Michael Collins
as Commander-in-Chief
at President Griffith's funeral
one week before his own murder
Michael Collins was born in Sam's Cross, near Clonakilty in West Cork in 1890. His family, the O'Coileains (in the Irish language) had once been the lords of Ui Chonaill, near Limerick, but like many Irish gentry, had been dispossessed (known in the Irish language as Án Duainaire - the dispossessed) and reduced to the level of ordinary farmers. Yet their farm of 90 acres made them wealthier and more comfortably off than most Irish catholic farmers of late nineteenth century Ireland. It was into that relatively well to do farming existence that Michael Collins, the yougest of eight children was born. Michael's father, also called Michael Collins, was a member of the radical fringe republican Fenian[?] movement when he was younger, but had left the movement and settled down to farming. One of Michael (the patriot)'s sisters, Helena Collins, became a nun, Sister Mary Celestine.
Collins was recorded as being a bright and precocious child, with a fiery temper and a passionate nationalism, spurred on by a local blacksmith, James Santry and later local school headmaster, Denis Lyons, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood[?] (IRB). He was tall, strapping and loved sports, none of which affected his cerebral development or uncanny instincts. After leaving school, the fifteen year old Michael, like many Irish emigrants, moved abroad, where he worked in the British Post Office in London from July 1906. He joined the IRB through Sam Maguire, a Protestant republican from Cork, in November 1909. The IRB was an organisation he was to play a central role in, ultimately ending up as its president, within little more than a decade.
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The Easter Rising
Michael Collins first came to national prominence during the Easter Rising in 1916. A skilled organiser of considerable intelligence, he was highly respected in the IRB, so much so that he was made 'financial adviser' to Count Plunkett, father of one of the Rising's organisers, Joseph Mary Plunkett. When the Rising itself took place, he fought alongside Patrick Pearse and others in the General Post Office. The Rising was as expected a military disaster. While many celebrated the fact that a Rising had happened at all, believing in the theory of 'Blood Sacrifice' (namely that the deaths of the Rising's leaders would inspire the populace to rebel), Collins railed against what he perceived as its ham-fisted amateurism, notably the seizure of prominent buildings such as the GPO that were impossible to defend, impossible to escape from and difficult to get supplies to. (During the War of Independence he made sure such a policy of 'becoming sitting targets' was not followed, with his 'soldiers' operating as flying columns who waged a guerrilla war against the British, suddenly attacking then just as quickly suddenly withdrawing, minimising losses and maximising effectiveness.)
Collins, like many of the Rising's participants, was arrested and sent to internment camps in Britain. There as his contemporaries expected, his leadership skills showed. By the time of the general release, Collins was already one of the leading figures in the post Rising Sinn Féin, a small monarchist party which the British government and the Irish media wrongly blamed for the Rising, leading to its infiltration by survivors of the Rising, so as to capitalise on the 'notoriety' the innocent movement had gained through British attacks. By October 1917 Collins though skill and ability had risen to become a member of the Executive of Sinn Féin and Director of Organisation of the Irish Volunteers[?]; Eamon de Valera was president of both organisations.
The First Dáil
Like all senior Sinn Féin members, Michael Collins was nominated to seek a seat in the 1918 general election to elect Irish MPs to the British House of Commons in London. And like the overwhelming majority (many without contests), Collins was elected, becoming MP for South Cork. However, unlike their rivals in the Irish Parliamentary Party[?], Sinn Féin MPs had announced that they would not be taking their seats in Westminster, but instead setting up an Irish parliament in Dublin. That new parliament, called Dáil Éireann (meaning Assembly of Ireland: See First Dáil) met in the Mansion House, Dublin in January 1919. De Valera and leading Sinn Féin MPs had been arrested; Collins typically, had been tipped off by his network of spies about the plan and had warned leading figures. De Valera, equally typically had talked everyone into ignoring the warnings, believing if it happened it would a propaganda coup, only to find that with the leadership now arrested, there were few people left to do the necessary 'spinning' in the media! In de Valera's absence, Cathal Brugha[?] was elected Príomh Áire (literally prime minister, but often translated as 'President of Dáil Éireann'), to be replaced by de Valera, who has escaped from prison, in April 1919.
Collins in 1919 had a number of roles: head of the IRB, chief spy-master, one of the key organisors of the Irish Republican Army1, as the Volunteers had become, the naming symbolising the organisation's claim to be the army of the Irish Republic ratified in January 1919. (The Irish War of Independence in effect began on the same say as the First Dáil met in January 1919, when two policemen were shot dead by IRA volunteers in Sohoheadbeg, County Tipperary.)
