Socialist Party (Ireland)

Foundation and Split from the Labour Party

While at university, Joe Higgins joined the Labour Party and became active in Militant, a Trotskyist group that operated in the Labour Party. Militant was a strong opponent of coalition politics which included TDs Emmet Stagg and Michael D. Higgins. Joe Higgins was elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party by the membership in the 1980s. In 1989, Higgins was expelled along with thirteen other members of Militant. The group left the party and formed Militant Labour.

1996–2002 (27th and 28th Dáil)

Militant Labour was renamed the Socialist Party in 1996, and came to wider attention among the general public when Joe Higgins polled just 252 votes behind victor Brian Lenihan, Jnr in the Dublin-West by-election. In the general election of the following year, Higgins was elected to Dáil Éireann for the first time.

2002–2007 (29th Dáil)

At the 2002 general election, Joe Higgins retained his Dublin West seat in Dáil Éireann. Clare Daly narrowly missed out on gaining a second seat for the party in the Dublin North constituency.

The Anti-Bin Tax Campaign came about at this time. On 19 September 2003, Higgins and Daly were sent to Mountjoy Prison for a month after refusing to abide by a High Court injunction relating to the blockading of bin lorries.

At the 2004 local elections, the Socialist Party gained two council seats, with Mick Murphy being elected to South Dublin County Council and Mick Barry being elected to Cork City Council. The party also retained their two previous seats (held by Daly and Ruth Coppinger) on Fingal County Council. At the European election held on the same day, Joe Higgins received 23,218 (5.5%) votes in the Dublin constituency, but did not win a seat.

Councillor Mick Murphy was responsible for bringing the GAMA construction scandal to light in October 2004. This involved a group of Turkish workers being brought to Ireland by GAMA, a Turkish construction company. They were illegally underpaid and forced to work hours in breach of the EU Working Time Directive. Murphy discovered the workers living on the building site where they were employed. After contacting the local council, GAMA and trade union officials and remaining unenlightened, Murphy wrote a leaflet in English, had it translated into Turkish "mainly to say that we had no problem with them being here, and saying what GAMA had said", then threw it over the hoarding surrounding the site. Murphy brought it to the attention of his party colleague Joe Higgins, who was then a TD for Dublin West, and Higgins raised the matter in Dáil Éireann on 8 February 2005, bringing public awareness to the workers' plight. The exploitation included migrant Turkish construction workers bring employed on state projects, being paid as little as €2.20 an hour (the minimum wage in Ireland was €7.00) while being forced to work up to 80 hours per week. This led to a strike by immigrant workers in Ireland. The exploited workers each won tens of thousand of euro worth of unpaid wages and overtime.

2007–2011 (30th Dáil)

At the 2007 general election, Joe Higgins lost his Dublin West seat and the Socialist Party was left without a TD for the first time since 1997. The Party campaigned for a "no" vote the 2008 and 2009 referenda on the Treaty of Lisbon.

At the 2009 European and local elections, Joe Higgins won a seat in the Dublin constituency with 50,510 (12.4%) first preference votes, as well as gaining a seat in the Castleknock local electoral area of Fingal County Council. The party held its seats on Fingal County and Cork City Council (Ruth Coppinger and Mick Barry respectively), while gaining one seat each on Balbriggan Town Council and Drogheda Borough Council. However, the party lost Mick Murphy, its only councillor on South Dublin County Council.

2011–2016 (31st Dáil)

At the 2011 general election the Socialist Party returned two TDs to Dáil Éireann: Clare Daly was elected for the Dublin North constituency, while Joe Higgins regained his seat in Dublin West. The Socialist Party contested this election as part of the United Left Alliance (ULA), a political alliance which included both People Before Profit Alliance (PBPA) and Workers and Unemployed Action Group (WUAG), as well as independent activists. The Alliance won five seats in the national parliament. Higgins resigned his European Parliament seat, and Paul Murphy was selected by the party to replace him. Following the death of Brian Lenihan, Jnr, the Socialist Party contested the 2011 Dublin West by-election, with its candidate Ruth Coppinger coming in third. The Socialist Party also called for a referendum on the December 2011 EU deal, which it opposed.

