authority whatsoever over you, but why were ye not there protecting one of your main men? There should have been fifty of you there. Ye have the numbers by comparison to the rest of us. I absolutely hope it was how he decided to go with just a small number, and it wasn't how ye left him out on a limb. I hope it is how he decided to go more low-key, underestimating the numbers of them, or just not wanting to be an imposition. I do not want to cast aspersions, as largely I have respect for PBP members for being one of the most consistent blocs at protests, which is why I am so taken aback at this.

I have a great deal of respect for Paul Murphy for having not only gone to the protest but, after being abused to the hilt, continuing to vocally support the protest. That takes a great deal of integrity, especially when he has no personal dog in this fight.

Regarding the Muslim Sisters of Éire: It is nothing short of a disgrace that women feeding the homeless in our nation's capital should be abused by thugs whipped up by loyalist collaborators who decided to take over a protest of the people against fuel prices, against the backdrop of monuments to Jim Larkin and Daniel O'Connell nonetheless. This is another reason that the left should have been there in numbers, because if we were, we could have and should have protected them.

On Thursday, after organising with a fellow County Limerick comrade to send food—including scones I was up all night baking—to Foynes, I went up to Dublin again. AIA were making good headway with their shopping-trolley pop-up café, handing out anti-war pamphlets. Some of the other anti-war and neutrality people were there doing their bit. Even the anti-vaxxer with the big placard had anti-war positions on his placard. One of the lads who were giving me abuse on Tuesday actually apologised to me, and an old man fuel protestor knocked out that Zionist shill Roiste on O'Connell Bridge, where Paul Murphy was abused the day before. Via collective efforts, things were starting to turn before they were shut down, and the far right are very, very unhappy about it. They were still on the day abusing us, and I, as a woman who has no children due to gynaecological problems and broader health problems—who had a premature baby who didn't live long years ago and a couple of miscarriages of wanted pregnancies since—got all sorts of abuse about dead babies from some lunatic old Dublin man based on the fact I am a woman and a leftist. So it wasn't all sunshine, rainbows, and unity. But progress was being made recapturing the general public from such lunatics, which is why they were not happy.

Anti Imperialist Action serving tea, coffee & biscuits at the end of O’Connell street Dublin. 

This is where the circle closes. We have, over the course of three years, gone from the rural people feeling the threat of corporate control of our land, being addressed by PBP and Sinn Féin, while protecting them from the young, burgeoning post-Covid far right themselves—to rural people being addressed by Independent Ireland, Sinn Féin, and Aontú at a rally on a platform almost entirely robbed from the republican left (including Sinn Féin), while politely ignoring the more organised, growing far right—to rural people being led by a group of people, some of whom are utterly deplorable (especially Duffy), having been addressed by everyone from Peadar Tóibín to Gavin Pepper formally, and addressed unofficially by everyone from Philip Dwyer to some lunatic swinging off O'Connell Monument shouting about Satanic something or other in the general direction of AIA out feeding people, he with a flag and a Bible in hand. Ignoring Paul Murphy and the Muslim Sisters of Éire being attacked by the far right. This is where we have come in three years. Who the hell knows what we will be facing in another three years? Another year, even?

The Silver Linings

The fact that they were so panicked about the few of us who showed up proves that they are not sure of their footing here. If the left was to show solidarity in numbers and stand firm, they know they would be in trouble, so they have to try to be as disruptive and as intimidating as possible.

The established left is starting to wake up on this. We must counter and hobble the comfort-chasing liberals to ensure the success of resisting the far right's attempts at capturing whole strategic sectors.

This issue is likely to continue, but we currently have a bit of breathing room. If we can organise ourselves properly and cooperate between groups to form a rapid response when inevitably this arises again as the cost of fuel and cost of living continues to rise, or go and talk to those who wanted to keep going until we all got something ourselves and take a bit of initiative.

We actually have the answers and an ideological basis to address their problems. We just need to overcome the propaganda and get out and organise. It is far easier said than done. I understand that. I am not preaching from the pulpit; I am asking people to come out and join in.

The Hurdles

We are out-funded considerably.

The media is absolutely not on our side, nor is the government.

They have the support of the billionaire class.

Our own cannot seem to apply a half-plausible class analysis to it because they are divorced from the sectors affected. They view the whole sector through the lens of the mega-farms and big hauliers. It'd be like trying to claim that everyone who works in retail are the owners of Penneys or Guineys and erasing the existence of the shop assistants. It's infantile, laughable, and only an argument because it upsets the aesthetic left to have to lower themselves to mix with them otherwise. There is class antagonism within the sector—more of it than you see in a lot of sectors. We are failing to organise the working class of those sectors because of essentially intellectual elitism and aesthetics. We spoke to truck drivers at the protest who see their families at most two days a week because they aren't allowed to drive the trucks home anymore and have to sleep in laybys, down lanes, and behind locked-up factories. We spoke to young men working for agricultural contractors whose jobs are threatened by this and who will likely be facing having to go to Australia.

A propaganda war is being waged on us: online by bots, on the streets by fairly desperate rent-a-crowds. I have reports going back a while from the south-east where they are picking up the homeless and mentally ill off the streets of places like Carlow and Waterford, as well as Cork and Dublin, tidying them up, giving them new clothes, and in some cases paying them to fill buses going to wherever needed. I personally have no idea who is funding this, but it needs to be looked into and investigated. Some of the homeless involved were personally known to comrades of mine in the south-east, but all we are getting out of people surrounding them is either denial or conspiracy nonsense about secret societies, and it's not a Dan Brown novel we are living in. I am personally interested in reliable organisational and financial information; anyone who has such can get in touch via rootspartyireland@proton.me.

What, by My Diagnosis, We Need

· An intergroup and interparty forum where we can information-share, skills-share, and make sure events are not conflicting with each other so we can have a strong collective showing at most things.

· To continue to distance ourselves from the liberals in rhetoric and positions. The liberals defining the left is what has gotten us where we are. Our positions should be based in sound theory and actually listening to the communities we aim to represent, not some European liberal think tank and their recommendations filtering through their attached parties and organisations. I am not a Maoist, but Mao was right about mass line, and any organisation, regardless of tendency, should apply it. We need to listen to the working class, but guided by theory. Which theory is up to your tendency in question.

· We need to be contributing to collective funds for legal support and other structural expenses for both actions and strikes. We need to start equipment-sharing as well. We don't have to unite in rhetoric; we don't even necessarily have to be friends, but we no longer have the luxury of not being allies to one another.

· We need to move beyond this thing of griping and trying to rob one or two activists off of each other and burning out the few we have. We need to be recruiting from the public. You can't do that until you get comfortable with talking to people outside the activist bubbles. We are not in competition with each other. We won't be for a good long while. Move out in the field a bit and do your fighting out there.

Closing

This is about reflecting on what we have up to now done wrong. All of us—me, you, basically every activist and every organisation—has gotten at least some of this wrong. Even what I am saying here could be wrong. I tend not to be wrong that often about trends, though. That's the neurodivergency and a bit of possibly divine inspiration or something. I'm not positioning myself as some sort of genius who has all the answers. We have all collectively made the mistakes that led us here, myself included. I have said and done daft things. We have all failed to speak up on various different issues. We have all handled issues, and we have all handled people the wrong way. We are human beings. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good, and try to put the gripes behind us to some degree.

*Disclaimer: This is not to be taken as a call to political violence. 

JD Vance has been on the news lately for clashing with the Pope over the Iran war. Under these circumstances let us inspect the Catholic Church’s stance on war. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is quite clear:

CCC 2308: All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war [1].

Can JD Vance honestly state that the American government worked to avoid war? No, on the contrary there was no sign a war would have occurred without Israeli and American intervention [2]. The war is not in the slightest a defensive war.

CCC 2312: The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties [1].

Can we state that the war has been engaged in a moral manner? Is the bombing of schools moral? Is the economic warfare inflicted upon the civilian populace moral? The murder of children is simply anathema.

What about the words of Cardinal Ratzinger before the Iraq war? 

“Given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'.” [3]

The weapons that America possesses have only become greater and more destructive since the days of Iraq. The American military industry complex is massive, every day there are new and more creative ways to kill thousands with American guns, bomber jets and missiles.

On the contrary to the wholly unjust war in Iran there is in fact one war where the defending party fights with sticks and stones, with worn down guns in the face of an immense enemy. That war is the war of liberation for the Palestinian peoples. That we might say today is the only “just war”.

[1] The Vatican. “Catechism of the Catholic Church” https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P81.HTM. ‌

[2] Stewart, Phil  and Pamuk, Humeyra . “Pentagon tells Congress no sign that Iran was going to attack US first, sources say” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-tells-congress-no-sign-that-iran-was-going-attack-us-first-sources-say-2026-03-02/

[3] Zenit Staff. “Cardinal Ratzinger on the Abridged Version of Catechism Cardinal Ratzinger on the Abridged Version of Catechism” https://zenit.org/2003/05/02/cardinal-ratzinger-on-the-abridged-version-of-catechism/ 

Neit Morrigan

There are in our modern times grave tendencies and graver yet consequences as a result in regard to our methodology in organising, winning over the support of the people in their masses and securing from them a revolutionary vanguard. Our task is no small issue, nor is it trivial, in how we perform it and with what precision. Many on the left, however, have strayed far from any principle in their desperation and, as a result, have muddied the path forward and the movement as a whole. They make false assumptions about our proletariat, make right-wing caricatures of them, and in that delusion head endlessly rightward to satisfy this non-entity. To them, to secure our fronts and bases, we must dilute ourselves with unsavoury figures who seem at all “talented” in their rhetoric and garner any base, regardless of how compatible their words may be with ours, and in their new petty-bourgeois friends who obfuscate capital with immigration myths, a new, common ground. What, or precisely who, do I speak of? What is this grave new trend that we must now dedicate our energies against? What exactly is the issue with what these people do?

We must concern ourselves with among the most contentious issues of our modern left for these answers. That is, the collaboration of certain left-wing forces with their corresponding right, or in essence, the unity between the constructive and reactive forces. This is not entirely new to us, as the phenomenon of this has occurred under countless instances both historically and in these times. Due to the establishment’s lack of ideological cohesion or indeed social mobilisation on economic affairs, it has been allowed in certain sections of the movement for the far-right to solve our manpower crisis through their participation and by sheer volume of numbers alone to produce results. In fact, many have gone so far as to disregard the social element of things altogether and thus forgoing that struggle for an ultimately economic one, and the social issues which are maintained lurch increasingly rightward to appeal to their new far-right friends. We see this on immigration, for instance. 

