581. The Irish Civil War: The Killing of Michael Collins (Part 2)

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Speaker 2 My dear Miss Collins, don't let them make you miserable about it. How could a born soldier die better than at the victorious end of a good fight, fall into the shot of another Irishman?

Speaker 2 A damn fool, but all the same an Irishman who thought he was fighting for Ireland? A Roman to a Roman. I met Michael for the first and last time on Saturday last, and I'm very glad I did.

Speaker 2 I rejoice in his memory. I will not be so disloyal as to snivel over his valiant death.
So treat up your mourning and hang up your brightest colours in his honour.

Speaker 2 Let us all praise God that he did not die in a snuffy bed of a trumpery cough, weakened by age and saddened by the disappointments that would have attended his work had he lived.

Speaker 1 So that, ladies and gentlemen, was original authentic archive of George George Bernard Shaw writing to Hanni Collins, the sister of Michael Collins, on the 25th of August, 1922 and three days earlier.

Speaker 1 Michael Collins, surely the most charismatic of all Ireland's independence heroes, the Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army, signatory to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and then the head of government, the provisional government of the Irish Free State and commander of its national army.

Speaker 1 He had been shot dead by his former comrades at a crossroads near Bail Neblore in rural County Cork. Tom, you know, I'm a great fan of County Cork.

Speaker 1 And this is one of the most hotly debated moments in all Irish history, isn't it? Some people see it as a tragedy. Others see it as, you know, Collins got his just desserts.

Speaker 1 A massive turning point in Ireland's history. Well, is it?

Speaker 1 We'll discuss that, whether Collins would have set Ireland on a different course.

Speaker 1 But certainly it is the most emblematic moment in this terrible conflict, which follows on directly from the Irish War of Independence and you see people who'd been fighting the British turning on themselves and it's a moment in Irish history that is much less commemorated in Irish memory for obvious reasons because all the romance, all the poetry of the War of Independence,

Speaker 1 it gets dissolved and crushed and ends up with this kind of squalid moment where the great hero of the Irish War of Independence is lying dead in his own county.

Speaker 1 Well, I think getting two Oxbridge Englishmen to talk about the Irish Civil War is madness. So the great news is that we're still in the Four Courts in Dublin, which is where the Civil War started.

Speaker 1 So if you hear lorries rumbling past, that is why.

Speaker 1 But the most exciting thing, we are joined by a great friend of the Rest is History, distinguished journalist for the Irish Times, the author of a brilliant book on the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, Great Hatred, our pal, Ronan McGreevy.

Speaker 1 Ronan, welcome back to the Rest is History.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Darling.

Speaker 1 So let's remind ourselves what's been going on. I'll attempt to summarise the world's most complicated historical question in about 40 seconds.

Speaker 1 So there's been a huge split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty, a split both in the Irish nationalist elite and in the Irish Republican Army in the early months of 1922.

Speaker 1 And anti-treaty IRA men have occupied the building we're in right now, the four courts. And Dominic, do you know what the Daily Mail said about this? They said that this sort of thing must stop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're right. I think it's

Speaker 1 a rather TED approach to the complexities of irish history so the anti-treaty ira men have been in this building the trigger comes when sir henry wilson as we talked about last time is assassinated in belgravia in london the british particularly lloyd george and churchill effectively deliver an ultimatum to the provisional government and we ended last time with these howitzers on the bridges outside where we are now being brought to help british guns

Speaker 1 opening fire and shelling the building. So Ronan, take us through the story.
What happens next? Because the fighting lasts for three three days, I think, or in this building.

Speaker 2 So the fighting lasts for three days in the forecourts. First of all, they had to find some people to operate the guns.

Speaker 2 And this is an interesting part of the Civil War, is that there's a huge number of former British soldiers in the National Army.

Speaker 2 So initially, they hadn't embedded the guns down properly and the the shells were flying way over the forecourts.

Speaker 1 Didn't they hit the British headquarters on the other side?

Speaker 2 They did, yes, and they were very, very inaccurate. But then eventually they did find their range and they started to, at really point-blank range, started to make holes in the walls here.

Speaker 2 And it was a very dangerous thing that they were doing. I mean, they were basically storming the building.
But on the third day,

Speaker 2 just when the garrison inside are their situation is hopeless, they're not able to escape. The public records office, which is on the site here, is blown up in a massive explosion.

Speaker 2 Public Records Office is the Irish National Archive. It's the archive going back to the 12th century and

Speaker 2 everything in there is destroyed. The census going back to the first part of the pre-famine census, going back to 1821, chancery records,

Speaker 2 grants of land,

Speaker 2 payments made to spies, payments made to headhunters, the records of the various chief secretaries to Ireland, centuries of Church of Ireland parish records, everything goes up in this massive conflagration.

Speaker 2 And there's a famous quote in Ernie O'Malley's book.

