Vox Populi
11-06-2007, 11:05 PM
Gerry Ruddy on the ideas of Ta Power
Ta Power was aged 33 when he was assassinated on the 20 th January 1987 by the IPLO [1] with John O'Reilly at the Rossnaree Hotel outside Drogheda. He and O'Reilly had gone to the hotel to reach an agreement with the IPLO. From Friendly Street in the Markets area of south Belfast, Ta had been in the OIRA [2] but joined the newly formed Irish National Liberation Army in 1975 while a prisoner in Long Kesh. Noted for having spent the longest time on remand (4 years and 4 months) on the word of super- grass [3] Harry Kirkpatrick, he was also held on the evidence of five different super-grasses, and had just been released from Crumlin Road gaol a short time before he was killed. Respected in republican circles, he was widely regarded as a soldier, a thinker and a theorist.
The ideas contained in the Ta Power Document have had an enormous influence on the Republican Left and was drawn up during his time in gaol. Ta was a self-educated republican socialist. During his time incarcerated he read the Marxist classics. He read avidly anything about Socialist Cuba and one of his dreams in gaol was to visit Cuba with his brother Jim. Neither made it. He was a true internationalist with a particular interest in the struggle of the Palestinian people.
I had the honour and privilege of speaking both at the graveside when Ta was being buried and also 16 years later at the unveiling of a monument to four dead INLA volunteers in the Markets area of Belfast in 2003. Two of those honoured were the brothers Power, Jim killed in action, 7 th May 1981, and Ta.
I began by quoting the words of Ta Power
“Revolutionaries are dead men on leave -- this saying sums up the type of life ahead for all who dare to oppose British rule in Ireland and indeed oppression and imperialism anywhere in the world. Life as a revolutionary offers no material rewards, no medals, only the joy of participating in the struggle for freedom. As individuals we only have a limited time to achieve this task”.
(Ta Power)
Those words, written by one of those volunteers, epitomises best the spirit of republicanism. It is a revolutionary doctrine, it is a radical doctrine, and it is a progressive doctrine. Those of us here today who call ourselves republicans should wear the mantle of republicanism with pride.
For there is pride in participating in the struggle for freedom. Those who we honour today knew some of that for they played their very active part in the struggle against Imperialism. Dedicated soldiers of the Republican tradition they grew up amidst repression, violence, discrimination and injustice. These things they observed but they did not ignore. They, like thousands of others, had enough of the daily humiliations from the Unionist state, enough of the casual brutality of the RUC, enough of the Imperialist swagger of the racists in the British army, enough of the “croppy lie down” mentality.
They had had enough of the cant and hypocrisy of the ruling elites who preached passivity in the face of violence, preached acceptance in the face of injustice, preached resignation in the face of inequality. Like thousands others, Jim, Ta, John and Emanuel had had enough. They did what any right thinking individual would do in the face of British and Unionist tyranny. They took up arms and fought in the streets of Belfast and elsewhere for the liberation of their people. In so doing they were following in a proud tradition stretching back to the United Irishmen, and including the Fenian Brotherhood, and the volunteers of the 1916-22 period.
Tomorrow, May 12 th marks the 87 th anniversary of the execution of James Connolly, socialist republican, founder of the Irish Citizen Army, murdered by the British establishment who tied a badly wounded man to a chair and shot him. Like our comrades we honour today, James Connolly walked the streets of Belfast organising the Mill Workers, the Dockers, the low paid. He organised the Irish working class in both political and military resistance. Connolly recognised that different situations require different responses. During the First World War he recognised that the time was ripe to take up arms against Imperialism. He saw that the struggle for the dignity and rights of the working class was part of the same struggle for national independence and that the social and economic parts of struggle could not be separated from the national struggle.
James Connolly was an inspiration, a guide, for all radicals and republicans. He inspired the volunteers we honour today. He was an example that each of those volunteers would have followed in their own ways if death had not intervened. They each had but a limited time to contribute to the struggle before death stole them away from us.
