Michael Collins

Irish political and nationalist leader

• Born: October 16, 1890
• Birthplace: Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland
• Died: August 22, 1922
• Place of death: Beal-na-Blath, County Cork, Ireland

As a guerrilla leader, negotiator, finance minister, and head of the provisional government, Collins led Ireland toward independence from Great Britain.

Early Life

Born on the ninety-acre family farm named Woodfield, Michael Collins was the last of eight children. His father, Michael John Collins, was sixty when he married Mary Anne O’Brien and seventy-five when Collins was born. On his deathbed, Michael John pointed to the six-year-old Collins and admonished the family to mind the child, whom he expected to do great things for Ireland. The local schoolmaster, Denis Lyons, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), inspired Collins with dreams of Irish nationalism; a local blacksmith, whose father had made the weapons for earlier Irish rebellions, reinforced Collins’s formal education with oral histories of a heroic past.

Because the family farm could not support such a large family, the children moved away. Collins’s mother sent him to live with a sister so that he could study for the British Post Office exam. While in school, Collins worked part-time for his brother-in-law as a local reporter and improved his writing style. Qualifying in 1906 for a boy clerkship, he was sent to London and put into the care of another sister already employed at the post office. While living with his sister for the next ten years, Collins entered into the life of London’s Irish community by joining the IRB, the Gaelic League, and the Gaelic Athletic Association. Despite a reputation as a hard drinker and a temper that flared on the playing field, Collins rose to leadership positions in the organizations. He earned the nickname Big Fellow not because of his size but for his desire to be important.

It was in the London Gaelic League that Collins first learned the Irish language. His parents had spoken Gaelic but used it only when they wanted to communicate without the children understanding them. Trying to recapture his Gaelic roots, he focused on the cause of Irish nationalism by dropping his college night courses and spending all his free time working in Irish organizations. Faced with the possibility of being drafted into the British army during World War I, Collins returned to Ireland on January 15, 1916, determined to fight the British for Irish independence.

Life’s Work

Collins’s central contribution to the Irish struggle for independence was his development of a system of guerrilla warfare that used limited Irish resources effectively against the British. Joining the most extreme elements among the nationalists, he fought in the ill-fated Easter Rebellion in the spring of 1916 at the Dublin Post Office and narrowly escaped execution. As a prisoner at Frongoch in Wales, he emerged as a leader among the Irish nationalists whose revolutionary dedication redoubled in jail. Released at Christmas in 1916, Collins returned to Dublin, where he was selected to head the National Aid Association, a charity created to support the Easter Rebellion’s veterans and their families. This position enhanced his standing among Irish revolutionaries. He advanced to the supreme council of the IRB, later becoming its leader.

After entering electoral politics in cooperation with the Sinn Féin (“ourselves alone”) party, Collins worked to elect men who would refuse to take their seats in the British parliament. One of his candidates in a by-election was in a British prison. Collins promoted him with the slogan “put him in to get him out.” Sinn Féin candidates steadily won, and the general election in December, 1918, produced a solid victory for members refusing to go to London. Elected from Cork, Collins was among the members of the Sinn Féin Dáil, or parliament, which claimed to form an Irish government. In 1918 he left the National Aid Association to take on a military role with a host of titles including director of intelligence. He organized an extensive spy network ranging from police officers to seamen and doormen. His female cousin, who decoded the British government’s secret messages, was especially helpful. Collins earned a formidable reputation for daring and ruthlessness. His most famous exploit was to spend the night of April 7, 1919, in a Dublin castle reading the British intelligence files on himself and the Irish revolutionary government. He could also be irresponsible. Bragging about the contents of his file endangered his counteragents.

Collins established a hit squad called the Apostles on September 19, 1919, and murdered key police officers and blinded British intelligence. As the most wanted man in the British Empire, Collins openly bicycled around Dublin dressed as a successful businessman. Operating on the assumption that appearing normal was the best disguise, his exploits became legendary. He joked and slapped the backs of British soldiers and police officers as they searched him at roadblocks. In one incident, the British raided Mansion House, the residence of Dublin’s lord mayor, to search for Collins while the mayor was entertaining visiting U.S. dignitaries. Collins escaped to an adjoining deserted building, where he hid until the British left. He was filthy, but his assistant brought him a uniform, and Collins reappeared at a formal reception in Mansion House that evening to applause and chuckles at his daring.

While running the covert war against the British, Collins also began serving as finance minister in the Irish cabinet in April of 1919. He floated a loan to finance the declared but unrecognized government and advertised it with a film shot at the ceremony staged to launch the fund drive. Armed Irish Volunteers persuaded projectionists around the country to show the film between features and then disappeared before British police arrived. Collins sent the film to the United States for use among Irish immigrants. The campaign was a success. Holding a variety of jobs, any one of which would have been too much for most men, Collins sometimes worked all night, forgoing sleep and denying himself the pleasures of smoking and drinking in his fervor for Ireland. Nevertheless, he found time to court his best friend’s girlfriend, Kitty Kiernan, and won her away.