Many left-wing organisations, viewing the rage of the lay workers against “mass-migration”, have capitulated on these terms and now also are ultimately sceptical of immigration, whether for genuine or performative reasons. 

Such was the case with IRSP a number of years ago, who held social gatherings on the topic, and as a result of the “debate” (are right-wingers really capable of delivering one?) and ensuing results of such conferences, began professing stricter immigration controls in their programme. A great victory for the right-wing! Not alone in this, however, another organisation who under the great halo of Republicanism delivers unto us from the back of their wings a grossly anti-immigrant narrative; Fronta Poblachtach. Known for their collusive methods with the most detestable, backward far-right sycophants and even their own internal delusions on immigration, we will now give them a crash course on class character. 

When these organisations think of the far-right, they think they see us. To them, the far-right is identical in quality but merely differs in what is otherwise fixable contents quantitatively. As Communists, we appeal to the proletariat who are so oppressed by the capitalist class and toil exhaustively under their system and state. To Fronta Poblachtch, it must be the case that these poor proletarians, disillusioned with the system at hand, may also tentatively sway right rather than veer left. While it cannot be denied that some proletarians can be far-right, that does not change the fact that the far-right’s character is a petty-bourgeois one. It has become fashionable as of late to view the petty-bourgeoisie positively, as our greatest class ally, together with whom we might form a victorious coalition. 

Indeed, these people, for such an ideological framework to work at all, must imagine the petty-bourgeoisie in their woe as the new revolutionary class on the block, desperate to destroy capitalism with us and proletarianise themselves, but if only we cast aside the immigrant and the social current of our analysis to appease them in their all-mighty strength! If only we did so, there could be a revolution tomorrow! These people would kill the immigrant at the altar in reverence for the petty-bourgeoisie if it were only ever suggested to them! 

It is lost to these people (who I will not call comrades) the vacillatory nature of the petty-bourgeoisie and how they so frequently oscillate between their sympathies for the proletarian struggle and their assured maintenance of the capitalist struggle. The far-right may suggest that they are not capitalists, that they oppose such a system, that they only differ in the social realm and perhaps not altogether on the entire economic front. They might march with us on one hand on basic issues of capitalism and mobilise to our aid on these matters, but then on the other, on topics like immigration, they expose fully their oscillation to the bourgeois system. Rather than substantively tackling the issues of capital, they instead conceal the problem; to them, the problem is not that capitalism has created a system which does not adequately distribute resources, but instead they perpetuate the age-old myth that these resources are a scarce entity that the immigrants are now outcompeting us for. 

They lash out with extreme anger against these immigrants, therefore, attacking them and deluding themselves and others with fantastical myths of an immigrant utopia within Ireland. The immigrant needs only to knock on our door and receive our entire house for free! They get endless social welfare payments at our expense, they strain our supply chains in housing (which the far-right dare not mention as a result of the vulture landlord with whom they share a common interest) and consume what is ours at their leisure. This is a sinister lie, totally out of line with any credible data or statistics. Any concrete scientific analysis, with which we must constantly burden ourselves, would immediately expose such falsehoods and create the real picture of the issue. 

The immigrant here, on average, does not receive any of the suggested benefits. They are often crammed, whole families at a time, into small rooms where they are hardly fed and given a meagre fifty euros weekly with which they must live. Legally speaking, they are also not permitted to work (a very inconvenient truth for the lazy migrant stereotype). I know this because I lived near immigrant encampments and at my place of work, an unpaid volunteer position, mind you, I worked with an immigrant who was a qualified accountant, but who could not work a paid job due to legal constraints. A man who otherwise could live a comfortable life has now subjected himself to such things in order to pass the time and help others while he himself suffers. What a utopia! I do not have to be believed; if you are so sure of your scientific method, research the topic, and you will be astonished by what you find. 

Beyond this, since when are immigrants not proletarian? Are they not equally qualified for such a label and entirely deserving of our same self-liberation? According to Fronta Poblachtach, this does not seem to be the case, for in appeasing their petty-bourgeois friends, they forgo any common understanding of class as defined by relation to the means of production, which would then correlate ourselves with the immigrant far more than with the petty-bourgeoisie, but instead define their class lines by blood. Let us consider their statements:

“We didn’t time the judgment of a British court. “British nationalists” like those who implement mass immigration policies aim for the destruction of Ireland and its working class. Siding with them makes you an enemy of Ireland.” 

Found after only searching the term immigrant on their Twitter account, they promote a disastrous, almost laughable excuse for an analysis. Do they think we are literally importing solely and exclusively the bourgeoisie from foreign nations? If it were so, where are the corresponding thousands of businesses overnight propped up by these immigrants or at the very least, any detailed transcripts of their accounts or owned capital? To them, it would seem, this great foreign bourgeoisie has, in their masses, invaded Ireland at the behest of mingling foreign institutions to…live in cramped, terribly maintained emergency accommodations? Oh woe to them who steal exclusively the Irish right to be impoverished in our nation! 

On a serious note, they do not dare suggest such a thing, as even for them it would be too obviously false. A vast majority of these immigrants are, in fact, proletarian.

 That raises a question, though: what system exactly is being threatened here? If they, as they claim, want a system of and for the workers, how would the addition of more workers threaten this? To any logical mind, it would be completely the opposite; more workers only strengthen the workers’ movement. However, the petty-bourgeoisie elements, threatened by such a concept and out of fear, preserve themselves by shifting the class narrative to an ethnic one of blood. As they do not hide what it is they exactly want, calling themselves for a “Free and Gaelic Ireland”.

Notice this sleight-of-hand, as this is exactly the whole issue of their red-brownism. They preface their extreme ethno-nationalism at the beck and call of the fascist petty-bourgeoisie with the term “free” in order to deceive themselves and others that they suggest a socialist system. What exactly is it they mean by Gaelic here? Is it blood? Over the centuries, the Gael has intermixed as a result of colonialism and earlier waves of migration and as a result is magnitudes different in orders of blood than what it perhaps once was. Also, the burning of a significant amount of family and census records in the Irish Civil War has consequently made it impossible to distinguish exactly how Gaelic someone is by blood alone.

Do they intend to issue DNA tests to everyone on the island to solve this issue and separate the Irish from the non-Irish? Since we qualify it by blood, following this logic, does someone with more Irish blood qualify for more things more easily? Where precisely do we draw the genetic line of counting someone as Gaelic? One per cent Irish DNA? 20%? 50%? Or so and so forth? 

However, the ethno-nationalists and their backward leagues may answer us, “not at all, such a thing would be entirely impractical, we mean Gaelic by culture.” This opens up a whole new set of questions. What exactly comprises Gaelic culture beyond small, unique things as a whole cultural unit? Is it Irish dancing? Anyone can learn to dance. Speaking Gaeilge? Anyone, with enough commitment and practice, can learn to speak any language. So what is it in our culture that entirely excludes these migrants, and just how rigid are these rules? Culture is already a superfluous thing that humans do, thus making such approximate boundaries is impossible. These questions cannot be answered by these people, as they certainly hoped you would never ask. Even in inventing any combination of characteristics of what makes a Gael, they only open the door to far more questions than they would ever answer. No, neither blood nor culture matters here; only class does as the only unquestionably correct unifying force of all workers. I have far more in common with the immigrant proletariat than the Irish petty-bourgeoisie. 

However, beyond all of this, they entirely misunderstand what exactly we are meant to do with the petty-bourgeoisie. We are not meant to shape or bend our ideology and become more alike to them, or at least more tolerable to work with. Quite the opposite, we are supposed to make them more like us. We are meant to proletarianise them, make them as ourselves and think as ourselves rather than vice versa. We are supposed to make them communists of the workers’ movement, not allow them into the workers’ movement as fascists. However, as long as Fronta Poblachtach (who we use merely as the greatest, though not sole, example) so reverently kneel at the cross of their petty bourgeois icons and make themselves as they are, they are forever trapped spreading the gospel of figures such as their Saint Malachy Steenson. 

Saint Steenson, a member of the petty-bourgeoisie through his law firm, has steeped himself into whatever form or organisation that will take him. He opportunistically rallies himself with any given party that bends so eagerly, evidenced by the sheer number of organisations he has been involved in or at least held good ties with. He coaxes these people by deceptively covering himself in proletarian clothing while maintaining his petty-bourgeois characterisation. He has consistently found himself in hot water for these false pretences and yet, much like a cornered rat, manages to escape and find himself anew somewhere else, where he inevitably acts as a rat does. He speaks so fiery in sermons on the petty-bourgeois mount, so convincingly and with such virulent and hate-filled conviction to all the masses of anti-migrant campaigners, he has found himself at home in the new reactionary movement, with Fronta Poblachtach platforming him along their ranks with such welcome. I use our dear Saint Steenson as the greatest example of petty-bourgeois intellectuals who venture between organisations, hoping to seep into their cracks and corrode them, and Fronta Poblachtach has provided me all the evidence needed for the results. Death to these red-brownist icons! We are proletarians and the workers of the world and have no need of them or their petty-bourgeoisie. 

Such collusions could not be said to be new. History, as always, is our greatest teacher, after all, and we see the effects of the petty-bourgeoisie. The IRSP, which had flirted with reactionary immigration policies, is in fact the party from which Fronta Poblchtach split. They attempted to appease the most reactionary sections of struggle and, in their vanity, instead created sections not even they anymore support. 

The trend is obvious, as organisations attempt endlessly to win over the support of the petty-bourgeoisie and sacrifice themselves increasingly, they realise this class, without being proletarianised, grows equally in their demands, demanding unending appeasement that if not met causes them, in their greed, to move on to their own venture with their own interests. Sinn Féin, who had long since betrayed any semblance of their old selves, also dedicated themselves to the same and as a result came Aontu. The examples one could name are countless, but they always share the same thread. When we lose our particular class character, we lose our general character. We become shapeless and alien to ourselves and our base, and “to be flexible” bend every which way for every support, but instead break ourselves and collapse. 