Jim Power was one of only two Republicans to die in action during the 1981 Hunger strike. He was killed defusing a bomb. Ta and John O’ Reilly died together when they were gunned down outside Drogheda where they had gone to peacefully resolve differences with others. Others killed Emanuel Gargan two months later in a pub on the Ormeau Road.
The latter three deaths at the hands of former comrades was a disgrace. Never again should any of us allow ourselves to view other Republicans either with hatred or as the enemy. A few weeks before his death I spoke with Ta in his home in the Markets here and he handed me a document, which included the following phrase,
“We must be vigilant that we don't sink into the morass of sectarianism, mixing, pettiness etc. We must not get involved in unprincipled slanging matches etc, into positions that are sectarian, anti-revolutionary, morally damaging, that give succour to the enemy and that confuse and divide the working class.”
Those wise words should be engraved in the minds of anyone who calls themselves a Republican. Friends and comrades the main enemy we all have is British Imperialism. Never, ever forget that.
It has been clear for some time that the vast majority of the Irish people favour Republicans using peaceful methods of struggle. That has to be respected for we all realise that different situations require different methods of struggle. There are huge social economic and political problems facing us all. If these are to be tackled then we need Republicans and Republican Socialists to throw their full wait into the political struggle for our full emancipation.
The unveiling of this plaque has been part of a process by which the Republican Socialist Movement pays homage to our dead volunteers and comrades. But friends and comrades they died trying to change this society. As indeed did many other republicans in other organisations who were good decent honest men and women who lost their lives fighting against injustices. Like so many others they never knew any life other than that of violent state repression firstly under the Stormont regime and then under the direct rule of the British government.
Life here should never have been such that young volunteers gave their lives to battle injustice. From whatever organisations volunteers came their sacrifices should be honoured by us all. To conclude, of each of them it may be said, to paraphrase the words of Ta, writing about his own brother Jim,
“He was born under a regime of repression and died fighting for liberty. In the words of George Jackson, on the death of his own brother: “I want people to wonder at the forces which created him, terrible, calm man-child, courage in one hand, the machine gun in the other, scourge of the unrighteous, an ox for the people to ride !"
Martyred Volunteers of the Irish National Liberation Army we salute you. (END SPEECH)
Ta’s death occurred as a consequence of the very things he had been warning the movement about in his writings, contempt for revolutionary politics. The IPLO contained most of the negative elements Ta criticised in his document. They, and who ever was manipulating them, could not abide the existence of the only revolutionary socialist tendency to emerge within the broad republican tradition. The attacks on the republican socialist movement were designed to wipe out any potential opposition to republicans doing a deal with the British.
The Irish Peoples Liberation Organisation’s spokesman said at the time,
"Republicanism in Ireland is adequately served by Sinn Fein and the IRA. If your talking about revolutionary socialism or communism, you`re talking about a further development. A new organisation at this point is premature."
In the same interview the spokesperson sneered at the decision taken relating to Marxism by the 1983 Ard Feis. Despite this decision taken at a democratically convened ArdFeis, followers of those who tried to liquidate the IRSP/INLA claimed that the INLA,
"was forcing an obscure and dogmatic form of Marxism-Leninism philosophy on the elected political leadership".
Such a claim was of course nonsense. In essence the liquidators hated the possibility of the primacy of politics emerging within the republican socialist movement [4]. To forestall that they were prepared to make unprincipled alliances and butcher revolutionaries. Their ideological confusion came from their mish-mash of half baked and badly digested socialist and republican ideas peppered with militarism and clique politics.
What lessons do we learn from the events that lead to the death of Ta? It is important to stress that the lessons we have learned in Ireland are, we believe, relevant to other struggles and other armed revolutionary organisations.