Minister for Finance
In 1919, the already busy Collins received yet another responsibility when de Valera appointed him to the Áireacht (ministry) as Minister for Finance. Understandably, in the circumstances of a brutal war, in which 'ministers' were liable to be arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British Army, the Black and Tans or the Auxilaries[?] at a moment's notice, most of the ministries only existed on paper, or as one or two people people working in a room of a private house. Not with Collins, however, who produced a Finance Ministry that was able to organise a large bond issue in the form of a 'national loan' to fund the new Irish Republic. Such was Collins' reputation that even Lenin heard about Collins' spectacular national loan, and sent a representative to Dublin to borrow some money from the Irish "Republic" to help fund the Russian Republic, offering some of the Russian Crown Jewels[?] as collateral. (The jewels remained in a Dublin safe forgotten by all sides until the 1930s, when they were found by chance!)
In retrospect, the sheer scale of Collins' workload, and his achievements, is staggering. From creating a special assassination squad (The Twelve Apostles to kill British agents) to the arrangement of an internationally famous national loan, from running the IRA to effectively running the government when de Valera travelled for a long period to the United States, and an arms-smuggling operation, Collins became almost a one-man revolution. By 1920, when he was only thirty years old, Michael Collins was wanted by the British with a price of £10,000 (a vast sum in the 1920s) on his head. And he made enemies among nationalist leaders; two in particular, Cathal Brugha[?], the earnest but mediocre Minister for Defence, who was completely overshadowed by his cabinet colleague in military matters (even though Collins nominally was only Minister for Finance, with Brugha in Defence supposedly being the big player). Eamon de Valera, the President of Dáil Éireann, also bitterly resented his much younger colleague, all the more so when Collins' reputation reached new heights while de Valera, against Collins' advice, devoted a year to a fruitless search for American recognition for the Irish Republic. Their rivalry was even represented in their nicknames. The extremely tall de Valera earned the nickname the 'Long Fellow' while, to de Valera's fury while he was abroad, Collins won the nickname from his colleagues of the 'Big Fellow'.
For its undoubted tactical cleverness, the IRA, always outgunned and outnumbered and now running out of ammunition faced collapse in mid 1921, which is why a British offer of a Truce so astonished Collins, who questioned whether Britain realised that the IRA was perhaps less than a week away from collapse. Following the Truce, arrangements were made for a conference between leaders of the universally unrecognised Irish Republic (other than Lenin's Russian Republic that needed money and so gave diplomatic recognition to the Irish Republic, not a single other country did so, despite heavy lobbying in Washington by de Valera and at the Versailles Peace Conference by Sean T. O'Kelly) and the British Government. In a move which astonished observers, de Valera (who had in August 1921 had the Dáil upgrade his office from prime minister to President of the Republic to make him the equivalent of King George V in the negotiations) then announced that as the King wasn't going, neither should the President of the Republic. Instead, with the reluctant agreement of his cabinet, de Valera nominated a team of 'plenipotentiaries' (ie, delegates with the power to sign a treaty without seeking approval from the government at home) headed by Arthur Griffith and with as his deputy, Michael Collins. With great reluctance (believing de Valera should head the delegation) Collins agreed to go to London.
The Treaty
The ultimate result of the negotiations was the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which provided for a new Irish state, named the Irish Free State (a literal translation from the Irish language term Saorstát Éireann, which appeared on the letter-heading de Valera had used, though de Valera had translated it less literally as the Irish Republic2). It provided for a possible all-Island state, subject to the right of the parliament of Northern Ireland to opt out of the Free State (which it duly did). If this happened, a Boundary Commission[?] was to be established to redraw the Irish border, which Collins expected would so reduce the size of Northern Ireland as to make it economically unviable, so forcing unity.
The new Irish Free State was to be a dominion, with a bicameral parliament, executive authority vested in the king but exercised by an Irish government elected by a lower house called Dáil Éireann (translated this time as Chamber of Deputies), an independent courts system, and a form of independence that far exceeded anything sought by Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party[?] in the nineteenth century. To republican purists, it was seen as a sell-out, with the replacement of the republic by a returned crown, and an Oath of Allegiance which it was claimed was directly to the King. (The actual wording shows it was to the Irish Free State, with a subsidary oath of fidelity to the king as part of the Treaty settlement, not to the king unilaterally. See Oath of Allegiance.) Sinn Féin split on the issue, with de Valera joining the anti-treatyites to oppose the 'sell-out'. His opponents charged that he knew, given the state of near collapse of the IRA, that a return to war was not an option and that the crown would have to feature in whatever form of settlement arrived at. His bitterest opponents even accused deV of in effect 'chickening out' of leading the delegation, in the knowledge that the republic could possibly result from the negotiations. It was a charge de Valera denied, though many historians now accept the allegation as explaining his absence.