Speaker 2 Ernie O'Malley was the one of the anti-treaty, and he was talking about this white rain that was coming down, this paper that was coming down on top of the people of Dublin. So

Speaker 2 they basically the archives were destroyed. That's the most famous thing about the battle for the forecourts.

Speaker 2 It lasts three days, the garrison surrenders, and the provisional government hopes that's the end of it. But the anti-treaties decide to fight on.
So

Speaker 2 the fight moves to O'Connell Street, which is the site in 1916 where the GPO is located.

Speaker 2 And the whole of the west side of the GPO, of O'Connell Street had been very badly damaged in the 1916 rise and so now it was the turn of the east side, northeast side, where there was a whole hotel complex, which was the Dublin IRA was located.

Speaker 2 And so again, the 18-pounders are opened up, and there's about

Speaker 2 80 people killed in Dublin in this time period. And so, the battle for Dublin is fairly quick and decisive.
And so, the anti-treaty rebels take to the countryside.

Speaker 1 So, to remind people, the IRA had split.

Speaker 1 On the one hand, you have Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy and people like that who are commanding what's now called the National Army, fighting for the provisional government.

Speaker 1 On the other hand, you have, I guess, Devalera. Yeah.
And the other, they're the IRA irregulars. Their commander is a guy called Liam Lynch.
That's right. Who's about 30, 31, very young?

Speaker 2 He's 27, I think.

Speaker 1 27, Craigie. So, at that point, actually, if you look at the numbers, the anti-treaty people seem to have the up.
There are more of them, right? Yes. And they think they're going to win.

Speaker 2 That's right. So in March 1922,

Speaker 2 the anti-treaty IRA said that 80% of

Speaker 2 their members are anti-the treaty, and they have...

Speaker 2 over almost 13,000 men under arms and only seven of the 16 IRA divisions from the War of Independence are on the side of the Free State government.

Speaker 2 So So this looks like a fairly perilous position for the Free State government.

Speaker 2 However, the Free State government have the support of the British and the British have an unending arsenal of weapons that they have accumulated from the First World War.

Speaker 2 And within like two months, they've given the Irish 40,000 rifles.

Speaker 1 And can I ask, do the Treatyites fight harder than the British had done? with these weapons?

Speaker 2 Well, they absolutely did. And because they were fighting, I mean, most of those who had been involved in the Black and Townsend auxiliaries were mercenaries.
We didn't have a stake in this.

Speaker 2 It was mostly for money. But the provisional government, the pro-treaty forces, were fighting for their survival.

Speaker 2 And they were fighting for the survival of an infant state that was like threatened to be stillborn. And

Speaker 1 this state, Eamon de Valera, who is the elected president, I mean, he's against what the state bodies. Large sections of the army, the IRA are against it as well.

Speaker 1 So, what is the constitutional situation? Who is in command of the army and who is in command of the government once de Valera and large numbers of the IRA have arranged in opposition to it?

Speaker 2 Well, the provisional government is seven members, famously described by Kevin O'Higgins as seven, eight young men sitting

Speaker 2 in the building with wild men screaming through the keyhole and with one administration gone and another one not formed. So they're in a very precarious situation, but their situation is

Speaker 2 strengthened by the June 1922 election on the 16th of June. Bearing in mind, this is only six days before Wilson is assassinated, in which the anti-treaty side are routed.

Speaker 2 They only get less than 22% of the vote. Most people in Ireland want to get on with their lives.
They don't care about the oath. They don't care.
They've had...

Speaker 2 eight years of war going back to the start of the First World War, want to get on with things.

Speaker 2 So and the British government grasps this fact and Lloyd George and Churchill are telling the provisional government, you have the mandate to govern.

Speaker 1 Get on with it. And specifically to Michael Collins, right? Yes.
Because Churchill, in particular, thinks Michael Collins is someone that the British government can negotiate with.

Speaker 1 And am I right that on the 1st of July, Collins announces that he is going to take over as commander-in-chief of the army. He's also in the government.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And I know that this will sound maybe a provocative thing to say in the context of our Irish listeners.

Speaker 1 But I am reminded reminded of Cromwell,

Speaker 1 a revolutionary against monarchy who overthrows a monarchy and then faced with divisions among parliamentarians and military opponents, makes himself essentially in command of both the military and the...

Speaker 1 Just for people listening who can't see the pictures, Ronan has just had to be physically restrained from doing injury to Tom.

Speaker 1 I mean, is there any justice in that complaint?

Speaker 2 Well, I think basically the Irish Civil War has been framed as a battle between democrats and uh

Speaker 2 those who don't support democracy so as i explained the there have been three democratic votes in favor of the treaty but the anti-treaty was side and and um domik talked about this before emin devilero said the people have no right to do wrong right so Collins, on the 1st of July, as you say, he becomes commander-in-chief.

