Know Your Enemy: The Westons

In 2021 Dublin Live published an article with the headline: “Meet the Dublin woman worth €11 billion and how she made her enormous fortune”. The article was about billionaire Alannah Weston, a member of the Weston dynasty.

No capitalist has ever “made” a fortune by themselves, they make their fortunes off the backs of workers or they inherit great wealth which they then use to exploit workers. Without the Weston name and connections Alannah would have “made” no fortune whatsoever. She’s a nepo baby!

Alannah is the daughter of Galen and Hilary Weston. Galen Weston was born into a wealthy capitalist Canadian family. Hilary was an Irish fashion model who married Weston. His family owned a number of businesses, predominantly in the baking and food production industries. They now operate under the holding company George Weston Limited.

The list of companies once under the ownership of the Westons include Selfridges (which includes Brown Thomas and Arnotts here in Ireland), Loblaw (a Canadian food retailer), the Choice Properties Real Estate Investment fund, Quinnsworth and of course Penneys (Primark outside Ireland).

They also own a huge amount of food production companies such as Twinings, Ryvita, British Sugar and Kingsmill Bread to name but a few. The supply chains of these companies link into a huge global web of other companies.

One of their holding companies, Associated British Foods, has been accused of tax avoidance through elaborate schemes moving capital between that company and a Luxembourg registered entity called ABF European Holdings & Co SNC. It’s estimated that they avoided about £9.7 million per year in taxes to the British state. Taxes that could pay for vital services like health and education.

In a similar scheme the company was accused of tax evasion in Zambia by moving profits from Zambia Sugar (owned by AB Foods) outside the country. It was estimated that between 2007 and 2013 $123 million were lost to the Zambian state.

Galen Weston moved to Ireland in 1962, and he commented on his reason for coming here in an article in the “Irish Business” magazine in 1981. He said: “Southern Ireland in the early Sixties, in terms of growth, was where the real opportunities existed. The population was coming to Dublin, the European Community was becoming more and more aware of Ireland. Lemass was beginning to take a different perspective upon capital coming into the country and it looked like there was going to be a major opportunity for growth.”

In other words he saw that there was an opportunity to exploit workers in Ireland through government policies that benefitted the capitalist class.

He met Irish fashion model Hilary Frayne here and they got married in 1966. They had two children, the aforementioned Alannah and Galen Jr. The family lived in a number of houses such as in Roundwood Park in Wicklow, they also had a mansion outside London called Fort Belvedere, homes in gated communities in the Bahamas and Florida, and their own private island in Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada.

In 1969 Galen Weston bought the small department store Todd Burns and founded Penneys with Arthur Ryan. The company remains in the ownership of the Weston family and now has 476 shops globally. This company alone has 80,000 workers across 19 countries.

It’s been widely criticised for its fast fashion consumerism and its environmental impact. Of course many of us have to shop at discount stores because we’ve no other choice and we’ve no control over what is produced, when and how it is produced.

The company has been shown to profit from the mistreatment of workers in countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar through their clothing suppliers. In March 2022 workers reported widespread violations of labour rights in Myanmar including unfair dismissals and child labour.

In 2013 over a thousand workers died when a building collapsed in a clothing factory in Dhaka in Bangladesh. The Rana Plaza factory supplied numerous big clothing brands including Primark. Despite pledges to improve conditions and increase inspections in Bangladesh there have been numerous workplace accidents and disasters in the country killing hundreds of workers.

As recently as October 2025 16 people died in a garment factory fire in the same region. Primark continues to source their clothing from Bangladesh precisely because the appalling conditions for workers there means that they’re produced very cheaply. But let’s be clear, Primark is not the only company doing this, but most clothing brands source their products from these places.

The best thing we can do as workers in Ireland to help the workers in Bangladesh is to fight against our own ruling class. And it’s not just workers in Bangladesh or Myanmar that need to fight for their rights.

Here in Ireland in 2019 the trade union Mandate had to take Penneys to the Workplace Relations Commission, and the Labour Court, in order to win a measly 2.25% pay rise for workers. Retail workers in Ireland used to have good terms and conditions with substantial additional pay for unsociable hours, but these conditions have been eroded in recent decades with most retail work paying minimum wage, or just above.

Penneys like to paint themselves as good employers but they have been part of this undermining of retail pay and conditions.

At the same time as workers are struggling to get by, the Weston family featured on the 2025 British Sunday Times rich list at number 6 with £17.7 billion. Alannah Weston is herself estimated to be worth over €11 billion.

It would take a worker in Penneys on €14.15 per hour, working 35 hours per week, more than 400,000 years to make that money. The Weston family fortune has been made through the blood, sweat and tears of workers all over the globe, from Ireland to Bangladesh, from Canada to Zambia.

While none of the Weston family have entered into politics in Ireland, Garfield Weston (the uncle of Galen) was a Conservative MP in Britain in the 1940’s. Hilary Weston was appointed lieutenant-governor of Ontario in 1996, a largely ceremonial role that included some governmental duties.

The Westons have often been celebrated for their charitable foundations, including Hilary who was the chair and patron of a long list of charities. This is typical of the hypocrisy of the capitalist class. They make billions exploiting workers and then give some crumbs to charity to show how virtuous they are.

Hilary died in August 2025 but her children carry on the game of exploitation and accumulation of wealth. Alannah has played a central role in managing the family’s luxury retail assets. Her father purchased the Selfridges Group in 2003 for roughly £598 million. She was appointed CEO.

The family sold off the Selfidges group in 2022 for £4 billion. Alannah remains a director at the family holding company, Wittington Investment and has her own investment fund AWC Projects Ltd which she uses to manage her own wealth. This child of Dublin oversees an international workforce of over 350,000 workers who work for her family’s various companies.

The Weston family became billionaires off the backs of workers here in Ireland and all around the globe. This is the obscene reality of capitalism. The only way to change this is through a workers revolt here in Ireland.

Our contribution to a global movement against the rich is to overthrow them here in Ireland and put workers in the driving seat of a planned economy where all the wealth is democratically controlled and used to benefit all.