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 his critique being implemented within the Republican Socialist Movement. He was assassinated in January 1987 along with John O'Reilly at the Rosnaree Hotel outside Drogheda by members of a counter-revolutionary cabal bent on the destruction of the INLA and IRSP. Before his tragic assassination at the age of 33, Ta Power spent his lengthy time in prison conducting a root and branch analysis of the revolutionary forces involved in the struggle for National Liberation and Socialism. The finished critique is some 67 pages of in-depth analysis of the history of the Republican Socialist movement from its inception and emergence as the most radical element within Irish Republicanism. Ta Power recognises the leading role of Republican Socialism's most outstanding advocate Seamus Costello and he refers to the near 'incalculable loss' to the movement of his assassination in 1977: "The sheer stature of the revolutionary Seamus Costello is too great for what can be expressed in feeble words, yet words are the only (way) to express and convey this stature albeit in a feeble way."
Ta Power pulls no punches in his critique of the Republican Socialist movement's varied fortunes but his analysis points out that at the heart of any excesses were structural defects which made those mistakes not only possible but inevitable. At the heart of Power's critique of Irish Republican Socialism is the need for politics to have primacy over military activity as opposed to the past practice of political work being ultimately subservient to the gun. Power goes some way to proving that the past excesses of Republican Socialism and the near eclipse of the Irish Republican Socialist Party in the 1980's were a direct result of just those practices. Power is honest in his descriptions of the excesses of the period of what is termed 'military rule' within the Republican Socialist Movement, personified by the already well documented and more often than not tabloid media sensationalised tenure of Domnic McGlinchey as Chief of Staff. The Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) was often relegated in those days to functioning as a mere public relations department for the military actions of the INLA.
Power's key contentions for the re-building of a dynamic revolutionary party could be said to have been ahead of his time and during the period when he was compiling his critique, all forces within the broad Republican project were very much military orientated. Within the IRSM and indeed all Republican groupings there was a strong military culture that was almost Macho in practice that in turn looked unfavourably on overtly political work. It is clearly apparent that elements within the Provisional movement borrowed heavily (though selectively) from Power's critique and this can be seen in the machinations and the eventual subservience of the Provisional movement to Sinn Fein from at the very least the 1990's onwards. Ta Power outlined adroitly in his critique how a movement that did not have politics in primacy would become directionless and subservient to militarism, that in turn would as it happened have a relatively short shelf life.
Ta Power's critique re-defined for the Republican Socialist Movement their raison d'etre and the ideas contained within his critique have become key principles of the IRSM today. Within the general public in Ireland and further afield, there is no longer the misconception that the IRSM is a Cinderella sister of the much larger Provisonal movement nor is there any doubt on the importance of the IRSP as a potentially radical alternative to the reformism of mainstream Republicanism. Power's examination of collective leadership models in Mozambique reinforced his assertion that accountable collective leadership within the IRSM would lead to political stability and the negation of any tendency for factionalism around individual power bases. In short, Power's critique provided a blueprint of sorts for the IRSM to rebuild and consolidate itself as the dynamic revolutionary party that it is becoming today. Power's re-defining of military activity as a tactic and not a Holy Grail has proven equally prophetic in the current political climate. It could be argued that the most significant developments within the IRSM have had a close correlation to the Ta Power Document's proposals which in turn re-inforce the concept of the primacy of politics. Even a casual perusal of Power's critique will dispell any misconceptions that the IRSM has been involved in a 'catch-up' exercise with the Provisonals, in fact the document provides a precedent or historical verifiable marker for the IRSM's current political direction and it's adaption to an age requiring new strategies for survival and political growth.
For those who wish to read the Ta Power Document it can be found in it's entirety here. In conclusion, it is tragic that Ta Power was so cruelly robbed of the chance to see his proposals becoming key policy. His assertion that revolutionaries were merely "dead men on leave" proved tragically prophetic! Ta Power's critique's legacy is very much alive within the contemporary Irish Republican Socialism Movement which has gone through a radical re-appraisal and a consolidation of it's original political dynamic which has the potential to again make Republican Socialism a key player in a radical alternative within the Irish political landscape.