Speaker 2 He's in the government as well. He has basically

Speaker 2 the government assumes dictatorial powers. The parliament that's elected in June, it doesn't sit until September because

Speaker 2 it's a civil war. I mean, you could have the same, you could say as well, well, why isn't Zelensky being, you know, why is there elections in Ukraine?

Speaker 2 You can't have elections when there's a war going on, there's a civil war going on. So

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 he does assume a huge amount of power in that time period.

Speaker 1 But I suppose one way in which he's, I mean, one of the many ways in which he's not like Romwell, but a very salient one, is he hasn't actually had any military experience, has he?

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 and we can talk about that when it comes to the circumstances in which he's shot. But certainly the National Army starts to recruit very quickly.

Speaker 2 So any disadvantages they had in terms of men and material is gone very quickly.

Speaker 2 I mean, they basically, not unlike the First World War, they have, they set up recruitment stations and there's a huge response.

Speaker 2 And of course, there's a lot of, because the Ireland had participated on the side of the UK in the First World War, there's a lot of ex-servicemen who are unemployed and looking for a job.

Speaker 1 So let's look at the course of the war a little bit. And something that strikes me as a big problem for the anti-treatyites or the irregulars, as they're called, is that

Speaker 1 if you support the treaty, if you're on Michael Collins' side, you know exactly what you want. You want the treaty, you want the free state, you just want to crack on and get it for their lives.

Speaker 1 If you're anti-the treaty, your goals are a little bit more nebulous, aren't they?

Speaker 1 You're not exactly for anything.

Speaker 1 You're for the nebulous idea of an Irish, independent Irish Republic. Do you think

Speaker 2 that political issue is a big problem for them in terms of winning the war the anti-treaty ice yes it is because a republic's not an offer at this stage and most people are are as i've said before they're really ground on by the war of independence the easter rising and they just want to get on with their lives and you're right they have framed it in the sense of being against something as as opposed to having a different offering and they're talking about a republic but the British are not going to grant a republic de Valera knows this so he comes up with this idea called document number two.

Speaker 2 He comes up with this idea, and this is as nuanced as the differences between them. He talks about external association.
He draws, because he's a mathematician.

Speaker 2 He tries to explain it with all these kind of pie charts and that. But essentially, what it means is that the free state is associated with the Commonwealth, but not...
part of the Commonwealth.

Speaker 2 And therefore, the British monarch is not the head of state and there's no oath of allegiance.

Speaker 1 Which is kind of genius, isn't it? I mean, it kind of works, but nobody, none of his enemies, whether they're British or pro-treaty, are going to accept that kind of formulation.

Speaker 2 Well, exactly. And fast forward to 1927, when he's forced to take the oath of office, he says it's just a piece of paper.
If he only had said that in 1922, we could have avoided the Civil War.

Speaker 1 So, on the Civil War, the anti-treaty strategy effectively is to hold the South and West.

Speaker 1 Liam Lynch, who we mentioned, has this dream of a monster republic.

Speaker 1 He thinks basically, if we can hold the South and West, then all that will be left is this treaty rump, and that will become unviable.

Speaker 1 Is that ever realistic that he can do this, have this Munster Republic? No, it's not.

Speaker 2 And this is the problem. You see, this war, this war, they're making it up as they go along.
I mean, no matter what anybody says,

Speaker 2 neither side is prepared for a war, so they haven't made any contingencies.

Speaker 2 So, Liam Lynch talks about setting up a fast net between in a line between Limerick and Waterford, and everywhere south of that line is the Munster Republic.

Speaker 2 But that's quickly breached in July and August 1922.

Speaker 2 There's a new book by an Irish Army officer called Garth Prendigast, and he talks about this and how quickly they were able to overwhelm the garrisons in both Waterford and in Limerick.

Speaker 2 But there's also fighting, there's actually two armies fighting each other in Kilmallock, County Limerick.

Speaker 2 So the extraordinary spectacle of these guys were fighting together a year previously and they're fighting over open territory in County Limerick.

Speaker 2 But the odds are all against the anti-treaty side once the war gets underway.

Speaker 2 And then in the coup de grace, really, for the sort of conventional operations of the war, is the amphibious landings that the National Army have at twice in Cork and once in Kerry.

Speaker 1 And again, are they helped there by the British?

Speaker 2 Yes, they are. The Commander, a couple of ferries, and they have a British Royal Navy escort into the bays in Cork.
So obviously the British are on the side of the National Army.

Speaker 2 They want the National Army to win. The reason why they decide to take to the sea

Speaker 2 to attack the Munster Republic is because all the roads and railways have been destroyed and there's a huge amount of physical destruction in the war done by the IRA.

Speaker 1 So with the capture of Cork City, which is, I think, the 10th of August, that's the last great sort of dramatic set piece of the Civil War.

Speaker 1 So actually, it's been done and dusted very quickly in a matter of weeks. Well, apparently two-thirds of those killed in the civil war die in its first three months.
But here's the interesting thing.