It must now be concluded these groups have made a terrible mistake, one perhaps in their ignorance they have failed to yet notice. Now that they have muddied their waters with petty-bourgeois delusions and hidden ambitions, they have lost sight of theory, of the significance of a proletarian and not racial or ethnic struggle. They have lost their anti-capitalist edge and worker-centric politics and attempt to reconstitute themselves toward the petty-bourgeoisie as a result. Naturally, we are not surprised by the right-wing opportunism that has destroyed these organisations beyond any reason, which has made them sources of ridicule. We, on the other hand, must now continue our proletarian works, not render ourselves unto the whims of the vacillatory class or subject ourselves to their programme, but create a new, correct programme. One that is for the workers of the world that does not weigh ethnicity against the labourer, nor their histories and backgrounds, but instead reconciles them with the broadest struggles. Only class struggle! That is the deafening cry of the Marxists of the world. That is the only banner under which we organise. Only class struggle, and death to the borders of the world.

Domhnall O'Gaothne

You can always trust Fintan O’Toole to come out with a safe analysis of an event once the dust has settled. Once he’s had a chance to read the room, he can safely pull out a few thoughts to feed to the Irish Times readership as if a wise scholar looking down upon events. Writing in the Irish Times, classism and derision are a safe bet so perhaps he has no need to actually read the room when it comes to the mood of the broader population but the article was so far off the mark, it warranted a response.

In his piece “Ireland’s far-right movement will emerge from the ‘breakfast roll-atariat’” [1], O'Toole takes shots at the fuel protests that spread across the country from the position of someone sheltered away from the people. Whilst focusing on the self-appointed spokespeople of a fairly decentralised movement, he uses derision to undermine the struggles that these people face. However, the biggest thing he misses in this self-congratulatory piece is why such a small subsection of Irish workers, mainly from places outside of Dublin, saw such widespread support across the country and in the capital.

The people of Ireland have been struggling through a cost of living crisis for years. Currently, things are blamed on the Iran conflict. Previously, it was Ukraine, and Covid before that. Go a little bit further back and it is the crash and housing crisis. Young people have not known a capitalist system that is not in crisis. To make it worse, not only have we had never-ending crises, we have also struggled through them with inept leadership in the form of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. These days, they rule as if they are surprised to still be in power, in shock and awe that Sinn Féin’s failure to appeal to voters has allowed them to cling to power. They feel so invincible, they seem no longer able to even feign care. It is the shattering of this veneer coupled with very real and existential cost increases for farming and transport workers that created these protests. We can all see prices climbing at the petrol pump so naturally the ones most reliant on fuel would be disproportionately affected. However, as with the water charges, the issue is not solely fuel but the unbearable cost of nearly everything. Complaints were falling on the deaf ears of our overpaid public servants, too busy running off on their two week holidays.

The water charges campaign was a grassroots movement that grew not out of a particular care about water but from a feeling that this was one burden too many. People had been hit with bin charges, property tax and then the water charges. The movement grew from frustration and didn’t follow “proper channels” such as the unions. It grew on the streets in confrontation with the state and with those trying to put meters where they weren’t wanted. The left stepped up to aid and support this movement and got very real results via direct action, civil disobedience and what the state tried to call “false imprisonment” [2]. More recently, when deprived working class communities and small rural towns, both long since abandoned by FFG, were chosen to house immigrants without the addition of any additional services or investment, this also became a burden too great for some. In this case, a hesitant left, afraid to touch the topic, left space for the far right to step in and misdirect that frustration into the poisonous rhetoric we see too often today. In both cases, the mobilising factor was not the source but the final nail in the coffin. This is also the case with the fuel protests. It is felt a burden too great for people barely keeping their head above water with no end in sight. As Mario Savio once said:

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” [3]

What happened in the past week was the biggest show of unity among the population we have seen in at least a decade. Despite O’Toole trying to paint the movement as the “HGV Soviet” (interesting choice if trying to paint it as far right), the solidarity from people showed that it represented far more than that. As someone who was actually down among the protest on O’Connell Street, it was a wide coalition of people with no shortage of grievances against this heartless government. The urban-rural divide was out the window as Dublin locals chatted with farmers and truckers from all corners of the island. People came together to show support for a protest that was successful in getting attention and having more of an impact than the all too common and frequently ignored walks to the Dáil. The city centre was peaceful, the quays were empty of moving traffic and people roamed freely among the streets and parked vehicles. There were people who had stood on opposing sides in previous demonstrations and counter-demonstrations standing among people who had never protested before. Of course the far right had a presence. Unfortunately, that’s where the country is at, currently. Wherever there is a grievance, they will show up to try to hijack it and steer it to punch downward. This was shown in Paul Murphy showing up to support and getting chased off by a handful of people shouting about LGBT issues. Their role, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is to divide a movement, distract from the issue and make it so toxic that people can’t get behind it. That didn’t happen this time, and it was in no way illustrative of the movement as a whole as thousands of workers across the country united to just get the ear of the government. A wide variety of left wing groups showed their support, albeit some slowly. But the government didn’t want to hear. The far right had not done their job and the media hit pieces weren’t having an effect. Instead, the government sent in the riot police. Instead, they threatened to use our Defence Forces on our own citizens and big man Jim O’Callaghan threatened to destroy property [4]. For a peaceful protest, this was the first call of its kind but the unity against them was a big cause of concern for them. Fintan O’Toole talks about how “more people will acquire the taste for dictatorship”. Well, it certainly looks like our ruling class has.

The article states that there’s a shift from “being against the government to being against the state” but when the same two parties have always ruled in this state, that distinction gets more blurry. When FFG openly gut the state and sell off its resources, waste tax money on idiotic investments and developments and hand huge amounts directly to landlords, developers, advisors and property speculators, what is left of “the state” but the ruling parties themselves? It appears some are only waking up to the corruption of our crony civil war parties. O’Toole says the protest “attacks the legitimacy of democracy itself” but FFG attack the very idea of an Irish sovereignty state through subservience to foreign capital, the EU and disregard for the wishes of the people for neutrality by allowing the US military to fly unimpeded and uninspected through our airspace and airport. The Occupied Territories Bill is still stalled and trade remains high with that infamous genocidal nation. It is very possible that the delay in responding to the protesters was due to needing to check with the bosses in Europe regarding tax. Considering Micheál Martin was grovelling at the feet of Donald Trump only a month ago, it is fair for him to share some of the blame for the rising fuel costs. It is also dishonest to only blame that conflict considering it is not our main source of fuel, nor is it to blame for the tax imposed on us in a society where only the wealthiest can avail of the grants to purchase electric vehicles.

So, why didn’t protesters use their unions? Well, what could the unions do for the immediacy of the situation that the protesters felt? Nothing. While the protesters had tried to use the IRHA and the IFA, there had been no result and some feel they are already at the cliff edge. The unions in Ireland are ineffective and muzzled. People complain that union membership is down and that is why they are ineffective, but the truth is that they are ineffective because the union bosses took a better pay deal for themselves and agreed to the Industrial Relations Act. They have restricted union members' ability to get results, to show solidarity, to pressurise the government all the while taking the wages of high paying civil servants. They now act like civil servants. Comfortable bureaucrats with inflated wages, content in the slow-moving status quo, using endless red tape only appearing for an occasional photo op or appearance on a march. The ICTU has been woefully ineffective, unable to mobilise more than a single housing march every few years despite being involved in various coalitions like Raise the Roof. This morning their general secretary, Owen Reidy, on RTE News [5] complained about the protesters, probably fearful that he may now be expected to do something. Maybe even actions that would actually ruffle some feathers. We are in extraordinary times for workers, yet the comfortable classes act as if the anger is coming from nowhere. But when single sector strikes and long negotiations can only get marginal wage increases at a time when inflation and the cost of living are far outpacing wages, it becomes time for more drastic measures.

One example of the negative impact of unions on workers’ demands for action was the Iceland workers and the betrayal by SIPTU in 2023 [6]. When Iceland decided to pull a Clerys/Debenhams and close up shop without warning and leaving workers unpaid, some of the staff members with the aid of the Independent Workers Union and PBP decided to occupy their stores [7]. Whatsapp groups were set up among staff across different stores in Ireland to prepare each other for what they all knew was coming. Eventually, the staff in Waterford got their notice that the store was to be closed. Workers occupied this store. In the case of Waterford, however, some staff were already SIPTU members. No solidarity with the IWU had been shown from any of the other unions up to that point, and it was no different with SIPTU. Instead, they presented this closure as if it had come from nowhere. Completely unexpected, how could a store owner do something so nefarious without warning to solely their members? Worse still, they convinced their members to end the occupation of the store with the promise that they had reached an agreement with Iceland. An agreement just for their workers? Even this wasn’t wholly accurate. Instead, Iceland agreed to pay their staff once the other costs had been accounted for. As someone who followed the situation, this meant not receiving anything. Among a variety of debts and costs, the landlord came first, the workers last. The workers were at their strongest before SIPTU came in to sabotage the direct action taken by workers who only wanted to be paid wages that they were owed.

Direct action and confrontation with the state is more prevalent in places like France on demonstrations where unions play a central role on the frontlines. Here, with the exceptions of CATU and the IWU, unions work at a snail’s pace and achieve far too little to warrant the 6 figure salaries of their general secretaries. These are not solidarity wages, they are status quo maintenance wages. 

For the fuel protests, the slow moving union bureaucracy was replaced by slow moving vehicles that had an instant impact and forced us to listen. They provided inspiration for tactics that work and that is one of the main reasons why people got behind them. In a society where those on the top actively ignore the suffering of those around them, a sudden burst of community spirit broke through the grey. On O’Connell Street and at the protests around the country, people brought food, snacks and drinks. People sang songs and played music. People danced, laughed and some cried. Unity was in the air despite the very best efforts of the ruling class.

