Michael Collins – Part Two Gerry OShea
Michael
Collins’ leadership was at the heart of the Irish War of Independence. He
oversaw the revolutionary plans with Richard Mulcahy in Dublin but the
decisions about confrontations with the Crown forces in country areas was
appropriately left to the local leaders.
Only 18
people were killed during 1919, the first year of the insurrection. No wonder
the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, dismissed the sporadic attacks by
Irish Republicans as the actions of “murder gangs” that the police were
well-equipped to handle. By the time of the truce in July, 1921, he had learned
that he was, in fact, dealing with a major national insurgency.
A week after
the mayhem of Bloody Sunday, Tom Barry’s famous West Cork brigade killed
seventeen Auxiliaries in an ambush at Kilmichael, near Macroom in County Cork. This
defeat shocked the military and political establishment. In revenge, the Auxies
burned large parts of the city of Cork, and Lloyd George was left to explain
why his police force was behaving in this incoherent way.
Michael
Collins realized the intense pressure that his approximately 5000 volunteers
were under as British army units were added to the police in an effort to intimidate
the population into submission. The advice from the leadership in Dublin was “a
little action wisely and well done must be our motto at present.”
Meanwhile,
Collins himself concentrated in expanding his intelligence gathering beyond his
base in the capital. Barmen, shop assistants, hotel porters, post office
workers and telephonists were tapped into for information throughout the
country, allowing the Cork man to acquire knowledge about troop movements and
to build up dossiers on senior policemen and British Secret Service agents. For
example, in the biggest IRA engagement in Kerry at Headford, it was a lowly
hotel worker who passed on the information about the planned itinerary of the
English forces in the area.
Eamon de
Valera was the president of the provisional Dail and the accepted leader of the
revolution. In 1921, at the height of the war, he wanted a spectacular military
event in Dublin that would support his propaganda for Irish freedom in the
European capitals as well as in America and Australia. This battle would show
the world that an army representing Ireland could deal with the invading force.
Michael Collins
opposed the idea because it was outside their successful hit-and-run guerilla
strategy used with considerable success throughout the war. On May 25th,
1921, about 120 volunteers from the Dublin command occupied and burnt the
Custom House, which was the home of the Department of Local Government during
British rule.
Although the New York Times headlined its
report “Priceless Records Lost,” it became an important success for Republican
publicity, but, as Collins forewarned, it was a military disaster. Five of the
attackers were killed as well as three civilians and over 80 volunteers were
captured and jailed. Only four Auxiliaries were injured.
About a
thousand people, including civilians, were killed during the apex months of the
war in the first half of 1921 – about 70% of the total casualties during the
thirty months of the revolution. Michael Collins and his leadership team
realized that the people were wearying of the conflict and with close to 5000
IRA volunteers in jail they began a plan to change their strategy and to bring
the fight instead to English cities.
The British
forces were also suffering some heavy losses and with the war in a kind of
standoff Lloyd George agreed to an unconditional ceasefire with Eamon de Valera
which took effect on July 12th, 1921.
The two
sides agreed to meet in formal conference to find a resolution to the age-old
conflict. In a bewildering decision that still baffles historians de Valera
decided not to lead the Irish negotiators. Instead, he asked Michael Collins
and Arthur Griffith to head the delegation as plenipotentiaries. Collins
reluctantly accepted and went to London with an Irish entourage of about thirty
people.
They arrived
in London on October 10th to engage in momentous discussions with a
British team led by the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. Collins was the cynosure
of all eyes because of his reputation as a charismatic revolutionary. He was
just thirty years old and recently engaged to Kitty Kiernan, the love of his
life from County Longford. He attended mass every morning and was very much at
home in London having previously lived there for nearly ten years.
While Arthur
Griffith was the official leader of the Irish delegation, Collins emerged as
the dominant personality. He had little regard for his British counterparts
with the exception of Lord Birkenhead, a staunch Unionist, whom he came to
admire as “a good man.” He defined Lloyd George as an obnoxious individual,
Winston Churchill as bereft of any principles and Austin Chamberlain as a snob.
He recoiled
from the niceties of diplomacy, which he saw as so much beating around the
bush. At the end of the first day of negotiations, he wrote to de Valera, his
boss in Dublin: “I never felt more relieved at the end of any day - - - such a
crowd I never met.”
The
negotiators faced two really knotty problems. The Irish were committed to a
unitary state, encompassing the whole island. However, the Government of
Ireland Act, passed in Westminster the year before, set up a parliament in
Belfast with jurisdiction over six counties in Ulster. Lloyd George offered to
set up a Boundary Commission with representatives from both parts of Ireland
and a British chairman. The Irish delegation, with approval from the leaders in
Dublin, believed that this new Commission would move Fermanagh and Tyrone into
southern control and eventually render the remaining statelet unviable.
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