Speaker 1 The civil war doesn't end there.

Speaker 2 The anti-treatyites think, well, we can now just revert to a guerrilla campaign that's right so they were going to do to the to the free state what they had done to the british they were going to uh set up ambushes what they call nowadays an it's asymmetrical war so this is this is instead of sort of um taking their beating so to speak they they retreat to the countryside a lot of them are now doctrinaire republicans they're not going to give up no matter what happens and even though there are peace feelers out there and we're talking about Emma Davalero at that time was thinking that maybe the game was up but the reality is that the war was going to continue on.

Speaker 1 Where is he at this point? Where is Devalero?

Speaker 2 Funny enough he's actually, when we come to the assassination of Michael Collins, he's actually in Cork. He's very close to where Collins is.
But Devalero is kind of sidelined at this stage.

Speaker 2 I mean he lights the match but the conflagration goes off without him and he's basically ceded control to the militarists at this stage.

Speaker 1 As to a degree Michael Collins has too. Yes because Collins is a man from Cork, from the southwest of Ireland.

Speaker 1 He's a man who has sponsored kind of shadowy guerrilla warfare, who has taken on the forces of the British Crown.

Speaker 1 And now he finds himself facing rebels

Speaker 1 around County Cork. He's fighting a guerrilla war.
He's using guns and ammunition supplied to him by the British. I mean, he must find this very, very painful.

Speaker 2 It's painful for all of them. It's really a surreal thing to have people that, you know, were your comrades in arms.

Speaker 2 And and within the space of a year you are killing people who are your own flesh and blood really and and and it splits families there are families on both sides of the divide as well so Collins is

Speaker 2 Collins wants the war ended I mean this is this is one of the questions we ask him when he goes down south in August 1922 was he trying to bring an end to the civil war so why do you think he goes to Cork in in

Speaker 2 well he goes to 1922 he goes to Cork for three reasons the first one is he he wants to inspect

Speaker 2 the garrison salaries there. He wants to see what's happening.

Speaker 2 The second reason is that he has heard on the grapevine that the anti-treaty side who had been occupying Cork had taken a huge amount of money

Speaker 2 in revenues from customs and so on.

Speaker 1 Of course, he'd been the finance minister.

Speaker 2 He wanted to get the money back.

Speaker 2 This question is whether he was there to try and bring bang heads and bring sites together. You hear conflicting reports about that, but he does write to W.T.

Speaker 2 Cosgrave on the 21st of August, the day before he's bailing the block.

Speaker 2 He says, you know, the people don't want us to parlay or they don't want any compromise with the irregulars, as they're called, at that stage. And he's also down there too.

Speaker 2 He wants to meet his own people. You know, he's a corkman through and through.
He has, and you'll see on his final day, he's calling in and seeing his family he hasn't seen for a long time.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Well, after the break, we'll get on to the events of that day and we will go through Collins' movements and his fate and then we'll ask what happens at the end of the Civil War and how it's remembered and we'll do all that in a few moments.

Speaker 1 See you then.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to The Rest is History. Ronan, it is the 22nd of August 1922, and Michael Collins has returned to his home county in Cork.
Take us through the events of that day.

Speaker 2 So being the sort of energetic man that he is, he's up at 6.30 in the morning. They leave the Imperial Hotel in Cork and it's a very big contingent.

Speaker 1 He's staying in the Imperial Hotel. Yes, I know.

Speaker 1 And there's a Michael Collins room there, yeah. Oh my God.
The optics of that are very bad.

Speaker 2 So he's basically going around

Speaker 2 with a very large escort in an open top Leyland touring car with a man by the name of Emmett Dalton, who is the general who takes Cork and he's only 24 years of age

Speaker 2 in August. So

Speaker 2 he's a very busy day ahead of him. He's going to meet some of his commanders in the southwest.
He's also going to meet some friends. He's going to try and meet some of the people who are pro-treaty.

Speaker 2 And the thing about this is even though we know that the conventional war is over, this is still very much anti-treaty anti-treaty territory.

Speaker 2 And it's a provocative gesture on the part of Collins to go into this part of West Cork. But as far as he's concerned, this is his home county and he's not going to be kept out of it.

Speaker 2 And he's alleged to have said there are many apocryphal statements, so I can't vouch for this. But he's apparently said they'll never shoot me in my own county.

Speaker 2 So he goes off, and it's an absolute marathon day.

Speaker 2 And it's beset with a lot of problems.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of roads that are blocked, there are trees that are down. One of the cars

Speaker 2 breaks down and needs to be fixed.

Speaker 2 And in the morning, they go past this pub called Long's Pub, which is at a crossroads just outside a place called, which will live an infamy in Irish history, is called Bill Nablaw.

Speaker 2 And he is spotted there by a sentry attached to the anti-treaty site. Entirely by coincidence, there's a meeting that day that the anti-treaty site have in Long's Pub.

