Michael Collins - The Movie - RTE 1

[disability student]

My late grandfather worked with Mick as he didn't trust Dev at all. He suspected that Dev was probably a double agent although no evidence otherwise. He placed a lot of ex civil war veterans in the Curragh camp in 1940's.

It was strange when he was let off in the execution of other '16 leaders while at the same time, he survived and also jail break as well.

Grandfather told me that Dev was within ten miles from where Mick was shot as then he went back to Dublin after that.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Well ... put yourself in the shoes of someone responsible for internal security in the IRA. A very senior member apparently escapes from a British jail with a rather romantic story of the escape itself.


I don't know about anyone else but I'd have had him watched like a hawk, fed disinformation in order to see whether it sticks somewhere surprising and a few other tricks just to settle my mind that he hadn't been 'turned' or cut a deal.

[Monetpenny]

The amazing thing is that a lot of contemporaries of De Valera's actually remarked that he was doing "Britain's work".
John Devoy was one & others involved in the Irish Freedom movement in the US & in Ireland said that of his actions.
But none of these people went so far as to say that he was actually a spy.

It does seem astonishing that whatever Irish counter intelligence existed didn't do something to verify the authenticity of the man who miraculously escaped the firing squad & then escaped Lincoln jail in ridiculous circumstances.
But then he did remove himself from the Irish scene immediately after escape & I believe he went directly to America meaning there would have been no opportunity for an investigation.

Whatever about De Valera being within 10miles of Collins when he was killed (I've heard reports to the contrary) it is amazing that his 2 greatest potential rivals, Griffith & Collins, both died within 10 days of each other.

[5intheface]

Whatever about the suspicion that Dev worked with the British against the establishment of a 32 county Republic, it has to be said that Collins certainly did and what he might or mightn't have done had he lived is, sadly, conjecture.

It's sad as Collins seemed to have the potential to become a giant of Irish history but the reality is that his legend is the true giant.

Who would I have preferred on my side? Collins by a country mile but whether it spoils the myth or not, he used British weapons against the vast majority of his former colleagues using as justification, a treaty voted through down the barrel of a gun.

Dev being the devil does not make Collins a god.

[Apjp]

Some questions ..........are not questions.

some sentences.......have only one full stop....

[Apjp]

de Valera was either a very effective British spy or the most incompetent Irish Republican ever.

A lot of what happened to him doesn't make sense. I saw the scene in the movie where dev is writing the letter saying the fact he was born in America might save him.
Well Clarke was an American citizen & he was executed.
Under US law if you act as an officer in a foreign army you automatically lose your US citizenship - so as far as the Americans would have been concerned he wouldn't have been a US citizen.
The US also executed 18 of their own servicemen in England during WWII.
It is simply not true that the US made a furore over de Valera's citizenship.
This is a legend that has developed to explain the inexplicable.

For whatever reason de Valera was spared from the firing squad it was not because of US citizenship.

I'm not so prone to conspiracy theories on this one seeing as how De Valera's one good deed (and thus much of our own lineage) was to preserve our sovereignty by keeping us out of ww2.

Incompetent Irish nationalist aside from 6 years of neutrality fits the bill. It would be mistaken to call Dev a republican, but I don't think he was an English agent. certainly he was no US agent

[Apjp]

We were 'a little bit' neutral.
RAF,USAF & RCAF pilots who crash landed in Ireland were taken over the border.
Luftwaffe pilots were detained.
Allied aircraft were allowed fly over Irish airspace.
1,400 US aircraft & 15,000 passengers passed through Foynes during the war.
70,000 Irish men from the republic served in the British army during the war.
200,000 Irish men worked in British factories during the war.
Irish cargo ships rescued 500 seamen/airmen in the atlantic.
Many German spies were captured in Ireland during the war.
No British spies were caught (maybe they were better spies than their German counterparts)
Irish military intelligence met with their British counterparts & formulated a joint plan in case the Germans invaded.

The Southern ports is a Red Herring.
Even if they had been available, the Allies would not have used them.
Whilst the Germans controlled the Bay of Biscay Allied ships would not take a route across the mid north Atlantic.
Allied shippings preferred routes would be along the south coast of Greenland, Iceland & the north of Ireland, then through the Irish sea to for example Liverpool.

Apart from soldiers, manpower, access to airspace & what military intelligence we had there wasn't much more we could have given the allies.

We were more neutral than that to be fair. Allied soldiers were given 24 hours to get out of the Free state upon landing or they would have to give themselves up. So lets say you crash land in Mayo or Kerry and your plane is knackered. You might struggle to get over the border in time. I read Behan's account of his time as an IRA member in the Curragh during the war and he said as well as all of the above, which was I think also an option to the Germans in the sense if they repaired their planes they were allowed fly out of the country(not sure if they were allowed to cross the border though that would hardly have been wise on the nazis part), that despite this right Candians and Germans oft gave themselves up. Cowards he called them.

[Apjp]

Despite a campaign of historical revisionism in the intervening years I don't think Irish unity was something de Valera was particularly interested in either.
He went about starting the Civil war over the oath of allegiance, not partition.
As there was almost no difference between what he requested as an oath & what the treaty negotiators delivered the dispute that allegedly caused the civil war was changed from the oath to partition.
De Valera was actually excommunicated from the Catholic church for the bloodshed caused by a completely unnecessary civil war.
Then he composed a very pro-catholic Constitution that alienated the northern community even further & was the great hero of the Catholic church.
De Valera may have claimed he wanted Irish unity, but he didn't want it militarily, which is what Collins wanted by continuing the guerrilla war in the north, nor did he attempt to achieve it politically by appealing to northern Protestants.

