Peter Hadden

Peter Hadden (19 February 1950 – 5 May 2010) was a leading member of the Socialist Party in Northern Ireland.

Born in Strabane, Hadden studied at the University of Sussex, where he joined the Trotskyist Militant tendency. He moved back to Belfast in 1971, where he became a full-time official for NIPSA, and they instead founded the Labour and Trade Union Group to contest elections as an independent organisation.

From 1980, Hadden wrote extensively on socialism and The Troubles, with titles including Divide and Rule, Common History Common Struggle, Beyond the Troubles, Towards Division Not Peace and Troubled Times. During the campaign, he only narrowly escaped a bombing. In 1996 his group was part of the Labour coalition. The list garnered 333 votes in Belfast South at the Northern Ireland Forum election 1996. He was placed sixth on the party's top-up list, but was not elected.

Militant Labour became the Socialist Party, and Hadden remained its leading figure in Northern Ireland until his death in 2010.