Speaker 2 and somebody spots Michael Collins. But by the time they spot him, he's gone.
So the opportunity is lost for them to ambush him. Then he then goes on,

Speaker 2 he goes, visits the old homestead, he goes to visit his cousins in Caharbeg, he goes out as far as Skibberine, which is a long, long way. And this is with a big contingent of men.

Speaker 2 He meets his commanding officers at the Elden Hotel. And then on his way back, he stops at Sam's Cross, the Four Alls public house, and he buys drinks for everybody.

Speaker 2 It's the most infamous or famous drinking session in Irish history.

Speaker 2 He visits his brother Johnny, and there's a drink taken. We don't know how many, but the question is: then, is he a little bit sizzled when he goes through the picture?

Speaker 2 He's had a couple of points in the four alls public house. He's visiting his brother Johnny.
He's in very good form, and

Speaker 2 he thinks they're in the clear, and they're going to go back to Dublin, and he's going to resume his activities the following day.

Speaker 1 But meanwhile, while he's been

Speaker 1 having a few pints and whatnot, these anti-treatyites have made their plans, haven't they? Because they know he's probably going to come back the same way. Yes.

Speaker 2 And that is something that every army officer will tell you, never come back the same way if you're in enemy territory.

Speaker 1 But he has no choice because they'll have trees and things, haven't they?

Speaker 2 So they're going to build Nabla, which is

Speaker 2 ideal ambush territory, right?

Speaker 2 There's a bend in the road it's very steep on both sides of the road and there is a watch for him and most of them have cleared off by about 8 30 as he passes the way we think it was around 8 30 it was certainly twilight and what happens next is that the anti-treaty men who were left is not a huge amount of them start fighting and Emmett Dalton, who is a former British Army veteran of the First World War, tells Collins that they should drive like hell, but Collins overrules them.

Speaker 2 Collins gets gets out of the car and starts shooting back. And what happens next is still a matter of conjecture, but there's only one fatality in this incident.
That's Michael Collins.

Speaker 2 He's shot through the head.

Speaker 2 And that's it. He's one bullet, one fatality.
We believe the bullet was fired from about 150 meters away. So whoever shot him must have been a trained marksman.

Speaker 1 There's a guy called Sonny O'Neill, who a lot of people think it might have been.

Speaker 2 Yes, so he is the chief suspect. And he's named in a documentary in 1990 by one of the men who was part of the IRA intelligence.

Speaker 2 But there's a guy called Paddy Cullivan, who's done his own research on this, and he has a stage play called The Murder of Michael Collins.

Speaker 2 And he said it couldn't have been Dennis Sonny O'Brien, because Dennis Sonny O'Brien wasn't a marksman, and he had been in a...

Speaker 2 German prisoner of war camp, and he had 40% loss of movement in his trigger finger.

Speaker 1 So was it the mafia? The Cuban.

Speaker 2 So his theory is that he was shot by someone on his own side. His own side?

Speaker 2 At the behest of the British. With respect to Patty, he's a friend of mine.
He won't let me say in this, but I'm not inclined to go with that theory. But the autopsy, there was no inquest.

Speaker 2 There were so many things that were done that have given rise to speculation over the years. But I believe that he was shot by the anti-treaty side.

Speaker 2 It was a terrible tragedy.

Speaker 1 And isn't the broader theory that we mentioned how Collins, despite being commander-in-chief, had never actually

Speaker 1 fought in a gun battle. That in a sense, he's kind of playing soldiers here.

Speaker 2 Yes, Emmett Dalton, who fought at the Battle of the Somme, who's a very interesting guy in his own right, and had been beside another lost leader of Ireland, Tom Kettle, who was killed at the Battle of the Somme.

Speaker 2 Tom Kettle had been talked about as the first leader of a home rule Irish parliament. So Emmett Dalton says, if he had known,

Speaker 2 if he'd ever been in scrap, he would have kept his head down. That's what he says.
So Collins' reputation is on getting others to do his bidding bidding for him.

Speaker 1 So, and of course he'd had, I mean, that's why those pints are crucial, right? Yeah. That he's had a couple of drinks and perhaps his judgment is, you know,

Speaker 1 slightly impaired. Yeah.
And you're a little bit more foolhardy than you would otherwise be. So here's the question with Collins.

Speaker 1 Collins is probably, with De Valera, he's one of the single best known men in Irish, in modern Irish history. Does it matter that he was killed in August 1922?

Speaker 1 In other words, when you think about the trajectory of Irish history after the Civil War, what happens in the 1930s and 40s and so on.

Speaker 1 You know, would Michael Collins's existence have changed all that? Does it really matter that he was killed?

Speaker 1 I mean, the most famous, possibly pseudo-comment on this, and you quote it in your book on Henry Wilson, is the quotation from supposedly Eamon de Valera, which ends Neil Jordan's film on Michael Collins, which came out in 1996.