So while he might have openly claimed he wanted Irish unity he had no idea how he wanted to do it nor did he actually do anything to achieve Irish unity.

A good documentary I saw a while ago suggested that some unionists in the Belfast govt. would have been willing to negotiate on reunification for southern help during the war(quite different from a drunken churchill offer) perhaps in exchange for retaining devolved powers and membership of the commonwealth. And Dev apparently knew this but never floated it at a time when he could have done so because a united administration with 25% Protestant/Loyalist minority would really dilute his political power. It could just have been self preservation more than anything, something his grandson and his grandson's colleagues showed to be a trait in FF even to their current dying days.

Moderates such as Terence O'Neill in the 1960s and a few in the Northern govt of the war years could well possibly have sought such a settlement if they thought it was in their interests. It's a shame O'Neill, on another note, was brought down by that sickening cultist Paisley as himself and Lemass(despite my misgivings about Lemass's EEC views) seemed to be edging closer step by step to all Ireland cooperation if not eventual unity. O'Neill being an Irish name, he probably wasn't cut from the same bigoted anti-republican cloth as Paisley.

[5intheface]

Moderates such as Terence O'Neill in the 1960s and a few in the Northern govt of the war years could well possibly have sought such a settlement if they thought it was in their interests. It's a shame O'Neill, on another note, was brought down by that sickening cultist Paisley as himself and Lemass(despite my misgivings about Lemass's EEC views) seemed to be edging closer step by step to all Ireland cooperation if not eventual unity. O'Neill being an Irish name, he probably wasn't cut from the same bigoted anti-republican cloth as Paisley.

O'Neill was only a moderate in comparison to the other Unionists of the period, laudable to a degree but pointless in the atmosphere of the time. It wasn't just Paisley he had to contend with, the Unionist people made it repeatedly clear that they would have ni truck with any give and take.

BTW, his surname was an assumed one, the family name being Chichester IIRC. His slightly different attitude would more likely have stemmed from the fact that he was born, raised, educated and had his military training in England.

[Kev Bar]

A good documentary I saw a while ago suggested that some unionists in the Belfast govt. would have been willing to negotiate on reunification for southern help during the war(quite different from a drunken churchill offer) perhaps in exchange for retaining devolved powers and membership of the commonwealth. And Dev apparently knew this but never floated it at a time when he could have done so because a united administration with 25% Protestant/Loyalist minority would really dilute his political power. It could just have been self preservation more than anything, something his grandson and his grandson's colleagues showed to be a trait in FF even to their current dying days.

Moderates such as Terence O'Neill in the 1960s and a few in the Northern govt of the war years could well possibly have sought such a settlement if they thought it was in their interests. It's a shame O'Neill, on another note, was brought down by that sickening cultist Paisley as himself and Lemass(despite my misgivings about Lemass's EEC views) seemed to be edging closer step by step to all Ireland cooperation if not eventual unity. O'Neill being an Irish name, he probably wasn't cut from the same bigoted anti-republican cloth as Paisley.

When it came to bigotry, Paddy and the Church could rise to the occasion and do Paisley proud.
Since we are talking about movies, check out the Fethard On Sea boycott of which there was a movie made a number of years ago...A Love Divided...I think.

Hubert Butler's Escape to the Anthill book of essays gives a good account of the sorry affair.

There's also a more recent paperback on the event

There's a nice account of me Da taking on the bigotry of the Church and the silence of the establishment in the name of a true concerned young Catholic.

Strange days indeed.

Re Dev perhaps there is a murky zone where the machinations of ambition and the aims of the spy mingle.

[goatstoe]

Is there one on Collins that you would recommend ?

There might be some docs or films about Collins and the Rebellion Era worth watching in the near future, seeing as the centenary of that time is nigh. That Neil Jordan film about Collins got completely lost in Hollywood movie making trash.

[Monetpenny]

There was an interesting discussion on Michael's demise on Newstalk yesterday evening.
Words like 'killing','execution' & 'assassination' are often thrown about.

His death was part of a timeline of events.
Irish Civil war starts 14th April 1922 when anti-treaty forces occupy the Four Courts.
The Pro-treaty forces do nothing about it & Michael Collins' men continue their armed campaign in Northern Ireland & England.
22nd June 1922 - Sir Henry Hughes Wilson assassinated in London by 2 IRA men.
The British tell Collins & Griffith they had better move the anti-Treaty forces out of the Four Courts or they would do it.
28th-30th June the Free State forces retake the Four Courts.
25th July - 5th August Battle of Kilmallock (largest battle of the Irish Civil War) takes place.
12th August - Arthur Griffith dies.
22nd August - Michael Collins dies - he is the only casualty in the skirmish at Béal na Bláth.
24 May 1923 - Irish Civil War ends.

The timing of the Civil war was very convenient for Northern unionists.
They were under attack from Collins' forces, but with the commencement of the Civil war they were able to ready themselves for any future assaults when Collins ceased his support for northern Nationalists to concentrate resources on fighting the anti-treaty forces.
It is amazing that Collins 'died' within 2 months of Sir Henry Wilson & within 10 days of Griffith, but long enough for the Civil War to begin in earnest with the Battle of Kilmallock.

It may all be a coincidence, but it is amazing how all these coincidences contrived to be so fortuitous for the British/Unionist side.