O’Toole states “this is arguably the most serious insurrection the State has experienced in a century” and he could be right there. It was a powerful moment seeing people putting their livelihoods at risk to say enough is enough. Standing up to a government that wouldn’t listen and bringing parts of the country to a standstill. Without the common courtesy of even meeting the protesters to placate them, government representatives and army officers were on the war path. What type of nation turns its army on its own people? The thing that brought this closest to an insurrection was the government’s unwillingness to listen to the pain of its own people. When people are stretched and their elected representatives refuse to listen, that is a democracy in turmoil. The likes of O’Toole would do well to read the mood of the population writ large. Despite surviving a vote of no confidence in the Dáil, this government has weakened its own power through its actions. What started as a day of disruptions became a week-long stand-off with the state. It became a campaign to unify around and it illustrated to the public the power of the people and the mechanisms to wield that power against the state. They may ignite a summer of civil disobedience. Pearl clutchers like O’Toole and his colleagues in the mainstream may worry what this means for our fragile democracy, but for many others, that democracy was hollowed out long ago.

1 O’Toole, Fintan. “Ireland’s far-right movement will emerge from the ‘breakfast roll-atariat’” https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/04/14/fintan-otoole-rule-of-the-breakfast-roll-atariat-this-is-how-irelands-far-right-movement-will-emerge/

2 Kenna, Colm. “Jobstown trial: Six cleared of Burton false imprisonment” https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/jobstown-trial-six-cleared-of-burton-false-imprisonment-1.3137761

3 Savio, Mario. “Operation of the Machine”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsO_SlA7E8k

4 Sherlock, Cillian. “Army called in to remove vehicles blocking depots as owners told 'not to complain' about damage” https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/defence-forces-ireland-fuel-protest-36987917

5 RTE. “Fuel protests show 'rules of engagement have changed' - ICTU”

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22600976/

6 O’Donovan, Brian. “Iceland workers reach agreement after sit-in” https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0826/1401826-iceland-workers/

7 Súil Chlé. “Iceland Workers Continue Occupation As They Push For Wages Owed” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmxpbRCuwF0

The test of a new political party is not how loudly it launches, but whether it can hold serious people together once the excitement fades. By that measure, Your Party has already failed. In less than a year it has gone from hype to feuding, expulsions, resignations and outright regional collapse. This is not a movement gathering strength. It is an organisation coming apart.

The resignations alone tell the story. In November, Adnan Hussain quit, condemning “persistent infighting”, “a struggle for power” and a “toxic” internal culture. Within days, Iqbal Mohamed followed, citing “false allegations and smears”. These were not unimportant figures. They were MPs attached to the project at the highest level and they walked because the atmosphere had already become poisonous.

The losses did not stop there. In December, Jamie Driscoll chose to join the Greens instead. At its founding conference, Your Party turned what should have been a show of momentum into a public display of breakdown, with Zarah Sultana boycotting the first day over internal disputes. Even after members opted for a collective leadership model rather than a direct Corbyn-Sultana contest, the underlying conflict remained. The struggle had not ended; it had simply moved inside the machinery of the party.

By February, the balance of forces was clearer. Corbyn-backed candidates won 14 of the 24 seats on the Central Executive Committee, while Sultana’s side took seven. Corbyn became parliamentary leader. Sultana was not formally pushed out, but politically she was no longer a co-equal founder setting the direction. She had become the public face of the losing faction inside a party she helped launch.

That matters, because her conduct has repeatedly reinforced the impression of unreliability. She has too often looked less like a disciplined organiser than a political freelancer, acting first and leaving others to deal with the consequences. Her role in the chaotic launch created immediate friction with Corbyn’s side. She then launched an unauthorised membership portal, emailing roughly 800,000 people and urging them to pay to join. The reported fallout was serious enough that the Information Commissioner’s Office advised Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project to consider reporting the matter to the police or fraud authorities. Whatever the ultimate legal position, the political damage was obvious. It deepened the sense of impulsiveness, poor judgement and unilateralism in a party that could not survive any of those things.

The clearest verdict has now come from Scotland. The entire 12-member interim Scottish executive committee has resigned, along with Niall Christie, the sole Scottish representative on the UK-wide Central Executive Committee. Their charge was devastating: attempts to prepare Holyrood candidates and build democratic Scottish structures had been blocked, decisions were being imposed without Scottish input and the organisation north of the border had haemorrhaged members to the point of collapse. Your Party disputes parts of that account. But when an entire national leadership walks out at once and says the party is effectively over, the argument is already lost in political terms.

Even its electoral strategy now carries the smell of retreat. For the English local elections, Your Party has chosen not to stand broadly under its own banner, but to back a limited slate, most of them under independent or local labels rather than the party name. In isolation, that might be defended as tactical flexibility. In context, it looks more like a lack of confidence in the coherence, authority and pulling power of the party itself.

What has collapsed here is not merely a leadership arrangement or a branding exercise, but the fantasy that another formation within British parliamentary politics can somehow escape the habits of centralism, managerialism and factional decay that define that world. A British party that cannot hold its MPs, cannot contain its factions, cannot keep its regional leadership and increasingly cannot trust its own name is not being built for power. It is falling apart in public.

Sir,

I’m writing as a student at Trinity College Dublin where the extent of rhetoric surrounding confidence in this government has been prolific throughout the year.

I wish to express my dissatisfaction with the current Union.

They have time and time again not put their words into action and have been absent when called upon to represent their mandates. There was a referendum earlier this year to establish a position of no confidence in the current government.

I am standing outside the Dáil as I write this and not only are they not present but have instead spent the day running ad-campaigns with local food chains on their Instagram story, their main form of communication to the student body. 

I am not an activist but my experience and position as a student has been greatly impacted by this government, I voted for my union to voice this concern, the referendum was passed, and now my representative body is silent.

What else am I to do when a group of students care more about LinkedIn titles, emails and brand deals than actual issues which they are mandated to act on. I expected more from them, I expected more from BDS.

Openly,

Anonymous Student

Many on the left know of Karl Kautsky, but few understand him. He is denounced as a reformist and his politics as anathema, but the reality of the fact is that he is one architect of the European revolution of 1917. 

The abandonment of Karl Kautsky and the reimagining of Lenin as a great man leading a vanguard against the Tsarist regime has led to all sorts of simplistic distortions of history and the nature of the state. Today Irish Marxists frequently speak of the “landlord” class that governs. While such a term has propagandistic use, it has become to some almost a simple statement of fact. But on the contrary we know that it is a simplification as “the capitalist class rules but does not govern. It contents itself with ruling the government”[1]. The fact that we have so many landlords sitting in government is not the cause of our problems, but the effect. 

So many marxists today read all the works of Lenin, but they neglect the seminal works: ‘The Social Revolution’ and ‘The Road To Power’ by Kautsky. So they read only the sequel, but not the source. Without this context they conceive of the vanguard party as a party of revolutionary elites. This lie has been repeated so many times by the Bolsheviks that it has become to many an unknowing assumption. This is not the case, Lenin was a proud follower of Kautsky when he wrote ‘What Is To Be Done’. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the real history has been unearthed again. ‘What Is To Be Done’ argued only against an economistic trend within the RSDLP that repeatedly pushed for strikes without ideological development. Lenin made this clear so many times himself[2].

Thus even today socialists continue to call for a ready made “Vanguard Party”. But a party is not made in a day. The struggle for ideological development must happen within the worker’s organisations. Similarly, some socialists call for a general strike just as Luxemburg did in her day arguing against Kautsky. But as we saw yesterday, even the far right can call for a general strike[3]. As laid out in ‘The Social Revolution’:

“The strike as a political method of warfare will scarcely ever, certainly not within any time we can foresee, assume the form of a strike of all the workers of a country; nor can it be expected to replace the ordinary weapons of political warfare of the pro letariat. ’ It can only complement and strengthen them.”[4]

The Kapp Putsch was not merely defeated by a worker’s strike, it was the threat of an armed uprising that led to its defeat. The strike defeated the Putsch but without ideological development and a victory on the political or military field it ultimately led to the rise of the DNVP and the bourgeois bloc. The task of organising is hard and slow and it is best that the “professional revolutionaries” of today heed that fact.

[1] Kautsky, Karl. “The Social Revolution”. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/xx/socrev2.pdf

[2] Draper, Hal. The Myth of Lenin’s “Concept of The Party” https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm

[3] Murphy, Ann and Sherlock, Cillian ”They went too far': Fuel price protesters call for national strike” https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41826308.html

[4] Kautsky, Karl. “The Social Revolution”

 László Molnárfi, James Rochford and Alexander Homits

Introduction

Alexander Homits

As someone who took great issue with the strategic and political direction that PBP, Solidarity, SWP and the other explicitly anti-communist parties and groups that often misdirected young people, it is refreshing to finally see the primary base of recruitment (  students and young people ) be chipped away at by other students who have independently assessed Trotskyism and drawn significant conclusions about its dead end and destructive nature.

A new generation of young people who can see beyond the State Department, CIA and Mossad historiography of geopolitics and life are actively re-evaluating the political outcome and impact of Trotskyism as an ideological framework to work from and an ever growing critical mass of young students is drawing the correct conclusion that Trotskyism is a fifth column and an ideological disease that operates in the interests of capitalism and imperialism.

Trotskyism in Ireland has operated like a glorified pyramid scheme by relying on well intentioned but naive young people, using them as foot soldiers for backroom planned campaigns and most importantly of all securing and maintaining electoral positions. Trotskyism has delivered no meaningful victories in Ireland that it can call its own and instead depicted socialism and socialists as disconnected from the class and communities they purport to represent.

Hopefully this ever growing push back against Trotskyism starts the slow process of rectifying all of this and conclusively isolates Trotskyist ideology from the political left in Ireland so that we can get on with organising towards a 32-county socialist workers’ republic.

People Before Profit — PBP

László Molnárfi

This is an eclectic multi-tendency organisation, split^[1] between the unorthodox Trotskyist dominant Socialist Workers’ Network (SWN), which traces its international allegiance to Tony Cliff’s International Socialist Tendency (IST), and its newspaper Rebel News, the ‘eco-socialist’ Trotskyism-ambivalent Revolutionary, Internationalist, Socialist and Environmentalists (RISE) and its associated Rupture Magazine and traces of post-Marxism, and unaffiliated post-Trotskyists and neo-Kautskyists grouped in Horizon Magazine, modelled after Cosmonaut Magazine.

