by Iskra

Created on: September 03, 2010   Last Updated: September 04, 2010

Within the Irish Republican Socialist Movement (IRSM) in Ireland, there are multiple references to the Ta Power Document as a central theoretical tenet.  The  Irish Republican Socialist Movement was made up of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the National Liberation Army (INLA.) Invariably the INLA, a guerilla army became internationally the best known component of the IRSM in the years popularly known as the 'Troubles', due to it's armed campaign against the British military presence in Ireland.  Many international observers mistakenly saw the INLA as a smaller and perhaps more ruthless version of the Provisional IRA.  Bestsellers such as Deadly Divisions created many mistaken perceptions of the IRSM and the movement Ta Power viewed as a credible revolutionary force.  Hopefully this short article will shed a little light on the importance of Ta Power and his critique providing a better understanding of the author and his ideas. 

Thomas "Ta" Power was a guerrilla fighter, a volunteer in the INLA  which was an integral part of what is known as the IRSM.  Power's revolutionary actions were reinforced by a clear ability to provide an insight and analysis of the nature of the age old struggle for Irish independence and the nature of the political vehicle to achieve that.  Many of his ideas are contained in a dissertation popularly known as the Ta Power Document.  The Republic that Ta Power believed was worth fighting for was one that guaranteed economic liberty for the Irish working class, not just an exchange of one ruling class for the homegrown Gombeen variety in a unitary state.  Ta Power believed in the concept of a Workers Republic as envisaged by Ireland's first Marxist philosopher and commander of the Easter Rising James Connolly.  Connolly's Republican Socialism rejected the native Capitalism of traditional Irish Nationalism just as much as British Imperialism.  Ta Power's legacy to the Republican Socialist Movement was considerable but his critique of the past excesses within the liberation struggle and the need for a cadre that would make 'every soldier a politician and every politician a soldier', has frequently been described as an Irish "What is to be Done!"

Thomas 'Ta' Power did not live to see the key points of

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