It’s the small differences you notice in Belfast. In the swimming pool changing room a man was talking about his brother’s illness. “He’s in a really bad way. We’ve tried everything. He’s had prayers said for him at Lourdes. We did the Clonard novena and lit candles to the Archangels.” He didn’t mention going to see the doctor.

Strolling along Castle Street, one of this city’s leafy boulevards, the butchers are selling pigs’ feet for 75p and the health conscious street drinkers snack on a large jar of beetroot. The west of the city has been heavily flyposted advertising a meeting organised by People Before Profit on “the corporate takeover of Ireland” at which the Irish SWP’s leader Kieran Allen would be speaking about his new book.

The main force in People Before Profit is the Irish SWP. It had a couple of pretty good election result in west Belfast and Dun Laighoire and I was interested to see what it looked like. It was AWFUL! Here’s why.

Kieran explained that Ireland is run by a tightly organised and ruthless corporate elite which has the politicians in its back pocket. I think this may be what we used to call the ruling class. The Irish government privatised a bit later than did the British government and the reason this neo-liberal ideology is so strong is because there are all these right wing think tanks in the US, Britain and Ireland which are feeding bad ideas to people.

People are angry

Despite the fact that the meeting was held half way up the Falls Road he kept referring to “Northern Ireland”. This is what unionists, imperialists and people who don’t know any better call the place and it’s a bugbear of mine. On the other hand he managed to speak for thirty minutes on how the Irish ruling class wants to make the place a tax haven for multi-national capital without once using the word “imperialism”. Perhaps pressure of time prevented him from touching on imperialism’s recent modest success in getting Sinn Féin to go into government with Ian Paisley and what political conclusions can be drawn from this.

His punch line was that People Before Profit can be the beginning of a new left in Ireland. This will unite anti-war campaigners, community struggles and parts of the existing left in an alliance. They won’t have to agree on everything and already some prominent figures on the southern left are interested in this alliance. It sounded very familiar to me.

Kieran’s contribution was a coherent, left-liberal sketch of a project. The “discussion” that followed was excruciating. People are angry we were told. (Can you guess what organisation that person is in?) Two loyalist women attended a meeting in a Republican area. We all want to live in a better Norn Iron. (It used to be that the starting point of Marxists in this part of the world was “how do we smash this state?) We want to attract unionists and supporters of Sinn Féin. We have to go out knocking on doors. We have a big opportunity. The nadir came as I was leaving. In my contribution I made a couple of points about the level of working class struggle in Ireland, imperialism and my time in Respect. It should have been obvious to anyone who understood English that I was very critical of how it developed. This completely passed by the SWP member who asked me if I would be interested in joining People Before Profit. Though she did concede that “a lot of people were fed up with George Galloway”. I don’t remember the last time I’ve sat in a room with so many live people with so few ideas.

If what I saw last night is typical People Before Profit is not the breeding ground of a new left in Ireland. Whatever Respect’s faults it was at least based on part of a mass movement and quickly attracted a number of leftward moving voters. What I saw last night was a half baked piece of wishful thinking trying to transplant the Respect model to a completely different society. What makes it even worse is the liberalism that runs right through it and its fear of talking about the imperialist domination of the country.