PBP are programmatic nihilists, with policy positions on various issues, but without a line of march, resembling more so a collective of activists without an explicit ideological current, in a move away from vanguardism. It can be considered a severely perverted version of Trotsky’s transitional programme at most.  “Ask, for example, whether PBP is a reformist or a revolutionary party and you might get a range of answers even from its members”^[2], wrote one of its leading theorists, John Molyneux^†. This results in a tailist attitude towards social movements where there is recruitment from a liberal stratum without the necessary heightening of class consciousness through political education, and to a lesser extent, from the ultra-left ‘actionist’ stratum, who usually break away from the organization subsequently^[3]. There is thus a Brownian motion around whatever is most popular at the moment, that is regardless an overdetermined shift towards the right-deviation which slowly drags the organisation towards the liberal baseline, away from revolutionary socialism, a process which led its leftmost faction, the Red Network, to split in June 2025 and abandon Trotskyism.

The organisation is pushed to reduce talk of socialist revolution, dampen their criticism of the European Union, sideline the national question and is pressured into bourgeois electoralism, while haphazardly jumping on whatever social movement is popular in the current conjecture. The class basis of the organization shifts from a working-class base in the 2010s water charges movement to students, especially on campuses, and the middle-class. Their integration with the NGO sector, liberal parties and bureaucratic trade unions is a rising tendency within the organization, justified by the ‘Left Government’ line, which calls on the organisation to enter into a coalition with bourgeois parties; this is then mirrored in the SWN’s front organisation, United Against Racism (UAR),^[4] which is a recruitment mechanism and a tool for the organization to sustain a united front with liberal forces. Kieran Allen’s theory of ‘creative illusions’ in Sinn Féin is used to justify the ‘Left Government’ position; as if the consciousness of the masses would suddenly shift towards socialist revolution upon reformist failure, it could be said that it fails to account for a reactionary turn or a return to the liberal baseline. The uncritical tailing of these social forces arises from the conception that a collection of reformist demands auto-transitions into an overall revolutionary consciousness should a crisis situation arise. In turn, this arises from the Cliffite reliance on Luxemburgist spontaneity.

There is a dearth of critique and self-critique, following a motion at the 2025 AGM, boasting of 400 attendees^[5], which ‘discouraged’ external polemics, cementing a liberal deviation, emanating from the SWN-dominated headquarters which exerts downwards pressure on local branches with diverging views in order to solidify its own position. There is a lack of a political education programme. On the other hand, however, at least formally, they have democratic mechanisms, multi-tendency socialism and open factionalism, which is the strength of PBP; this is best exemplified by Rupture Magazine and Horizon Magazine, which conducts Marxist theoretical debates from a post-Marxist^[6] in the former and post-Trotskyist/neo–Kautskyite intersectionalist^[7] approach in the latter, whereas Rebel News functions more as a propaganda paper with occasional critiques of ultra-leftism, the IPSC and bourgeois democratic parties^[8], as well as, notably, opposition to third-worldist campism^[9]. The critique of ultra-leftism makes PBP to the Right of the ‘actionists’, such as AIA et al., which have an uneasy relationship with them, believing them to be too compromising on matters of militant direct action; whereas the critique of third-worldist campism makes PBP situated to the Left of AIA et al. on foreign policy. They are weak on the national question, being critical of republicanism and nationalism^[10].

Solidarity (formerly known as Socialist Party) — S

László Molnárfi

An orthodox Trotskyist organization turned unorthodox, they uphold Trotsky’s transitional programme and are positioned to the Left of PBP, owing to their criticism of a ‘Left Government’ and greater emphasis on revolutionary socialism. They have a hierarchical mode of organization in which Party “full-timers” hold sway over membership, and consequently, over ideological direction, with membership vetted according to Leninist vanguardist principles, through discussions with leading cadres before onboarding. Their political education consists mainly of the ‘classics’, Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, with other traditions neglected. They have a penchant for recruiting impressionable minds from campuses, combined with democratic centralism, leading to a homogenization of the political line within the organisation. Their position on the national question is abysmal, believing that it is a sectarian distraction from class struggle, hence their rejection of republicanism and nationalism as a reactionary force; they believe that Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales should merge into a socialist federation and eventually into a Socialist European federation^[11].

In 2019, their parent organization, the Peter Taaffe-aligned factions of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) warned that a tendency was developing within the Party to examine events through the lens of gender, rather than class struggle^[12]. They subsequently split, eventually forming the International Socialist Alternative (ISA), rejecting what they saw as ‘workerism’, undoubtedly influenced by the changing class composition towards student membership after the Repeal the 8th campaigns. Taafe’s accusation of Mandelism, a concession to petty bourgeois intellectualist politics and a succumbent to opportunist pressures^[13], would be consistent with the claim of increased student membership, and the subsequent shift to LGBT+, gender and campus organising as the new force for revolutionary politics^[14][15]. These internal documents were leaked, rather than openly shared, which is inconsistent with the Bolshevik principle of open debate in the Party newspapers. The ‘other side’ of the split, from there came out the CWI-aligned Militant Left (ML), which advocates class-first politics. Paul Murphy’s Revolutionary, Internationalist, Socialist and Environmentalists (RISE) is also traceable back to this split, which places stronger emphasis on class but with an eco-socialist coating and is ambivalent towards Trotskyism.

Today, the Party’s socialist feminist front group, ROSA, has come to dominate much of what Solidarity does in their day to day activities. They also undertake trade union entryism in UNITE, where they have made strong inroads, taking important positions and amassing influence in the organisation towards militant politics. Youth Against Racism (YARI), their anti-racist collective, is less active nowadays.

This is a formation which is pulled in different directions. They are pulled towards anarchism on foreign policy, to the Left of PBP as well as AIA. They lean heavily towards liberal identity politics in its sectional advocacy for LGBT+ people, women and ethnic minorities to the Right of PBP. At the same time, they preach class struggle arising from the Trotskyist core, to the Left of PBP. Thus, their transitional programme is at the mercy of an eclectic form of tailism. This is a mix of simultaneous rightwards pulls and leftwards pulls, one which is overdetermined towards the former rather than the latter. As a result, they are in an electoral alliance with PBP, as well as participants in UAR, where they attend counter-demonstrations against nationalist-populist demonstrations across the country where they subsequently recruit from. Through their electoral alliance, they pull PBP to leftwards on the question of Left Government, but pull them rightwards at the same time through the identity politics lens of viewing societal change.

Revolutionary Communists of Ireland — RCI

James Rochford

The Revolutionary Communists of Ireland (RCI) are, in ideological terms, firmly orthodox Trotskyist. They describe themselves as adherents of the “orthodox Marxism” of Bolshevism and have at times styled themselves as the “Irish Bolsheviks.” The organisation is the Irish section of the Revolutionary Communists International (also abbreviated RCI), formerly International Marxist Tendency (IMT), which traces its origins to the 1992 split in the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) led by Ted Grant.

In observing them, there is a marked tendency among their members to distance themselves from other leftist organisations. They are critical of People Before Profit (PBP) leadership, criticising them for reformism, while orbiting around them to seize recruitment opportunities. For instance, they have an article highlighting one member defecting from PBP to the RCI^[16]. In addition, they tend to recruit from other leftist factions; in picking them off, being 'magpies' in a way, they have most noticeably made recruitment attempts from PBP and disaffected members following the Red Network split, using this period to criticise PBP^[17] as a way to attract members. Regardless, they state that they have a long candidate period of up to or even over 3 years for anyone who comes from outside groups, as they often have countless political baggage. They highlighted that open discussion is necessary for a socialist movement. They do not seem to enjoy good relations with other leftist organisations, or they appear neutral towards them. They do not focus much on issues such as identity politics, being critical of liberal intrusion into the socialist movement; rather, they tend to focus on class, though there is space for discussions outside of class war^[18]. They are critical of non-socialist republicanism and opposed to nationalism, the theoretical justification thereof being laid out in Alan Woods' "Republicanism and Revolution"; at the same time, they do not seem to follow the tradition of socialist republicanism, therefore being weak on the national question. Following the Palestinian resistance acts of October 7th, their international organisation, from which they take their line too, called to unite the Palestinian and Israeli proletariat and was critical of Hamas^[19], similar to anarchists, to the Left of Solidarity, PBP and AIA. They march, walk and participate in actions of the ultra-left “actionists”^[20], the liberal left and the rest of the socialist left, and set up their stalls at demonstrations, though they do not have a working relationship with any of these organisations; rather, the RCI tails along in hopes of converting people and selling papers and subscriptions, a tendency which is its defining feature.

Its organisational structure is top-down, conformist and demands a high degree of ideological compliance, it being a vanguardist formation, thus their political line is homogenous as set down by democratic centralist mechanisms. Their political education is heavily partisan to the ‘classics’, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Connolly with a special distaste for ‘post-modern’ and ‘post-structuralist’ critical theory. They deny the Big Bang happened due to its supposed ‘undialectical’ nature^[21]. They have eleven branches in Ireland to date, but despite years of organising, they have '50 to 75 members'^[22], reportedly closer to 100 as of today. Despite their numbers, they appear to charge high membership dues, as they employ 2 full-time organisers. What should be pointed out here is that, like in all Left groups, the de facto centre tends to be based in Dublin, which has most of their branches in any county (3). Their recruitment strategy shares many features with most groups (PBP, Solidarity, Workers’ Party, etc.), in that it tends to involve stalls in prominent public areas, such as the GPO, Grafton Street and Mary Street. However, they do organise in busy areas in their other branches. They have expressed no intention of running a candidate in national or local elections so far, but they are not against using elections for revolutionary socialist agitation. Notably, they do hold congresses with their second Congress having been held on the 5th and 6th of April, with 50 of their members in attendance, with 56 active members in all of Ireland, with international membership in the RCI having doubled from 2,600 to 5,800^[23] ,reportedly closer to 10,000 as of today.

In terms of their recruitment, there is a clear age range of members in their late teens and early twenties, who are often of a student background, at least in the Dublin area, where they hold branch meetings in Trinity College Dublin. However, they have members in other universities, such as University College Dublin and likely have branch meetings there as well. This appears to be mostly a student-body organisation, while also having some working-class members.  They have a high degree of member burn-out and departures, which are then substituted for by others, but overall results in a stagnated membership. This is an organisation with a set political line, that is to say, a transitional programme, not so eclectic as PBP and as Solidarity. However, their transitional programme’s implementation tends to be maximalist, revolution shouted out into the void, as engagement with social movements is done solely for the purposes of recruitment through tailism, so a disconnect ensues. As to their overall positionality on the left- and right-deviation spectrum, Solidarity flanks PBP to the Left, but RCI flanks Solidarity to the Left, the AIA and such flank the RCI to the Left. It should be emphasised that Irish nativist spaces are aware of the RCI and have, on occasion, harassed them at their stalls, with a documented incident of their stall being thrashed by a passerby.

