More than six years after being publicly defrocked from People Before Profit amid controversy over an alleged violent incident involving his then-girlfriend and subsequent Galway SU President, Joe Loughnane appears to be re-emerging as a prominent figure on the Galweigan left.
Loughnane was a visible presence, if not a principal organiser, at a counter-protest in Fr Burke Park over the weekend, held in response to local opposition to the asylum system’s in the city. His renewed public activity suggests a conscious effort to revive a political career that had largely stalled following his departure from PBP, potentially seeking an independent path to bypass his Trotskyist comrades over in Dublin.
To rejig your memories, the 2020 allegations of smashing his girlfriend’s phone in a fit of rage by Loughnane were soon compounded by a rather bonkers recorded admission of dealing drugs as former PBP comrades began gushing about his tendencies towards misogyny and even anti-traveller prejudice.
Loughnane’s downfall, in tandem with the controversy around SocDem councillor Owen Hanley, did much to blunt the local left scene, which had been worsened by two years of COVID inactivity.
The result was an effective 5-year exile by Loughnane amid family tragedy on his part following PBP removing his candidacy on the day of the 2020 election, a feat never once occurring in Irish political history. Since then, Loughnane, like Trotsky lurking around the Spanish Arch, has bided his time making various call-out videos to rebuild his political clout among the socialist left against the ‘far right ’, most notably against Ryan Casey.
It is also worth noting that, before the allegations received national attention and while left-wing activists were defending him from attacks by the far right, Loughnane frequently and quite cynically foregrounded his mixed ethnic heritage as part of his political identity.
The difficulty for Loughnane and for those apparently content to restore him to the Corribside barricades is that it is no longer 2020. Migration is now firmly within the bounds of legitimate Irish political debate, and shouting “far right” at every Salthill resident who raises a question about housing and migration has rather lost its former magic.
By not introducing their own cordon sanitaire against such a transparent live liability as Loughnane, the left in Galway only has itself to blame when locals fail to take them seriously, and the inevitable happens.
My brother is Far Left and the biggest bully of a big brother anyone wouldn’t wish for. No contact for 20 years. I read a good article about the Far Left viewing themselves as the defenders of ‘victims’ and how they felt this anger was justified because they saw themselves as morally superior. Seems to make sense to me…we used to call my brother ‘St Peter’ yet he loved to strangle and smother us. I have a very deep personal reason for loathing the more venomous of the Far Left. The clever ones are the most dangerous.