Speaker 1 De Valera is meant to have said, It's my considered opinion that in the fullness of time, history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.

Speaker 2 Yes, 1966, he's alleged alleged to have said that.

Speaker 2 A lot of people would agree with that. But see, the trouble with Collins is he's only 31 when he dies.

Speaker 2 He's not tainted by the messy compromises and the disappointments that would inevitably come trying to rule a new state.

Speaker 2 But I do think that the history of Ireland would have been different had he lived. I feel that he's a much more dynamic.
practical-minded person than me.

Speaker 1 Very able, very good at the kind of practical business of running a government.

Speaker 2 He was and he had, he was a trained banker and

Speaker 2 he he had trained in the post office as well.

Speaker 1 And I think also what's really impressive when you read about him, say going to London to negotiate or whatever, or becoming involved in finance or military or whatever, is how quickly he learns.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 he's just a generational talent. And of course, when he dies, he's 31.
And he's often cited, you know,

Speaker 2 what would Michael Collins have done? And so on. There was even,

Speaker 2 it just goes to show you what the sort of cold he has on the imagination. There was an article in one of the Irish papers here.

Speaker 2 There's this incredibly arcane arcane debate outside about whether Irish Camogie players, it's an Irish form of Ireland, should wear these thing called skorts, which are a cross between shorts and a dress, or should they wear shorts?

Speaker 2 And the final paragraph in it is, well, if Michael Collins was around, he'd have shown the hypocrisy of the Camogie Association.

Speaker 2 And this is kind of, this is, this is, he's constantly evoked, oh, you know, he'd have done this, he'd have done that. I think, you know, we're in the great realms of the great man theory of history.

Speaker 2 I think the history of Ireland would have been different. It certainly would not have accepted partition the way his colleagues in government accepted partition.
I think that's fair to say.

Speaker 1 Do you think the Catholic Church would have had the same degree of influence if he had lived? I mean, De Valera, clearly a more sort of clerical temperament.

Speaker 1 Do you think Collins would have been different? I mean, he's still a very good Catholic boy, isn't he?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think if Collins had lived, I think what would have been different was he would have been much more dynamic in trying to build Ireland up economically and so on.

Speaker 2 But I mean, people have always, people have been speculating, you know, what would, where where was his attitude to the Catholic?

Speaker 2 There's no real evidence that he was any different from the rest of them. It was a very Catholic country.
And the Catholic Church had a huge amount of power and sway here.

Speaker 2 I mean, they ran basically the health services and the education services, and the people were very devout. So whether he could have changed that, I don't know.

Speaker 1 So let's get back to the wider picture. Collins was killed on the 22nd of August.
But as we've said, the war continues for months afterwards until the following summer.

Speaker 1 Although the conventional fighting is over, and we're now talking about guerrilla fighting, there is a kind of an edge to it now, a nastiness, is that right? Yes.

Speaker 1 So for example, the provisional government start summary executions. The British, I think, had executed 24 people during the War of Independence.

Speaker 1 The Provisional Government executed, I think, almost 80. And there's a sort of, there's a real...

Speaker 1 There's a real edge to this now. And do you think that's because both sides have been brutalised by fighting the war for so long?

Speaker 1 Or is it because it's the difference between a civil war and a war against occupiers? Or what is it?

Speaker 2 Well, the provisional government didn't feel constrained in many ways as the British felt.

Speaker 2 And so what happens in September 1922 is that the government brings in the Public Safety Act, which is basically give military tribunals the power to try and execute anti-treaty forces.

Speaker 2 The anti-treaty side say that anybody who passes this legislation will be shot.

Speaker 2 And so you enter this phase of tit-for-tat killings, which seem extraordinary when you look back on it, how these people could have turned on each other like the way they did.

Speaker 2 So the provisional government starts executions in November 1922. And within a few weeks, they've executed.

Speaker 2 Erskine Childers, who's a very famous author, the author of the Riddle of the Sands, who is the secretary of the Anglo-Irish delegation.

Speaker 2 He's found with a pistol in his cousin's house, and they execute him.

Speaker 2 And then the worst aspect of it is, so the Free State comes into being officially a year after the treaty is signed on the 6th of december on the 7th sean hales who's one of pro-treaty mps or tds is shot dead here on the quays and the following morning the newly established free state government take out four men who'd been in the four courts and shoot them summarily without any pretense of a trial so yeats says that uh they're fighting like like was it weasels in a hole yeah that's fighting and of course it's not just um free state on anti-treaty fighters There is also, although the extent of it is, I know, very controversial, sectarian killings and expulsions of Protestants.

Speaker 1 And one of the great social transformations of this period is the decline of non-Catholics in Southern Ireland.

Speaker 1 And I suppose the other notorious social change is the destruction of what are called the great houses, the stately homes of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, including Sir Henry Wilson's family home, which were burnt down.