Involvement in a secret army can lead to an attitude of mind that sees conspiracies everywhere. Small differences can become magnified out of all proportion. Ta Power was well aware of this in gaol where the enclosed environment had led to a rapid deterioration in the relationships between former comrades. But Ta did not put this down to bad faith nor warped personalities. He analysed it in Marxist terms and saw clearly how the contradictions between Party and Army develop. When he was released from gaol he arranged to see me. I had been attempting over at least the previous two years - with little success - to stabilise the Party and forge a relationship with the INLA that was not the traditional republican model.
At that meeting in the Markets home of Ta Power a long conversation took place between us. I gave my interpretation of the then current political situation of the Party and what was possible and what was not.
The trouble from my point of view, and for any socialist who tries to win armed movements towards revolutionary political action, was that I did not have the mystique that goes with membership of the army.
Being an “operator” [5] always gives one more credibility than being a 'politico'. [6] However when Ta Power handed over his handwritten copy of his history of the party to me and I later read it, I was immediately aware that here was someone qualitatively different, not only from the militarists, but also most of the politicised soldiers inside armed organisations.
For a start it was clear he was a communist.
“The ideal which the working class alone possesses being the ideal of a communist way of life." and he called for the building of a revolutionary party. He had no contempt for the “politicos” On the contrary he argued every soldier should be a” politico” as well. Ta Power was a communist, an active member of the INLA and a member of the I.R.S.P. For Ta there was no contradiction at that time in having these positions. Like many a prisoner before him he had analysed, criticised and was now determined to implement a revolutionary path for the movement.
The death of Power robbed us of a powerful political figure but it gave us a tremendous role model. He was determined to ensure above all the primacy of politics and to unlock the power of the masses.
"We must be able to inject into the struggle or rather to call forth from the people the values and ideals of solidarity, self sacrifice, non sectarianism, unity, internationalism. Values that transcend our own individual existence, that lead to greater awareness, greater participation and greater aliveness in Oneself. We must somehow be able to grip the mass of the people if we are to change the world." (Power)
But in the situation that the Republican Socialist Movement was in when he came out of gaol the priority was internal. As Ta himself wrote, the leadership of the I.N.L.A. had no analysis nor strategy outside armed struggle itself. Armed struggle had become an end in itself. This had led to attitudes of elitism and superiority and to regarding the Party and its members with contempt. There was a lowering of standards where criminal elements and unsavoury characters are allowed entrance and rise to prominence in the army. Intelligent, sincere individuals had attempted to rectify the situation. They had failed. Why? Ta asserted they failed because of the basic contradiction between the Army and the Party. Both the INLA and the IPLO had members who claimed to be socialists and Marxists. But the bloodletting between them was the antithesis of what they claimed to stand for. It demoralised the catholic ghettoes, almost destroyed the fragile hold that Marxists had in a republican organisation and left the Provos [7] unchallenged leaders of the armed struggle.
Many individually committed Marxists had joined and participated in the activities of the various republican armies over the last thirty years. They learned that if one’s primary activity is military then one enters a world where there is little contact with different opinions. Those who supply safe houses are unlikely to be too critical. As a member of a close knit group in a close community where being in the 'Ra' [8] or in “B” [9] confers an almost mystical status, it is hard to be objective about the direction in which one’s movement is going. If one begins to harbour serious differences then military discipline can be used to sideline dissidents.
If there is dual membership then the Army will always pull rank, if it has to, and win if conflict arises. Ta Power, gave a very accurate picture of the pressures even committed socialists faced because,
"the struggle goes on; we get no analysis, we get no strategy outside the basic confrontation - it eventually becomes an end in itself due simply to the fact that they don’t know of any other strategy; other trends manifest themselves due to this for eg. psychological traits: there arises the condition of elitism, superiority etc. that 'we’re the lads, that this is the real macho way to do things, that those in A (the Party) are ******s, bluffers etc who always harp on about meaningless things'."
