The real Michael Collins

07/12/1996

Michael Collins and de Valera are two seminal figures of twentieth-century Irish history. How far is Neil Jordan?s new film about Collins true to life? The professor of history at the University of Ulster assesses the revolutionary?s legacy. Almost exactly 27 years ago I chanced on a small commemoration of one of the most decisive episodes in Ireland?s past. Mustered in the forecourt of Dublin Castle was a group of elderly men, the survivors, as it turned out, of the Four Courts guard, who had come to honour the memory of their leaders, Rory O?Connor and Liam Mellows, executed on 8 December 1922.

Reviewing them was their President and former leader both in the war of independence and subsequent civil war, Eamonn de Valera. In all their minds must have been the thought that their comrades had fallen in a war fought, not against the British, but in bitter conflict with their fellow Irishmen, and that the fate of O?Connor and Mellows had followed the assassination of one of the pivotal figures in their fight for independence, Michael Collins.

Collins can stand as an epitome of what made Irish nationalism such an elemental force in the early years of the century. The son of elderly rural parents (his father was 75 at Michael?s birth), Collins followed an all too familiar path for young Irishmen of character and ambition by leaving for London to train for a career, in his case with the Post Office Savings Bank.

Young men of the lower middle class, invariably of rural background, were the dynamic behind the growth of nationalist sentiment, in Ireland as elsewhere in Europe. Like other exiles, he turned to the culture of home. His time in London also saw the growth of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League; the young Collins became an enthusiastic player of Gaelic games and a rather less competent speaker of Irish.

In this, too, he was typical of idealistic young men in various parts of Europe. But the most decisive influence in his life was the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), into which he was initiated in 1909. The immediate descendant of the militant Fenian movement of the 1860s, the brotherhood was a secret society dedicated to the achievement of an Irish republic. Its impact on the country?s destiny lay far beyond anything its numbers might suggest, for as late as 1914 it numbered no more than 1,600. A single-minded revolutionary ?lite, its members were to be found at the heart of nationalist bodies such as the National Volunteers.

The IRB provided much of the inspiration behind the 1916 Easter Rising which marked Collins?s entry into the violent world of Irish revolutionary politics. During that week, which powerfully opens Neil Jordan?s film, Michael Collins, the republican forces of Patrick Pearse and James Connolly created the images of militant nationalism, just as the executions which followed provided its martyrs. The only major leader to survive, de Valera, was to become the nemesis of the then unknown Collins.

By 1918, the tone of Irish politics had changed. The elections held in November saw the established Irish Parliamentary Party, which had fought for Home Rule, reduced to six seats, while Sinn Fein, committed to Pearse?s republic, won 73; here, too, the IRB played no small part. Constituting themselves Dail Eireann, Sinn Fein members pledged allegiance to the republic and began a fruitless campaign to secure recognition at the peace negotiations in Paris. Despairing of progress, in June 1919 the Dail?s president, de Valera, left for the United States, where he remained for the next 18 months as Anglo-Irish affairs entered their bloodiest stage. This was when Collins came into his own as one of the most resourceful and ruthless revolutionary leaders of the century. Even so, he was only one of a number operating under the Dail?s authority; others, such as Richard Mulcahy, Dan Breen, Rory O?Connor, Ernie O?Malley and Austin Stack made substantial reputations. The Minister of Defence was Cathal Brugha, another 1916 veteran, who came to resent Collins?s prominence. Formally, Collins was Minister of Finance, but his real power base was the IRB. As president of its Supreme Council, he was a major impulse behind the campaign of the IRA against the forces of the Crown.

In August 1919, the Irish struggle took on a new dynamic when the Irish Volunters and the IRBcame together as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a name which has echoed in the country?s history ever since. Even so, fusion was not complete, for the IRBremained in existence, its members tenaciously loyal to its leadership. It was a situation bound to create tension and rivalry within republicanism, and it did.

The secret of Collins?s success was his intuitive grasp that the Crown?s intelligence network had to be attacked without pity. This key aspect of his career is effectively captured in Jordan?s film, no matter the liberties taken with some of the events. If Collins never personally killed a member of the Crown forces, he rarely took his eye off his aim of eliminating Dublin Castle?s intelligence officers; hence the killing, so chillingly recreated, of 11 members of the so-called Cairo Gang. By such action, Collins reduced the British to regarding the entire population as rebels, real or potential.

The authorities helped his case by reinforcing the Royal Irish Constabulary with the special forces of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries whose retaliation became a by-word for atrocity. The shooting of spectators by some of these forces during a Gaelic football match at Dublin?s Croke Park was only one such incident. It became a hard war, waged without pity by both sides.

The essence of these events, though fictionalised, is captured in Jordan?s film, but once peace negotiations started in the summer of 1921 Collins?s career took a new turn. He accompanied Arthur Griffith and other Sinn Fein leaders to London for the negotiations with Lloyd George?s Government. The treaty they signed on 6 December 1921 brought the Anglo-Irish war to an end while setting the scene for a struggle of a different kind.

De Valera?s decision not to go to London will always be controversial, but he was only too aware of the compromises his negotiators would have to make. Griffith and Collins went with hopelessly contradictory status, as plenipotentiaries but with instructions to refer the terms of a treaty back to Dublin, which they did not do. Collins agreed to the right of the Northern Ireland parliament to vote itself out of a Dublin jurisdiction but only on the basis of a boundary commission, believing that such a body would transfer large areas with nationalist majorities, such as Fermanagh and Tyrone, thus rendering partition unworkable. On the evening of 6 December, Lloyd George confided to his Cabinet colleagues his belief that the boundary commission would do no such thing.

Bitterly assailed by de Valera and Brugha, the treaty scraped through the Dail by 64 votes to 57. It was left to Griffith and Collins to honour and implement an agreement they believed represented the best that could have been secured. At the same time, Collins, who was sensitive to the criticism that the treaty abandoned northern nationalists, tried to reach a working accommodation with Sir James Craig?s government in Belfast.

Initial contacts proved promising but were overtaken by Belfast?s sectarian tensions; sectarian rioting in the city in the spring of 1922 left 236 dead and Collins was forced to send arms to the IRA in the north. Then came the climactic challenge to the treaty by forces led by Rory O?Connor in the Four Courts in central Dublin. Under severe pressure from London, on 28 June 1922 Collins began the bombardment of the building, which ushered in the civil war. By its end, some 4,000 were dead, including, of course, Collins himself.

This second phase of Collins?s career is as interesting as the first, not least because of the tantalising hints of what might have been, for he was still only 31 when he was killed. Ten years later, de Valera won power and began the systematic dismantling of Collins?s treaty. The ending of partition always eluded de Valera, though some would say that he never really tried.

De Valera remains an ambivalent figure in the Irish republican tradition. Controversy will always surround his actions in 1921-1922. Many never forgave him his compromise with the oath of allegiance in 1927, which led to his entry into the Dail and prepared the way for his 1932 electoral victory. Once in power he was capable of ruthless behaviour towards republicans, notably the IRA, who believed he had compromised deeply-held positions. Even so, he lived long enough to secure his position as twentieth-century Ireland?s elder statesman.

In a very real sense Collins had set the mould for modern Ireland. This, too, held a mixed message. Realising what it would take to force the Crown forces on to the defensive, he directed a campaign of ruthless precision against their intelligence networks. As a negotiator, he settled for what he believed to be realistic, though there is evidence that Lloyd George was less than straightforward in his dealings with him. Confronted by bitter dissension on his return to Ireland, he returned to violence, this time against those who had fought with him. It is not a comforting legacy.