The Triple Approval: Dáil, British Parliament & House of Commons of Southern Ireland
Under the terms of the treaty, three parliaments in effect had to approve the document. The British parliament which did so. So too did Dáil Éireann, although its approval was required for political rather than legal reasons: Dáil Éireann (which though it had no status in internal law and was not accepted as the parliament of Ireland by the international community, being universally regarded as an illegal assembly) nevertheless had a de-facto position that was crucial, as the voice of Sinn Féin members and as they represented the majority of Irish people, Irish public opinion. In addition there was a third body, the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, which was the lawful parliament of the twenty-six county state called Southern Ireland created under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920 (of its 128 members, 124, having been elected, had formed the Second Dáil in 1921, the body with had approved the new Treaty in December 1921.). Though it was not recognised by the Irish people as their valid parliament, as the legal parliament it too needed to give approval, with it did overwhelmingly (anti-treaty members stayed away, meaning only pro-treaty members - and the four unionists elected who had never sat in Dáil Éireann - attended its meeting in January 1922.
The Provisional Government
Under the Dáil Constitution adopted in 1919, Dáil Éireann continued to exist. De Valera resigned the presidency and when he sought re-election (in an effort to destroy the newly approved Treaty) he was defeated by Arthur Griffith, who assumed the presidency. (Griffith called himself President of Dáil Éireann rather than de Valera's more exhaulted President of the Republic.) However this government or Áireacht had no legal status in British constitutional law, so another co-existent government was created, answerable to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland. The new Provisional Government was formed, under Michael Collins, who became President of the Provisional Government (ie, prime minister). He also remained Minister for Finance of Griffith's republican administration. An example of the complexities involved can be seen even in the manner of his installation. In theory he was a Crown-appointed prime minister, installed under the Royal Prerogative[?]. To be so installed, he had to formally meet the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount Fitzalan (the head of the British administration in Ireland). According to republican history, Collins met Fitzalan to accept the surrender of Dublin Castle, the seat of British government in Ireland. According to British constitutional theory, he met Fitzalan to 'kiss hands' (the formal name for the installation of a minister of the Crown), the fact of their meeting rather than the signing of any documents, duly installing him in office.
First Dáil
Michael Collins (second from left, front row),
Arthur Griffith (fourth from left, front row)
Eamon de Valera (centre, front row),
W.T. Cosgrave (second from right, front row)
Anti-treatyites, having opposed the Treaty in the Dáil, withdrew from the assembly and, having formed an opposition 'republican government' under Eamon de Valera, began a campaign that led to the Irish Civil War. By mid 1922, Collins in effect laid down his responsibilities as President of the Provisional Government to become Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, a formal structured uniformed army that twas being formed from the remnants of the Old IRA. As part of those duties, he travelled to his native Cork. En route home through County Cork on 22 August 1922, at Beal na mBlath (an Irish language term that means 'the Mouth of Flowers'), he was killed in an ambush, probably by a ricocheting bullet. He was not yet 32 years old.
Collins' Legacy
Michael Collins has gone down in Irish history as one of the great 'what might have beens'. A man of extra-ordinary intelligence, incredible passion but most of all a monumental workrate, his loss was a disaster to an Ireland just setting up an independent, internationally recognised system of government. His loss was made all the more shocking by two facts. Only one week before, President Griffith himself had died, worn out by the stress. Indeed one of Collins' last public appearances had been to march behind the body of his friend and cabinet colleague. Within one week, he would be joining Griffith in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
But most striking of all were his prophetic words, on the day the treaty was signed. As Lord Birkenhead, one of the British ministers, aware of how unpopular the Treaty would be in Britain (where it would be interpreted as a 'surrender to murderers') commented that he may have signed his political death warrant, Michael Collins said 'I may have signed my actual death warrant.'
Whereas his colleagues, whether Eamon de Valera, W.T. Cosgrave, Richard Mulcahy or Eoin O'Duffy[?] were judged by how they handled the difficult task of building a state, Collins by his early death, is simply remembered as a radical young man who faced none of their peace-time problems. If people remember de Valera as a blind old man in semi-retirement in the presidency of Ireland in the 1960s and early 1970s, Cosgrave as the prime minister who had to balance the books financially after the Wall Street Crash, Mulcahy the man who authorized executions of prisoners during the Civil War, O'Duffy the policeman turned politician who dabbled in fascism, Collins remains in the public memory as the young man, barely aged thirty, who delivered a republic, then a treaty, who inspired a generation, and who died before his time as his country stood on the threshhold of independent self government.
Michael Collins was the subject of a semi-fictional film called Michael Collins, with Liam Neeson playing his role. It was directed by Neil Jordan[?]. Though praised for bringing the story of Michael Collins to a wide international audience, it was criticised by some historians for its many liberties with historical facts.
Notes
1 The IRA of the period 1919-21 is now generally known as the Old IRA to distinguish it from later claimants to the name, whose deeds did not have the sanction of the Irish people, unlike the first IRA, which had its authority through the Irish politicians elected in 1918.
2 Two gaelic titles were used to mean 'Irish Republic', Saorstát Éireann (which literally meant Free State of Ireland) and Poblacht na hÉireann. Irish language purists preferred the former title, for the latter was made up specially, whereas the former came from real previous existing gaelic words.