Party work is "beneath their style" and there is a contempt for politics. Then power building starts and there is "-a lowering of standards" which attracts criminal type elements, unsavoury characters and inept individuals. Marxists/Socialists in armed groups in Ireland became declassed, cut off from the mass of the class and forced to rely on one tiny section of one community. Her/his ideas could never gain hegemony within the movement.
Power quoted Lenin to point out that, "Their terrorism is not connected in any way with work among the masses, for the Masses, or together with the masses. It distracts our very scanty organisational forces from their difficult and by no means completed task of organising a Revolutionary Party,"and that the absolute complete subordination of the army to the party was essential.
His was then a lone voice. It is not anymore. More and more political activists not only in Ireland but around the world are coming to the same conclusions that Ta Power came to in the 1980’s. While it is not comfortable reading for the Republican Socialist Movement the Ta Power Document is essential reading for those serious about building a revolutionary Party to transform society. Ta dissects our past mistakes, points out the negative consequences of militarism and articulates the values that the collective leadership of the Party should espouse.
It was not until eight years after his death that the Republican Socialist Movement began to implement the ideas of Ta Power. As a result we now have had the longest sustained period of stable collective leadership the movement ever has had. But more important than that Irish revolutionaries recognise that armed struggle is simply a means of struggle to achieve revolutionary aims. It is a tactical decision whether or not to engage in armed struggle. Likewise it is a tactical decision to engage in peaceful methods of struggle. No genuine revolutionary movement can hope to survive by divorcing itself from the working class. Individual terroristic actions do exactly that. Our perspective is that armed action by any revolutionary movement should be in support of the working class, not in spite of it or in substitution for it. In the context of today’s Ireland and the enormous changes taking place in the composition of the working class revolutionaries need to be in support of, and responding to, the needs of the working class. We must not be a substitution for the class for once Revolutionaries go down the road of thinking that they know better than the class then elitism, terrorism and arrogance grow.
The Ta Power Document spells out clearly the road we must travel if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past. And therein lies lessons for militants of the national liberation and socialist struggles worldwide.
Gerry Ruddy,
Ard-Comhairle Member the Irish Republican Socialist Party,
December 2004
Ta Power was aged 33 when he was assassinated on the 20 th January 1987 by the IPLO [1] with John O'Reilly at the Rossnaree Hotel outside Drogheda. He and O'Reilly had gone to the hotel to reach an agreement with the IPLO. From Friendly Street in the Markets area of south Belfast, Ta had been in the OIRA [2] but joined the newly formed Irish National Liberation Army in 1975 while a prisoner in Long Kesh. Noted for having spent the longest time on remand (4 years and 4 months) on the word of super- grass [3] Harry Kirkpatrick, he was also held on the evidence of five different super-grasses, and had just been released from Crumlin Road gaol a short time before he was killed. Respected in republican circles, he was widely regarded as a soldier, a thinker and a theorist.
The ideas contained in the Ta Power Document have had an enormous influence on the Republican Left and was drawn up during his time in gaol. Ta was a self-educated republican socialist. During his time incarcerated he read the Marxist classics. He read avidly anything about Socialist Cuba and one of his dreams in gaol was to visit Cuba with his brother Jim. Neither made it. He was a true internationalist with a particular interest in the struggle of the Palestinian people.
I had the honour and privilege of speaking both at the graveside when Ta was being buried and also 16 years later at the unveiling of a monument to four dead INLA volunteers in the Markets area of Belfast in 2003. Two of those honoured were the brothers Power, Jim killed in action, 7 th May 1981, and Ta.
I began by quoting the words of Ta Power
“Revolutionaries are dead men on leave -- this saying sums up the type of life ahead for all who dare to oppose British rule in Ireland and indeed oppression and imperialism anywhere in the world. Life as a revolutionary offers no material rewards, no medals, only the joy of participating in the struggle for freedom. As individuals we only have a limited time to achieve this task”.
(Ta Power)
Those words, written by one of those volunteers, epitomises best the spirit of republicanism. It is a revolutionary doctrine, it is a radical doctrine, and it is a progressive doctrine. Those of us here today who call ourselves republicans should wear the mantle of republicanism with pride.