Speaker 2 Well these are these these houses were burnt in the War of Independence because they were regarded as being places where sort of British armies, British troops were billeted and whatever.

Speaker 2 There was no rationale for the fact that there was over 100 of them burnt by the anti-treaty side.

Speaker 2 in the civil war other than really revenge for whatever it was and one of the reasons that henry wilson was so against the anglo-irish treaty because he believed there are 300 000 of my fellow protestant or unionists in the South.

Speaker 2 What's going to be their fate?

Speaker 2 And I suppose he might feel vindicated by the fact that on the 16th of August, 1922, six days after Dun and O'Sullivan are executed, Curry Greenhouse is burned to the ground and the Wilson family leave Ireland forever after that.

Speaker 2 And they were not bad family. I mean, most of the people, their landlords and such, you know, they did an awful lot of good.
uh in Ireland, but they're gone and they never come back.

Speaker 2 And that is, that, that's a really sad thing.

Speaker 2 And of course, there is the issue, you know, of a lot of the, as you say, the big houses were burnt and a lot of the houses of belonging to some of the free state politicians were burnt as well.

Speaker 2 It was a it was a very, very, very ugly time.

Speaker 1 So, on the war, the savagery of the war, so I was thinking about this. It does seem more savage in lots of ways than the War of Independence.
But then I was thinking about contemporary conflicts.

Speaker 1 So, we're in the early 1920s in Eastern Europe, in the Baltic, with the Freikorps,

Speaker 1 Greece and Turkey, of course. And a comparison that's often made, the Civil War on Finland, which kills, I think, about 25,000 people.

Speaker 2 In the space of three months.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 By those standards, the Irish Civil War, as bloody and as brutal as it is,

Speaker 1 is pretty restrained. And it's remarkable how few people die.
And why do you think that is, given what is at stake?

Speaker 2 Well, it was perfect Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short. It was only 11 months.

Speaker 2 And the number of people who are killed is just just over 1,400, which is not a huge amount, but the destruction is massive.

Speaker 2 And the caliber of people who are killed as well, you know, you're talking about

Speaker 2 some of the finest people, Michael Collins being the most obvious example,

Speaker 2 but he wasn't the

Speaker 2 only one. And

Speaker 2 it's not a civil war, like the Finnish Civil War you mentioned, or the Spanish or the American Civil War, which goes on for years and years and years.

Speaker 2 And that is one of the reasons why, relatively speaking, Ireland's able to recover fairly quickly after the Civil War.

Speaker 1 So it ends in, what are we, the spring-summer of 1923. The IRA Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch.

Speaker 2 It's killed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's killed in April, isn't he?

Speaker 2 That's right. And his successor, Frank Aiken, has a dump arms order and Devil Aira says, you know, victory is with those who

Speaker 2 have destroyed the Republic. This is his melodramatic way of putting it.
So it peters out more than that it ends.

Speaker 2 There's no armistice. There's no peace treaty.
There's nothing nothing like that. It just ends.

Speaker 1 But one intriguing way in which I think perhaps the hatreds and the violence are pacified remarkably quickly, and it's perhaps the greatest

Speaker 1 achievement of Collins' regime, is the fact that after all the kind of paramilitary quality of policing in Ireland over the previous decade and more,

Speaker 1 he has instituted a kind of almost, dare I say, British style police force, a kind of unarmed civic police force. And that would be the garder.
And that is key, isn't it?

Speaker 1 That for the first time you start to get unarmed policemen going into police stations.

Speaker 2 Policing by consent.

Speaker 1 Policing by consent. And the vast mass of people in Ireland of all temperaments, religions, perspectives kind of accept that.

Speaker 2 They do, yeah. And a lot of people say that the war wasn't necessary.
It wasn't necessary, but it was decisive.

Speaker 2 And the most important legacy that the Civil War left is that the state would never be challenged in the same way again.

Speaker 2 And in fact, in 1932, there's a peaceful transition from the pro- to the anti-treaty side. So while it leaves a legacy of bitterness, the country survives.

Speaker 2 And I think that's the most important thing, that the state survives.

Speaker 2 The real cruel legacy of the Civil War is that because the state was unable to deal with the issue of partition, so

Speaker 2 the afters in 1925, this boundary commission that's set up to draw the boundaries and it had originally been anticipated that it would give large swathes of the north to the south, it doesn't do that.

Speaker 2 And because the free state government is so impoverished, the free state government actually allows the border to stay in place as it is

Speaker 2 in return for about £13 million, which was the Irish share of the British imperial debt, because the Irish government's broke. And that sows the seeds for the troubles which occurs later on.

Speaker 1 Could I also just read you something that Charles Townsend writes writes at the end of his book, The Republic?

Speaker 1 And he says, in fact, and against the odds, the emergent Irish state, however tyrannical it seemed to its Republican victims, so that's the anti-treatyites, became a remarkably stable democracy.