Eamon de Valera, the president of the Irish government, went to the United States in June of 1919 to win support for the fledgling Irish government. During his eighteen-month absence, Collins had a free hand to develop guerrilla war, eliminate British spies, and conduct lightning raids around the country to capture weapons and demoralize the enemy. In response, the British became increasingly brutal, burning dairies and farms such as Woodfield. With better information, Collins was able to select only those who were “guilty” as his targets, while the British were forced to strike out blindly. Thus, Collins won people’s hearts and minds. Unfortunately, Cathal Brugha, the Irish minister of defense, developed a strong dislike for Collins and his methods. When de Valera returned from the United States in December of 1920, he joined Brugha in his animosity toward Collins.

Tiring of a conflict they could not win, the British offered a negotiated settlement. After an initial visit to London, de Valera chose to remain in Ireland and, in October, 1921, sent Collins and four colleagues to deal with the British. Collins suspected he was being trapped into supporting an unpopular agreement with the British, which de Valera would denounce, but he went because he was convinced of the need for a settlement. When he and the other negotiators signed a treaty in December accepting dominion status within the British Empire and an oath of loyalty to the king, the Republicans, led by de Valera and Brugha, rejected the agreement in a furious Dáil debate. Collins led the protreaty forces, who prevailed in the Dáil by a majority of only seven votes. De Valera resigned from the Dáil and led the Republicans out of the chamber.

In January, 1922, with broad public support, Collins became chair of the provisional government charged with overseeing the British withdrawal and the creation of a responsible Irish administration in the south. At the same time, he fought the establishment of the Protestant-dominated government in the north. When the Republicans refused to recognize the provisional government, robbed banks, and seized Dublin’s Four Courts building in April, 1922, Collins hesitated to fight them. Friends and families split over the issue, and Collins uncharacteristically hesitated because he disliked the prospect of killing his former comrades. However, faced with a British threat to intervene, Collins borrowed British artillery and attacked the Four Corners in June, opening a bloody civil war. To devote himself full-time to the civil war, Collins relinquished the office of chair to become commander in chief of the new Irish army, invigorating it with his demonic energy and magnetic personality.

Refusing to give up hope for peace with his old friends, Collins undertook a dangerous journey into his home county. He was seeking money that the Republicans had diverted from the government and probably intended to negotiate with Republican leaders. While visiting with relatives and buying his escorts rounds of beer all day, he foolishly ignored warnings of an ambush planned by Republicans. When his small convoy was attacked on August 22, Collins refused to run for safety and stood in the open, firing at his attackers, one of whom shot him in the head.

Significance

Collins’s career still produces controversy in Ireland. In his lifetime, Republicans suspected him of dishonest dealings with the British. Some accused him of selling out because of affairs with aristocratic British women. Rumors persisted for years about his death as a plot by the British or a faction in the civil war. De Valera downplayed Collins’s legacy after he came to power and even blocked efforts to erect a monument at his grave until 1939. De Valera once said that he expected Collins’s reputation to grow at the expense of his own. This has certainly been the case: Books, television documentaries, and motion pictures have revived memories of Collins.

Collins was the driving force of the Irish revolution and was highly effective in leading a guerrilla war. He then turned into a peacemaker and played the key role in negotiating with the British. He met secretly with Winston Churchill and took over the work of the delegation’s leader when the leader became too ill for the job. As chair of the provisional government, Collins worked to establish a legal entity to replace the British. Then took on the military obligation to fight the Republicans. He did not move quickly and forcefully enough against the Irish rebels because of his love for and confidence in the Irish people. He was a man possessed by the dream of winning Irish independence. He often offended people by simply not taking time to shake hands and exchange greetings, but he offered sincere kindness to others, especially the widows of his brothers in arms. He was seen to weep when a group of children offered him a fist full of shamrocks. History seems set to record him as a lost leader of rare talent and energy.

Bibliography

Connolly, Colm. Michael Collins. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996. This picture book by the director of a television documentary on Collins’s death includes a good life summary.

Coogan, Tim Pat. Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland. Boulder, Colo.: Roberts Rhinehart, 1996. Originally published in 1992 as The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins. This is a knowledgeable journalist’s account of Collins’s life and the controversies surrounding him.

Gleeson, James Joseph. Bloody Sunday: How Michael Collins’s Agents Assassinated Britain’s Secret Service in Dublin on November 21, 1920. Guilford, Conn.: Lyon’s Press, 2003. Based on interviews with both Irish and British men who took part in the assassination. Gleeson recounts the causes and events of Bloody Sunday.

Hart, Peter. Mick: The Real Michael Collins. New York: Viking, 2006. A comprehensive biography that aims to demystify the Collins legend.

MacKay, James. Michael Collins: A Life. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1996. This Scotsman’s account of Collins’s life provides a little more objectivity than the Irish biographies.

O’Brion, Leon, ed. In Great Haste: The Letters of Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996. The letters give firsthand insight into the life of Collins.

O’Connor, Ulik. Michael Collins and the Troubles: The Struggle for Irish Freedom 1912-1922. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. O’Connor provides a literary account of the fight for independence and Collins’s role in that fight.

Ryan, Meda. The Day Michael Collins Was Shot. Dublin: Poolbeg, 1989. Ryan tries to dispel the myths that grew up around Collins’s death.

Stewart, A. T. Q. Michael Collins: The Secret File. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1997. This book reproduces Collins’s police file and provides a brief biography keyed to the documents.