For there is pride in participating in the struggle for freedom. Those who we honour today knew some of that for they played their very active part in the struggle against Imperialism. Dedicated soldiers of the Republican tradition they grew up amidst repression, violence, discrimination and injustice. These things they observed but they did not ignore. They, like thousands of others, had enough of the daily humiliations from the Unionist state, enough of the casual brutality of the RUC, enough of the Imperialist swagger of the racists in the British army, enough of the “croppy lie down” mentality.
They had had enough of the cant and hypocrisy of the ruling elites who preached passivity in the face of violence, preached acceptance in the face of injustice, preached resignation in the face of inequality. Like thousands others, Jim, Ta, John and Emanuel had had enough. They did what any right thinking individual would do in the face of British and Unionist tyranny. They took up arms and fought in the streets of Belfast and elsewhere for the liberation of their people. In so doing they were following in a proud tradition stretching back to the United Irishmen, and including the Fenian Brotherhood, and the volunteers of the 1916-22 period.
Tomorrow, May 12 th marks the 87 th anniversary of the execution of James Connolly, socialist republican, founder of the Irish Citizen Army, murdered by the British establishment who tied a badly wounded man to a chair and shot him. Like our comrades we honour today, James Connolly walked the streets of Belfast organising the Mill Workers, the Dockers, the low paid. He organised the Irish working class in both political and military resistance. Connolly recognised that different situations require different responses. During the First World War he recognised that the time was ripe to take up arms against Imperialism. He saw that the struggle for the dignity and rights of the working class was part of the same struggle for national independence and that the social and economic parts of struggle could not be separated from the national struggle.
James Connolly was an inspiration, a guide, for all radicals and republicans. He inspired the volunteers we honour today. He was an example that each of those volunteers would have followed in their own ways if death had not intervened. They each had but a limited time to contribute to the struggle before death stole them away from us.
Jim Power was one of only two Republicans to die in action during the 1981 Hunger strike. He was killed defusing a bomb. Ta and John O’ Reilly died together when they were gunned down outside Drogheda where they had gone to peacefully resolve differences with others. Others killed Emanuel Gargan two months later in a pub on the Ormeau Road.
The latter three deaths at the hands of former comrades was a disgrace. Never again should any of us allow ourselves to view other Republicans either with hatred or as the enemy. A few weeks before his death I spoke with Ta in his home in the Markets here and he handed me a document, which included the following phrase,
“We must be vigilant that we don't sink into the morass of sectarianism, mixing, pettiness etc. We must not get involved in unprincipled slanging matches etc, into positions that are sectarian, anti-revolutionary, morally damaging, that give succour to the enemy and that confuse and divide the working class.”
Those wise words should be engraved in the minds of anyone who calls themselves a Republican. Friends and comrades the main enemy we all have is British Imperialism. Never, ever forget that.
It has been clear for some time that the vast majority of the Irish people favour Republicans using peaceful methods of struggle. That has to be respected for we all realise that different situations require different methods of struggle. There are huge social economic and political problems facing us all. If these are to be tackled then we need Republicans and Republican Socialists to throw their full wait into the political struggle for our full emancipation.
The unveiling of this plaque has been part of a process by which the Republican Socialist Movement pays homage to our dead volunteers and comrades. But friends and comrades they died trying to change this society. As indeed did many other republicans in other organisations who were good decent honest men and women who lost their lives fighting against injustices. Like so many others they never knew any life other than that of violent state repression firstly under the Stormont regime and then under the direct rule of the British government.
Life here should never have been such that young volunteers gave their lives to battle injustice. From whatever organisations volunteers came their sacrifices should be honoured by us all. To conclude, of each of them it may be said, to paraphrase the words of Ta, writing about his own brother Jim,
“He was born under a regime of repression and died fighting for liberty. In the words of George Jackson, on the death of his own brother: “I want people to wonder at the forces which created him, terrible, calm man-child, courage in one hand, the machine gun in the other, scourge of the unrighteous, an ox for the people to ride !"