Speaker 1 It may even have been too stable. The staters who battled the Republic to a standstill seem to have had their imaginative horizons shrunk by the experience.

Speaker 1 And I guess the stereotype of that would be that de Valera's island becomes kind of

Speaker 1 a craggy island.

Speaker 1 It's a place that people try to escape.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's true. I mean, there was just, if you look at the history of the Irish state from 1922, you're probably looking at the first 50 years were decades of underachievement.

Speaker 2 But then you look at the next 50 years and, you know, you get the full measure of independence. And, you know, Ireland is a very stable, wealthy country.

Speaker 2 It's got its problems like everybody else, but it's a full part of the

Speaker 2 full part of the

Speaker 2 international community, so to speak. So it is remarkable.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you go to other countries like like spain i've been to spain and and the legacy of the spanish civil war is still there but it's not in ireland the the civil war is not it's not an issue that divides people anymore um

Speaker 2 it probably hasn't been for the last 24 although to this day the irish political parties are defined by the role that they played yes but they're both in government now so you have fina fall which is uh which is anti-treaty and then you have finégill which is pro-treaty but they've been in government together to keep out

Speaker 2 since yes 2020

Speaker 2 i I think Sinn Féin would probably be the real legacy of the anti-treaties.

Speaker 1 Can I ask a question that I think would puzzle a lot of our listeners and has often interested me, which is why Devalera, who's

Speaker 1 the last man standing of the big characters that we've talked about to some extent, he had backed the losing side. Yeah.
And yet he gets back into power reasonably quickly.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, within the space of less than a generation, he's back in. And then he stays in and he dominates the century.
How is that possible when he'd lost the war?

Speaker 1 And he had lost the argument.

Speaker 2 yes he had lost the argument but um

Speaker 2 basically essentially uh next year's uh the 100th anniversary the founding of fena fall

Speaker 2 he began to realize very quickly that this this old thing was um was just a total impediment to to any kind of political advancement and 1927 kevin o'higgins who by the way and we're talking about the the viciousness of the civil war he's the minister for justice who orders one of them who orders the execution of his best man at his wedding, Rory O'Connor.

Speaker 2 Kevin O'Higgins is assassinated in 1927, it's after from the from the war and the provisional government or the free state government at the time says if you want to take part in the parliament you've got to swear this oath.

Speaker 2 And De Valera

Speaker 2 walks in and he swears the oath. And then of course the Cuminiel government becomes more and more unpopular and De Valera starts saying, we'll do this, we'll do that.

Speaker 2 And by the 1930s comes along, 1932, you know, a lot of it has been forgotten about the people want to change the same government has been in for 10 years and then he starts to dismantle the treaty gets rid of the oath of allegiance 1938 he gets he gets the treaty ports back these are three ports that the british insisted on keeping and churchill says we have to keep these ports and chamberlain says no no we're giving them back so collins was completely right well i think that he had one island the freedom to become free yes and this is the thing i mean i think he's been vindicated the one abiding issue issue of course in all of this is the issue of partition.

Speaker 2 And this is the issue that is still a live subject today. I mean I make the distinction between history and of civil wars history and partition which is current affairs.
It's still a very important

Speaker 2 issue for an awful lot of people.

Speaker 1 So when the troubles break out in the 60s and intensify in the 70s,

Speaker 1 so much of the language and the visual language of that derives from the Civil War period. So the provisional Irish Republican Army.
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 The shoot, you know,

Speaker 1 as Collins has said about the only eulogy that Athenian needs is the gunman firing over the grave. And all this comes out.
And in a sense, it's a kind of very

Speaker 1 violent form of cosplay, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yes, it is. And in fact, the provisional IRA in the 1970s would say that they were continuing on the fight from the anti-treaty side.
I mean, the IRA never went away after 1923.

Speaker 2 It just became sort of went underground and morphed into something else until 1969. So there's a direct continuity between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the United States.

Speaker 1 And also reading through this account all the hunger strikes and the role that hunger strikes play in the story of Irish independence and you realise the resonance say of Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers that I suspect largely in Britain went completely nobody understood the resonance of that for Irish Republicans.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because Terence McSweeney was you know he's the Lord Mayor of of Cork who died on hunger strike in 1920 in Brixton prison.

Speaker 2 And, I mean, that was a direct imitation of that, the hunger strikes in 1920.

Speaker 1 Right. Ronan, you know what? We're going to be kicked out of the four courts, not by howitzers, but by, I think, a high court judge judge who wants to use the room.

Speaker 1 So on that, I mean, thankfully not a bombshell, only a metaphorical bombshell. We bring this mighty series to an end.
Ronan, you've been a brilliant host and a great guest.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for joining us on the rest of this history. It's been a huge pleasure to have you.
We've been looking forward to it for a long time, and it's lived up to our expectations.

Speaker 2 The pleasure has been all mine, gentlemen.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. Thank you, Ronan, and goodbye.

Speaker 2 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.