Like many organisations on the Left, they sell (surprisingly) a fairly high-quality magazine with articles ranging from topical issues in Ireland and internationally to selections of theory (generally from the canon, such as Trotsky and Lenin). What should be emphasised is that, in terms of recent issues in Irish society, they are writing in a populist language where they choose not to adopt moralistic language but lay the blame in institutions and government, such as in its Ballymena article^[24]. This is also in line with their proclamations on anti-IPAS riots, with some of their members expressing a desire to capture and redirect these populist energies through class-based messaging^[25]. In addition, they, owing to their antagonistic attitude towards liberalism, have criticised PBP and their counter-demonstrations to nationalist-populist marches, also highlighting that these stirrings are not of a purely fascist nature^[26].

What should be emphasised is that, despite their sectarian nature, they rarely attack other organisations openly. They have been sharp towards the Irish government on their issues; for example, most recently on the General Budget^[27]. They have not issued a specific article aimed at other Leftist organisations, aside from PBP, with the aforementioned article(s). However, they have gone after the idea of a Left government led by Sinn Féin, using their governance up north as a study not to trust them as bringers of change^[28].

In essence, the RCI is too small a force to have any impact in Irish politics. Even in Leftist circles, they are acknowledged but not as a threat, despite their noticeable presence and publication if one looks or is approached by them.

Appendix - 16 Scientific Questions for Evaluation Purposes

What structural/class/ideological forces are there pressuring the organisation? Who is its class basis? Where does the organization’s “boundaries” end and where does it then connect with other social forces and groups? What is its Left-Deviation and Right-Deviation as the internal content of the organisation? What intersects/flanks it from the Left, and what intersects/flanks it from the Right? Which of these has a determining effect on the form the organization projects (under-over-determination)? What is its organisational structure, hierarchies, and who has an outsized amount of influence in each, where does power lie, what does this power want in light of the previous questions? How does organisation and ideology interact as a co-conditioning process? Who benefits? Where does it recruit from? What does the organisation say? And more importantly: What does the organisation not say, where has it dampened its critiques of an issue, and why? What has it emphasized? Where is it now? Where was it before? Where is it going?

^[1] At its 2025 AGM, the 14-member Steering Committee elected 10 SWN, 2 RISE and 2 unaffiliated members.

^[2]Molyneux, John. “John Molyneux: What Is People before Profit? (March 2022).” Marxists.org, 2022. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/molyneux/2022/03/pbp.htm.

^[3] Action for Palestine Ireland (AFPI) is an example of this.

^[4] This is the same Trotskyist formation as Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) in the United Kingdom. This is a core part of Trotskyism. It arises as a reflex from erstwhile entryism into the Labour Party.

^[5]Koenig , Robin , and Cian Prendiville, eds. “PBP AGM 2025: Biggest Ever AGM Debates Strategy for Era of Extremes.” Rupture, March 18, 2025. https://rupture.ie/articles/pbp-agm-2025.

^[6] Murphy, Paul. “More Lenin Needed: Review: Class War Not Culture War.” Rupture.ie, 2026. https://rupture.ie/articles/class-war.

^[7]Keane, Aron. “Neither Revolutionary nor Realpolitik: A Reply to László Molnárfi - Horizon Magazine.” Edited by Diarmuid Flood. Horizon, June 11, 2025. https://horizonmag.ie/neither-revolutionary-nor-realpolitik-a-reply-to-laszlo-molnarfi/.

^[8]Tadjine , Lamia. “The Workers of the World Have Had Enough of Genocide: Strategies for the Palestine Movement.” Edited by Eli Kane and Bana Abu Zuluf . REBEL, October 29, 2025. https://rebelnews.ie/2025/10/29/the-workers-of-the-world-have-had-enough-of-genocide-strategies-for-the-palestine-movement/.

^[9]Daher, Joseph. “Solidarity with Palestine and the Struggle from Below.” REBEL, November 15, 2024. https://rebelnews.ie/2024/11/15/solidarity-with-palestine-and-the-struggle-from-below/.

^[10] Hedges , John Hedges , and Mark Moloney. “The Hollow Populism of AAA/PBP.” Anphoblacht.com, 2017. https://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/26677.

^[11] Socialist Party. “The Socialist .” Issuu, July 27, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20210512135000/https://issuu.com/socialistpartyireland/docs/ts_south_july_-_august_2016.

^[12]Kelly, Fiach. “Socialist Party Documents Illustrate Criticism from International Comrades.” The Irish Times, March 6, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20230713035953/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/socialist-party-documents-illustrate-criticism-from-international-comrades-1.3815624.

^[13]Sell, Hannah. “Documents on the Dispute That Arose at the EC.” Socialist Party, 2019. https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Aa0ea37e7-8140-4e21-b046-e96b65c02fba&viewer%21megaVerb=group-discover.

^[14]Flakin, Nathaniel . “The Split in the CWI: Lessons for Trotskyists,” 2019. https://www.leftvoice.org/the-split-in-the-cwi-lessons-for-trotskyists/.

^[15] Taaffe, Peter. “In Defence of a Working-Class Orientation for the CWI.” Adobe.com, 2019. https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%253Aaaid%253Ascds%253AUS%253A72123d6f-76d4-45e9-a54f-ffaf1f51d1d3.

^[16]  Revolutionary Communist. Issue 2, 'Why I left PBP and joined The Irish Marxists' by Nathan Mac an tSionnaigh, p. 10

^[17] Curry, Ben . “An Open Letter to PBP Members: Tax the Rich or Socialist Revolution? - Revolutionary Communists of Ireland.” Revolutionary Communists of Ireland, June 11, 2025. https://communism.ie/an-open-letter-to-pbp-members-tax-the-rich-or-socialist-revolution/.

^[18]  Revolutionary Communist. Issue 6, 'Justice for Harvey - sweep away this rotten system!' by RCI, p. 4

^[19] Revolutionary Communist International. “Down with Hypocrisy! Defend Gaza! – RCI Statement.” Marxist.com, October 11, 2023. https://marxist.com/down-with-hypocrisy-defend-gaza-imt-statement.htm.

^[20] At the October 4th 2025 port blockade for Palestine, for instance.

^[21] Woods, Alan. “An Alternative to the Big Bang: ‘the Universe Had No Beginning and Will Have No End.,’” 2005. https://marxist.com/big-bang-alternative300402.htm.

^[22] Revolutionary Communist. Issue 7, 'editorial,' p. 3

^[23]  Revolutionary Communist. Issue 4, 'A historic second congress for the Revolutionary Communists of Ireland, p. 20

^[24] Revolutionary Communist. Issue 5, 'Ballymena: Unionist establishment reap what they sow' by Ewan McGrane and Fiona Lali,' p. 5

^[25] Patanè, Andrea . “Class Struggle Not Broad Fronts Will Beat the Far Right - Revolutionary Communists of Ireland.” Revolutionary Communists of Ireland, May 2025. https://communism.ie/class-struggle-not-broad-fronts-will-beat-the-far-right/.

^[26] Ibid

^[27] Revolutionary Communist. Issue 7, 'Death by a thousand cuts: the budget and the economic storm,' by Andrea Patane, pp. 6-7

^[28] Revolutionary Communist. Issue 4, 'Tectonic shifts in the North,' pp. 11 - 15

This evening I was browsing Instagram when I saw a new article comparing Paul Murphy to Lizz Truss. Yusuf Murray criticised Paul’s call for a price cap on petrol and diesel. He accused the policy of being a blank cheque to Shell, BP and ExxonMobil. I have always known Yusuf as particularly outspoken in his criticisms. Knowing a small deal about Paul’s stances on energy and environment I felt that Yusuf’s concern was misplaced and had to be contextualised.

Under the current system workers are bearing the brunt of the burden of the rise in oil prices. They are already sending money to the likes of Shell, BP and ExxonMobil. The introduction of price caps is just the simplest and frankly the only way to cushion that burden right now. The fear that wealthy SUV drivers would be “subsidised” by the taxpayer is the wrong way to look at the issue. The wealthy can afford fuel already, and I hardly expect that Yusuf would desire the expansion of government bureaucracy necessary for any “means” based system. Imagine the fuel gestapo asking you if you have a “Fuel License” for that fill…

The below text is sourced from People Before Profit's Economic Policy.

"Because of its location, Ireland has the potential to be a leader in the development of renewable energy worldwide. The state could enable a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and become a manufacturer and exporter of renewable energy components. Wind and wave technologies have enormous potential here. A report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) outlined how investment in additional wind capacity of 4000 MW, mostly offshore, would create 36,000 jobs. A large scale reforestation programme would also benefit both the economy and the environment. We need a special fund for green energy employment which could create an additional 5,000 green energy jobs. We would invest in green research and development (R&D) and afforestation."

Any loss in money in the treasury ultimately requires further taxation of the wealthiest in our society. The price cap policy should not be taken in isolation. PBP has repeatedly pushed for a transition to renewable energy and Paul Murphy made it clear that we should pay for price caps and energy credits by taxing data centres. So long as we live in the capitalist system we will ultimately have to make deals with the capitalists: Shell, BP and so on.

Saoirse Éireann Ní Bhaoighealláin

Has the left failed the working class? We recently saw László Molnárfi debate in the Phil in Trinity College Dublin where he quoted my work “What Rosa Gets Wrong About Socialist Feminism” . The reaction to this speech like most of László’s work on the left was quite mixed receiving harsh criticism and a lot of praise from people who also feel the mainstream left in Ireland is and has been failing working class people for years. Seeing as the speech made reference to my own work I felt I should make my thoughts on it known. 

Molnárfi’s criticism of People Before Profit and Solidarity have resonated with many people for good reason, across the left a frustration with the parties are at an all time high. Red Network’s recent split from the party has in my opinion represented the final abandonment of working class activists from PBP. That’s not to say everyone in People Before Profit is middle class but Red Network held the most solid working class line within PBP and without it the party's ideology will continue to stray further into petite bourgeois ideology.