Martyred Volunteers of the Irish National Liberation Army we salute you. (END SPEECH)
Ta’s death occurred as a consequence of the very things he had been warning the movement about in his writings, contempt for revolutionary politics. The IPLO contained most of the negative elements Ta criticised in his document. They, and who ever was manipulating them, could not abide the existence of the only revolutionary socialist tendency to emerge within the broad republican tradition. The attacks on the republican socialist movement were designed to wipe out any potential opposition to republicans doing a deal with the British.
The Irish Peoples Liberation Organisation’s spokesman said at the time,
"Republicanism in Ireland is adequately served by Sinn Fein and the IRA. If your talking about revolutionary socialism or communism, you`re talking about a further development. A new organisation at this point is premature."
In the same interview the spokesperson sneered at the decision taken relating to Marxism by the 1983 Ard Feis. Despite this decision taken at a democratically convened ArdFeis, followers of those who tried to liquidate the IRSP/INLA claimed that the INLA,
"was forcing an obscure and dogmatic form of Marxism-Leninism philosophy on the elected political leadership".
Such a claim was of course nonsense. In essence the liquidators hated the possibility of the primacy of politics emerging within the republican socialist movement [4]. To forestall that they were prepared to make unprincipled alliances and butcher revolutionaries. Their ideological confusion came from their mish-mash of half baked and badly digested socialist and republican ideas peppered with militarism and clique politics.
What lessons do we learn from the events that lead to the death of Ta? It is important to stress that the lessons we have learned in Ireland are, we believe, relevant to other struggles and other armed revolutionary organisations.
Involvement in a secret army can lead to an attitude of mind that sees conspiracies everywhere. Small differences can become magnified out of all proportion. Ta Power was well aware of this in gaol where the enclosed environment had led to a rapid deterioration in the relationships between former comrades. But Ta did not put this down to bad faith nor warped personalities. He analysed it in Marxist terms and saw clearly how the contradictions between Party and Army develop. When he was released from gaol he arranged to see me. I had been attempting over at least the previous two years - with little success - to stabilise the Party and forge a relationship with the INLA that was not the traditional republican model.
At that meeting in the Markets home of Ta Power a long conversation took place between us. I gave my interpretation of the then current political situation of the Party and what was possible and what was not.
The trouble from my point of view, and for any socialist who tries to win armed movements towards revolutionary political action, was that I did not have the mystique that goes with membership of the army.
Being an “operator” [5] always gives one more credibility than being a 'politico'. [6] However when Ta Power handed over his handwritten copy of his history of the party to me and I later read it, I was immediately aware that here was someone qualitatively different, not only from the militarists, but also most of the politicised soldiers inside armed organisations.
For a start it was clear he was a communist.
“The ideal which the working class alone possesses being the ideal of a communist way of life." and he called for the building of a revolutionary party. He had no contempt for the “politicos” On the contrary he argued every soldier should be a” politico” as well. Ta Power was a communist, an active member of the INLA and a member of the I.R.S.P. For Ta there was no contradiction at that time in having these positions. Like many a prisoner before him he had analysed, criticised and was now determined to implement a revolutionary path for the movement.
The death of Power robbed us of a powerful political figure but it gave us a tremendous role model. He was determined to ensure above all the primacy of politics and to unlock the power of the masses.