In 2012, legal advice was sought when it emerged that the expenses given to Higgins and Daly as TDs may have been used for travel outside their constituencies and journeys to the Dáil. Public expenditure minister Brendan Howlin subsequently confirmed that TDs were, in fact, entitled to claim expenses for travel outside their constituencies and that Daly and Higgins were guilty of no wrongdoing. The Socialist Party and ULA said the story was a "manufactured controversy", part of a "vindictive smear campaign by Independent Newspapers", which were owned by billionaire Denis O'Brien.

Clare Daly resigned from the Socialist Party in August 2012, following a dispute over her support of Independent TD Mick Wallace, whom the party had called on to resign after the revelation of tax irregularities. The Socialist Party left the ULA in January 2013.

Socialist Party members contested the 2014 local elections as part of the Anti-Austerity Alliance. The party gained seats on Limerick and Cork City Councils, making it "a national rather than Dublin-centric alliance". The Dublin West by-election of the same day returned Ruth Coppinger to Dáil Éireann, giving Dublin West two Socialist Party TDs. Paul Murphy was unsuccessful in retaining the Socialist Party's European seat at this time but was elected to Dáil Éireann that October after a surprise victory in the Dublin South-West by-election, which the Sinn Féin candidate had been favourite to win.

The party altered its registered name in 2014 to Stop the Water Tax – Socialist Party. In 2015, water charge protestors, including party elected representatives Paul Murphy, Kieran Mahon and Mick Murphy, were arrested. The arrests led to accusations of "political policing" and sparked minor solidarity protests across Europe, including in London, Berlin, Vienna and Stockholm.

2016–present (32nd Dail)

In the 2016 general election Murphy and Coppinger were re-elected in Dublin South-West and Dublin West, respectively, and Barry was elected in Cork North-Central, all of them running as Anti-Austerity Alliance–People Before Profit members.
For the 2016 Assembly Election, the Socialist Party in Northern Ireland supported Cross-Community Labour Alternative and critically called for a vote for the People Before Profit Alliance as the two parties did not stand candidates in the same constituencies.

Policies

According to its website, the Socialist Party "stands for the socialist alternative to the dictatorship of the markets – namely real democracy whereby ordinary people take centre stage in running society, with democratic public ownership of banks, of key sectors of the economy and industry, and a democratic plan of the economy to provide for the needs of people". It opposes the so-called "Social Partnership" deals and those in the trade union movement who advocate them, considering the agreements detrimental to the well-being of workers. It also holds influence in the Northern Irish branch of the FBU, where its members played a key role in encouraging the FBU's split from the British Labour Party in 2004, as well as influence in NIPSA with members in the NIPSA Broad Left faction.

The Socialist Party is involved in many community campaigns, including the 1996 Anti Water Tax Campaign, the 2003–2004 Anti-Bin Tax Campaign and the current Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes. It opposes the U.S-led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation of Palestine, targeted killings and drone warfare in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere and continues to be active in campaigns against fascism, racism, low pay exploitation and religious sectarianism. They claim to advocate on behalf of, and support, workers, women in the home, LGBT people and ethnic minorities.

Regarding the divided north, the Socialist Party opposes sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics and seeks to bring working class unity to both sides of the border. They argue that capitalism is incapable of overcoming sectarianism. They have opposed paramilitary threats with peaceful protest in a movement that set in motion the "peace process", a turn of events they resolutely support. However the Socialist Party take a critical view of the Good Friday Agreement and other subsequent initiatives, claiming it further entrenches and institutionalises sectarianism and doesn't work towards solving the fundamental causes of the conflict.

Youth wing

Socialist Youth is the youth wing of the Socialist Party.

List of newspapers and publications

European

The Socialist Party has contested European elections in the Republic of Ireland but not in Northern Ireland..

Oireachtas members

All elected as TDs for the Anti-Austerity Alliance–People Before Profit