The recent rent hikes vote only showed the mockery of the “Keep Left” conference back in November which had Labour and Green representatives who went on to vote in favour of hiking rents. In the European elections in 2024 People Before Profit pressured Bríd Smith into running for MEP resulting in us losing Clare Daly as MEP. This has shown that People Before Profit prioritize seats over all else which is the very core of the problem within the party.

This is why even critics of Molnárfi agree with his criticisms of PBP/Solidarity. Of course it's no surprise this was my favourite part of the speech as it was also mostly quoting my own work. Now of course the criticism.

After the speech was publicised People Before Profit echoed Red Networks critique of Molnárfi has never set foot in the working class estates he wishes to represent. As someone from a working class town which heavily relies on at-risk jobs from a factory as well as agriculture and the trades, I am particularly aware and in agreement of this critique. As I discussed in “Suggestions on Organizing from a Rural Activist Perspective” on Aontacht I believe that engaging in mass organisations particularly in order to work alongside the working class is the most important task of socialist organizing.

Molnárfi would do well to engage in a bit of door knocking work with the Community Action Tenants Union in order to strengthen his skills in engaging with the actual working class. Actually doing the unglamorous work would only serve to strengthen his argumentation and I fear he prioritizes doing the spotlight work in a way that lends itself well to student activism but utterly fails in the working class estates.

On the speech itself it opens discussing the march down O’Connell St in April 2025 which Molnárfi frames as the 10,000 people marching under the leadership of far right figures as “members of the working class” this framework is in my opinion flawed and points to Molnárfi’s misunderstanding of the working class. I believe Molnárfi often views the working class as the people who make up what Marx would refer to as the “lumpenproletariat” 

The lumpenproletariat are in Marx’s view the “lowest stratum of the proletariat” in plain language the people most oppressed by capitalism are often stuck in chronic addiction, unemployment, criminal behaviour and adversary to progressive ideas. The far right has been repeatedly exposed for their connections to drug dealing which they use to mobilise this section of people struggling most under capitalism into attacking immigrants as the cause of their problems.

Of those 10,000 people the class distinction between them was indeed greater than what you would see in the left, sections of the upper classes who wish to turn worker against worker, sections of the lower middle class who fear becoming worse off, sections of the working class who have been pitted against their fellows and a large base of this “lumpenproletariat”. The lumpenproletariat make up the majority of those who rioted in citywest and burned down buildings for being rumoured spots for IPAS centres.

László Molnárfi is right about how People Before Profit has strayed away from the working classes losing the base that they had built during the water charges protests this was due to a trend hoping tendency which prioritized the hot topic of the day over remaining consistently within the working class neighbourhoods instead of continuing to build up their bases after the water charges protests they moved on to the referendums and then international solidarity. 

People Before Profit have softened their tone on the European Union in order to appeal to people uneducated on the EU but who found themselves opposed to Brexit not on economic arguments but because it was being led by the far right in Britain. People Before Profit have voted down legislation which would’ve given working class communities a say on whether an IPAS centre would be suitable in their communities and People Before Profit refuse to be concretely republican despite the colonial nature of partition trying to gain support from the loyalist communities without challenging them on the national question. All of which allows the right to dominate the conversation on these topics but the suggestion that the far right is working class suggests collaboration over competition on these issues and that is where Molnárfi strays from the correct analysis.

This is not a fight against People Before Profit this is a fight to build up a new republican left which can gain the support of the working class by challenging the state, the far right and British, American and European imperialism and shrive not for seats in Dáil Éireann and Stormont but to bring about a 32 county democratic socialist republic!

Paul Murphy has been banging the drum for an apparently long-standing People Before Profit-Solidarity policy the last few days: a price cap on petrol and diesel. While it's one of the stupidest ideas ever, in his defence, he's not the first politician to have it. A certain Liz Truss (of 'opening new pork markets in Beijing' fame), also tried out the idea (in this case, an 'Energy Price Guarantee') in her über-brief stint as British prime minister, in which she was outlasted by a lettuce.

The consequences for working-class people in Britain were horrific and near instant: headline inflation reached a 41-year high of 11.1% in October 2022. For the bottom 10% of earners, real income plummeted by 6.6%. Average two-year fixed mortgage rates surged from below 4% to over 6% following her move.

Price controls are of course, a valid left-wing policy - in a country with a left-wing government, with nationalised industries. For anyone who has been living under a rock for the last century, Ireland does not have a left-wing government and is not an oil producing country. Even if PBP-S were to find hitherto undiscovered levels of popularity with the working class and storm into government tomorrow, they cannot nationalise Irish oil. Because it doesn't exist.

What this means of course, is that a price cap on oil is a blank cheque, signed by me and you, to the likes of Shell, BP and ExxonMobil. And while a left-wing government could do many things to challenge the neoliberal economic consensus: like running a managed deficit and quantitative easing, progressive taxation remains a key component of funding public services like universal healthcare, education and social housing.

Paul, of course, knows all this. While my schooling was done in Handsworth, in inner-city Birmingham, Paul was educated a fee-paying school in Clonskeagh. So I really don't understand his advocacy of a policy that steals tax from schools in Ballymun to subsidise the fuel going into SUVs in Blackrock.

To put all this into context: the temporary measures announced by the government yesterday, mainly benefitting large haulage and agri firms, will cost over half a billion euro. In real world terms, that's around 1,700 units of social housing, 220 MRI machines, or over 8,000 extra teachers and nurses for a year. And these measures don't go as far as Paul and PBP-S want, and are only going to last until July.

Somewhere along the way, Paul and PBP-S have lost their way. Socialism isn't an aesthetic and it isn't a vaguely defined vibe. Left politics is, above all else, the centring of class-interests and agitation along those lines. Raiding the coffers to pay for D4 Rugby Dads' fuel at the expense of social housing, teachers and nurses? As Liz Truss might say: That. Is. A. Disgrace.

Aontacht Media emailed Paul Murphy asking for further clarifications on this policy. At the time of publication, no response has been received.

Domhnall O'Gaothne

Internationalism, the holy gospel of the left, has been failing us here in Ireland. No matter the critiques of policy among the various factions of the left, no one dareth question the supreme doctrine of internationalism. A contentious topic to take on, but an important one in dealing with a left that no longer threatens power in Ireland. In the light of the current fuel crisis mobilisation, and the countless other issues we have to work with, we need to pull our focus on to what gets the people moving if we are to have an impact on the power structures in this country, and their influence abroad.

The currently failing strategy in relation to internationalism not only creates a barrier to the struggling working class but allows our government to use our action to garner an image abroad as if we are on the same side. Internationalism is about solidarity not exclusivity. It is supposed to go alongside national struggle, not take over from it. It is supposed to show how broad coalitions with different interests can work together for a unifying goal. And, if you want your solidarity to mean anything, it has to mean the removal of our ruling parties who will at most make a side comment, provided it doesn't get in the way of kissing Trump's toes. Their rule must be threatened if you want your solidarity to mean anything.

A glance abroad, look at how the French protest on May Day. Yearly riots consistently over workers' rights and policies of the government. Next month, expect many Palestinian flags on the streets of Lyon and Paris, but also expect confrontation with the police over matters affecting the working class in France. At near every other anti-government protest abroad, Palestinian flags are a frequent feature, but there is an understanding that the only way to make real change is to overturn or upset the status quo in their own country. What has taken over in Ireland is the liberal Saturday walkabouts in Dublin for Palestine. Our unions and political parties take years to organise a single march on housing. Meanwhile, between regular national demonstrations and impromptu actions, there is  a near daily action somewhere on Palestine, Iran or Ukraine. People have become so obsessed with the international issues that we are forgetting our own struggles. This reeks of the activism of the comfortable classes. Wanting to give themselves a pat on the back for doing their part whilst blinding themselves to those struggling around them. Stepping over homeless people so that they can rush their banner to the front. There is rarely confrontation in these actions, and instead there are appeals to FFG and our ruling elite. Appeals to the morality of our subservient rulers who clearly have none.

One case study that shows the shift to an overemphasis on internationalism is the brilliant activism of the Revolutionary Housing League who were willing to get themselves arrested and repeatedly made a show of the Gardaí via over the top evictions. The owner of James Connolly House claimed in court that RHL was evicted to "house Ukrainians" though that building has remained empty ever since. A flagrant abuse of the court system. A "For Sale" sign currently hangs in its yard. But rather than continuing to build that campaign, they traded getting arrested over housing, for getting arrested on the steps of the Belgian embassy with Anti Imperialist Action. I dare not critique the bravery of people willing to get arrested, but the pivot to these issues, while important and popular in left wing circles, are not winning the working class, it is losing it. There have been similar arrests at Shannon and elsewhere of activists. There have been people forcibly removed from conferences and occupations of buildings all for the Palestinian cause. But where are the arrests for occupation of the vulture funds, law firms and housing bodies? Surely our own issues deserve at least some of the share of civil disobedience. We need to remember that change starts at home. This has even allowed Gavin Pepper to step in as a voice against the vultures. Mass movements that enact meaningful change do not base themselves on conflicts thousands of miles away. Some might hark back to the Dunnes Stores strike 40 years ago as if that was not an outlier, and as if packing trolleys of Israeli goods at Lidl is more than just a nuisance for local underpaid staff. The unions have failed to mobilise their workforce in airports and elsewhere over handling Israeli goods, but worse still is their inability to mobilise for the issues their members face daily in Irish society. The online world has people glued to their screens thinking they are changing history thousands of miles away. They think that enough engagement online means they are making a difference but it is not. Ireland has managed to achieve near nothing for the people of Palestine, sad as that is to admit. And it will remain so until FFG are dethroned and a message is sent to all who dare to fill their seat.

The Republican movement were comrades to the PLO, comrades in their own national struggle. They linked up with national struggles abroad including in the transfer of certain items the Gardaí and PSNI did not like. Now, far too many pat themselves on the back for a Saturday stroll whilst continuing to perpetuate the system that creates these foreign conflicts. This "solidarity" achieves nothing. You do not need to become a gunrunner, but people should focus their energy on power's core here in Ireland. Pleading to their better nature is redundant.