"We must be able to inject into the struggle or rather to call forth from the people the values and ideals of solidarity, self sacrifice, non sectarianism, unity, internationalism. Values that transcend our own individual existence, that lead to greater awareness, greater participation and greater aliveness in Oneself. We must somehow be able to grip the mass of the people if we are to change the world." (Power)
But in the situation that the Republican Socialist Movement was in when he came out of gaol the priority was internal. As Ta himself wrote, the leadership of the I.N.L.A. had no analysis nor strategy outside armed struggle itself. Armed struggle had become an end in itself. This had led to attitudes of elitism and superiority and to regarding the Party and its members with contempt. There was a lowering of standards where criminal elements and unsavoury characters are allowed entrance and rise to prominence in the army. Intelligent, sincere individuals had attempted to rectify the situation. They had failed. Why? Ta asserted they failed because of the basic contradiction between the Army and the Party. Both the INLA and the IPLO had members who claimed to be socialists and Marxists. But the bloodletting between them was the antithesis of what they claimed to stand for. It demoralised the catholic ghettoes, almost destroyed the fragile hold that Marxists had in a republican organisation and left the Provos [7] unchallenged leaders of the armed struggle.
Many individually committed Marxists had joined and participated in the activities of the various republican armies over the last thirty years. They learned that if one’s primary activity is military then one enters a world where there is little contact with different opinions. Those who supply safe houses are unlikely to be too critical. As a member of a close knit group in a close community where being in the 'Ra' [8] or in “B” [9] confers an almost mystical status, it is hard to be objective about the direction in which one’s movement is going. If one begins to harbour serious differences then military discipline can be used to sideline dissidents.
If there is dual membership then the Army will always pull rank, if it has to, and win if conflict arises. Ta Power, gave a very accurate picture of the pressures even committed socialists faced because,
"the struggle goes on; we get no analysis, we get no strategy outside the basic confrontation - it eventually becomes an end in itself due simply to the fact that they don’t know of any other strategy; other trends manifest themselves due to this for eg. psychological traits: there arises the condition of elitism, superiority etc. that 'we’re the lads, that this is the real macho way to do things, that those in A (the Party) are ******s, bluffers etc who always harp on about meaningless things'."
Party work is "beneath their style" and there is a contempt for politics. Then power building starts and there is "-a lowering of standards" which attracts criminal type elements, unsavoury characters and inept individuals. Marxists/Socialists in armed groups in Ireland became declassed, cut off from the mass of the class and forced to rely on one tiny section of one community. Her/his ideas could never gain hegemony within the movement.
Power quoted Lenin to point out that, "Their terrorism is not connected in any way with work among the masses, for the Masses, or together with the masses. It distracts our very scanty organisational forces from their difficult and by no means completed task of organising a Revolutionary Party,"and that the absolute complete subordination of the army to the party was essential.
His was then a lone voice. It is not anymore. More and more political activists not only in Ireland but around the world are coming to the same conclusions that Ta Power came to in the 1980’s. While it is not comfortable reading for the Republican Socialist Movement the Ta Power Document is essential reading for those serious about building a revolutionary Party to transform society. Ta dissects our past mistakes, points out the negative consequences of militarism and articulates the values that the collective leadership of the Party should espouse.
It was not until eight years after his death that the Republican Socialist Movement began to implement the ideas of Ta Power. As a result we now have had the longest sustained period of stable collective leadership the movement ever has had. But more important than that Irish revolutionaries recognise that armed struggle is simply a means of struggle to achieve revolutionary aims. It is a tactical decision whether or not to engage in armed struggle. Likewise it is a tactical decision to engage in peaceful methods of struggle. No genuine revolutionary movement can hope to survive by divorcing itself from the working class. Individual terroristic actions do exactly that. Our perspective is that armed action by any revolutionary movement should be in support of the working class, not in spite of it or in substitution for it. In the context of today’s Ireland and the enormous changes taking place in the composition of the working class revolutionaries need to be in support of, and responding to, the needs of the working class. We must not be a substitution for the class for once Revolutionaries go down the road of thinking that they know better than the class then elitism, terrorism and arrogance grow.
The Ta Power Document spells out clearly the road we must travel if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past. And therein lies lessons for militants of the national liberation and socialist struggles worldwide.
Gerry Ruddy,
Ard-Comhairle Member the Irish Republican Socialist Party,
December 2004