If you want to make a change abroad, we should hone in on our ruling class and more energy needs to be put on the working class who feel so neglected that some are turning to anger when they see a Palestinian flag. They are angered at the frequent marches and actions all around them led by the comfortable classes whilst they struggle for housing, education and healthcare. The left insist "we are fighting for the working class" and yet the only public actions many witness are the larger Palestine marches. The obsession with internationalism, people larping as if they're on the frontlines, neglects the issues we face here at home and it does actually neglect our working class. It hoovers up far too much political energy so that people feel they have done their bit. They have put in their political hours, their CPD has been logged. No need to mobilise the working class, there are enough boots on the street for Palestine. Another symptom is burn out. People are exhausted from redundant actions before they have even glanced at working class concerns.

Internationalism can also divide the class. What a beautiful tool for our ruling class. They can sit back and watch the left argue about how to deal with Iran. Heated arguments about whether to fly the regime flag, or the merits vs horrors of the Iranian regime, what counts as  imperialism or anti-imperialism, that make unity on local issues ever more impossible. This has been the case with Ukraine for even longer. Falling out over capitalism's wars. Elsewhere the working class argue over the merits of Trump and the US culture war creeps further in as if we are all chilling in Washington DC.

Ireland needs to reorient itself and bring the struggle back home. It is time for solidarity for the struggles abroad to go hand-in-hand with explicitly anti-government protests here, and not take the focus away from the very real struggles people here face daily.  In Czechia, massive crowds turned out to protest their government. The presence of EU flags at that protest might arouse some suspicion but the point is not what the protest was for but of the massive unity against the government that could so easily be echoed here. In Japan, South Korea and elsewhere protests aimed at the government achieve results. There is definitely enough unity against the government to grow a movement at home that does not just look for people abroad to speak of how great Irish solidarity is. We need meaningful change and that comes from directing our energy at the government, not the international issue of the day. That comes from uniting all of our struggles, not finding the minute differences to make sworn enemies out of our allies. That approach divides and loses people. The resulting impatience creates an easy recruit for the right, meanwhile FFG have never looked so comfortable.

The first rupture in FFG status quo rule in years has emerged with the fuel protests. These came not out of our leaders’ subservience to US imperialism but from the price here at the fuel pump. Similarly to the water protest, it is that the issue is the final straw rather than the issue of the utmost importance. The left should be leading anti-government protests, instead it is the right who until now had tried a couple of disorganised and fairly incoherent rallies at the Dáil. At one such march, a man held a sign that simply read "I am very angry". Me too, my friend. Our futures have been stolen. 

The left have the capacity to capture that rage, to steer it in the right direction and show how the housing crisis, the energy crisis, the cost of living crisis, healthcare crisis, the children's hospital, native industry, immigration crisis, fuel crisis and near every other struggle we face here in Ireland is not in fact caused by those abroad, but by our leaders here who bend themselves like contortionists to sell off the very idea of Ireland. What internationalism misses is the central role that our government plays, as if a couple of harshly worded statements will purge our leaders of their sins and save the day. Firstly, they will not say those sentences. Secondly, they are meaningless without the actions we know they will not take. The only meaning can come from an overthrow of the current regime here. Ask a disillusioned working class person why they dislike the left, and the culture war or obsession with conflicts abroad will eventually come up. "They don't care about our own". People need to wake up to the fact that our internationalism is being used against us and people are allowing it to, because they enjoy the moralistic grandstanding. If you want to make change abroad, it starts with getting rid of the politicians who have made blatantly clear they do not care. It is about making their lives uncomfortable. It is about building a collective movement against them around every issue where they are failing people. Bring your colours, bring your flags, but focus on the only thing that can bring about change in this country and therefore have echoes abroad. We need to uproot the civil war crony parties because without that, internationalism is just waving your flag on a Saturday and marching to an empty Dáil whilst our leaders laugh at you with their feet up at home.

Ireland’s pollsters have had a bad few years. A few weeks out from the doomed ‘Family and Care Referendums’, RedC Research predicted that 55% of voters would vote yes for the ‘family’ amendment, while an even higher 58% would vote yes for the ‘care’ amendment. In the end, the figures were 32.3% and 26.1% respectively. Not only were the pollsters' reading of the numbers way off, but their reading of the trends, too.

The reader will forgive me then, for having little faith in the polling in today's Irish Independent which claims 56% of the public support the fuel protests. If you exclude the 'don't knows' (6%), this rises to a whopping 60% of the population supporting the fuel protests.

I simply don't trust this: the left is divided on the issue, as evidenced by the various arguments advanced on Aontacht Media in the last few days. The right is divided, with large parts of the establishment right condemning the protests, while the fringe right like Aontú seek political capital from the protests. Social media is, as always, divided, and closer to home, my friends and my family are divided in their opinions of the protests. If there is a clear majority in favour of the fuel protests, I have yet to see it outside of the Indo.

But more than my own experiences over the last few days, the numbers just seemed out too. So I decided to take one for the team and run the sums, to see whether the percentage of claimed 'support' votes mapped onto the last true polling we have: the 2024 General Election.

The results, in the table below, show that the totals add up to only 51.55% of the public supporting the protests. This means the poll has a 4.45% margin of error, nearly one and a half times the 3% that is normal in polling with this sample size. If we exclude people who 'don't know' whether they support the fuel protests, this rises to a whopping 8.45%. At this margin of error, public support for the protests could be as low as 47.55%.

As I predicted yesterday, the government has now announced €505 million of measures largely benefitting large haulage and agri firms, despite a lack of any clear democratic mandate from the public.

While a further 10 c reduction in excise on petrol and diesel has been announced, this will still leave ordinary workers paying far more to fill their car than they would have in February. With no measures at all announced for heating oil, families and pensioners across the country will remain unable to afford to heat their homes.

There is one clear winner from these protests, and the Indo and the far-right have played a blinder in delivering for their millionaire masters. The question we'll be left pondering is how so many on the left read the room so badly.

In late 1932, against the backdrop of a stricken economy and a dying political system, the Berlin Transport Company (BVG) proposed a pay cut of 2 pfennigs per hour for their workers. While the social-democratic trade unions, like the ADGB, refused to back a strike, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) led a strike anyway. Afraid of losing the streets to the KPD just before an election, the Nazi party joined the strike, and picket lines had the surreal sight of swastika and Communist flags flying side-by-side.

Within less than a year, leading Communists were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered in Dachau and other early concentration camps throughout Germany. All of this should be sufficient warning for anyone tempted to take Cillian Ó Riain, who yesterday argued in these pages for us to 'Strike While The Iron Is Hot', seriously.

Anyone who knows their history knows that the KPD was brutally suppressed following this short-lived alliance despite being a strong and well-organised political force. The same cannot be said of the Irish left today: a post-Water Charges retreat to the cosy consensus of left liberalism, data-driven electoralism, and the reign of the slick SPAD has left us unable to run a bath.

If you think I'm exaggerating, ask yourself what years of polite, middle-class marching en masse has achieved for the beleaguered Palestinian, and latterly, Iranian and Lebanese people? Weapons and purveyors of death and destruction still fly through our airports and airspace on their way to destroy homes and lives, and even the most symbolic of gestures, promised in their own manifestos—a watered-down Occupied Territories Bill—is unlikely to ever be passed by this government.

When a group of protesters, including regular contributors to these pages, decided to escalate their efforts for Palestine, they were abused and sworn at by Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign stewards. Within hours, they were unlawfully tear-gassed by members of the Gardaí. The same Gardaí who have, in recent days, demonstrated superhuman restraint and dedication to 'policing by consent' in handling the fuel protests.

These protests represent no ideological or material opportunity for the left. Marshalled by a ragtag collective of fascist reactionaries and millionaire lobbyists, they hold no prospect of empowering the working class.

I would not presume to tar every protester with the same brush, but let no one be in any doubt about the ideology of those leading these protests: Christopher Duffy of Navan, who once hoped that Greta Thunberg would be raped by the Israeli military. James Geoghegan of Westmeath, who alongside convictions for animal cruelty, recorded tax defaults of over €500,000 in the last six and a half years. Work backwards from those figures, and it implies he turned a profit of at least €1 million in that time - and potentially more than €4 million if he was not operating as a sole trader. Some 'ordinary man'.

The Muslim Sisters of Éire have provided their weekly Friday soup kitchen at the GPO for over a decade now. In the febrile atmosphere created by these protests, they were racially abused and intimidated for the first time in that decade. Even if white lefties naïvely believe they can successfully ride the back of the fascist tiger, they simply do not have the right to decide that a febrile atmosphere where women of colour feeding the homeless can be intimidated and abused is a price worth paying for some illusory victory against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

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Turning to the material reality of the protests, in a week of listening to the various spokesmen's demands, I have yet to hear a single mention of heating oil: the fuel that working-class people outside of cities and towns across Ireland use to heat their homes, in a country where one in eight people live in fuel poverty. It's almost as if this isn't about ordinary people.

Indeed, the strongest indications coming from talks with government is that the likely outcome is a 'rebate scheme' for hauliers and farmers: meaning you and I will pay not a cent less at the pump. In such a scenario, are any of the left commentators who have argued so passionately of 'common cause' with haulage and agri firms naïve enough to believe they will hold out until they reduce the pump price for struggling nurses and tradies too?

The sad truth is that far from representing an opportunity for the left in Ireland, the fuel protests are a sad indictment of how far the left has fallen. Just over a decade ago, in the heady aftermath of the Water Charges protests, the left would have been front and centre in organising these protests.

We could have done so from a grounded, class-centred perspective. A perspective that was unafraid to centre the role of US-Israeli aggression in the current fuel crisis. A perspective that argued for extensive, fully-funded retrofitting and renewable energy options for working-class people that will suffer the most from worsening fuel poverty. Instead, the best we can do is debate whether we should or shouldn't support tax dodgers, cattle killers and rape enthusiasts.

I respect the sincerity of those on the left who wish for a shortcut back to relevance through the fuel protests. I do not, however, agree with their analysis. Bitter as acceptance can be, it is time for the left in Ireland to recognise how far we have slipped since the Water Protests. Now is the time to return to base principles: sustained organising, a turn away from the 'twinks in suits' who infest Leinster House, and a return to building working-class power.