Michael Collins: A Biography

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S. city with a large population of Irish immigrants—described Collins with adulation, describing his "contempt for danger" through several prior attempts on his life, including a separate attempt only a few days prior. Collins was the only fatality sustained in the ambush, although another member of his party suffered a neck wound. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the IRA. No state gave diplomatic recognition to the Irish Republic, despite sustained lobbying in Washington by de Valera and prominent Irish-Americans and at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

One of his men whispered an Act of Contrition into his ear, but Collins was clearly close to death if not already dead.Mackay also examines the events of ""Bloody Sunday"" 1920, when Collins's security squad assassinated the entire British Secret Service in Dublin (""I paid them back in their own coin,"" said Collins); his part in the negotiations of the Irish-Anglo peace treaty and his own assassination. The Irish Volunteers were created in the same year by nationalists in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (UVF), an Ulster loyalist body pledged to oppose Home Rule by force. The settlement overturned the Act of Union by recognising the native Irish legislature's independence.

He was a member of the London GAA, through which he became associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Gaelic League. My favourite part of this book is in its telling of the War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty that saw the creation of the Irish Free State and the eventual division between the Pro-Treaty faction headed by Arthur Griffiths and the Anti-Treaty faction headed by Eamon De Valera.From 1917, his girlfriend, Madeline (Dilly) Dicker, vivacious and talented, helped to ease the burden of his huge workload as well as acting as a secret agent. I say that rejection of the Treaty is a declaration of war until you have beaten the British Empire, apart from any alternative document. Heavy fighting broke out in Dublin between the anti-Treaty IRA Dublin Brigade and the Free State troops.

Shot while he crossed the pavement from a parked taxi to the door of his house, Wilson suffered six wounds - two of them fatal - to the chest. In addition, Britain's efforts at a military solution had already resulted in a powerful peace movement, which demanded an end to the unrest in Ireland.Much of the work he was involved in after the 1916 Rising with the Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependants’ Fund was mundane – “for the most part he wrote letters, day after day, week after week” – and he was always frustrated with those who were, in his own words “excellent in theory bur rather weak in practical details”. The agreement provided for a Dominion status " Irish Free State", whose relationship to the British Commonwealth would be modelled after Canada's. de Valera, another veteran of 1916, stood for the presidency of Sinn Féin against Griffith, who stepped aside and supported de Valera's presidency. I prefer The Big Fellow: Michael Collins and the Irish Revolution because O'Connor was a storyteller.

However, in private Collins told the northern divisions of the IRA, early in 1922 that, "although the Treaty might have seemed an outward expression of partition, the [Irish] Government plans to make it impossible … Partition would never be recognised, even if it meant smashing the Treaty". It did not establish the fully independent republic that Collins himself had shortly before demanded as a non-negotiable condition. Collins and his supporters argued that de Valera had refused strenuous pleas from Collins, Griffith and others to lead the London negotiations in person. Despite the abdication of a large part of the Dáil, the Provisional Government (Rialtas Sealadach na hÉireann) was formed with Michael Collins as Chairman of the Cabinet (effectively Prime Minister).

Because of this, most northern IRA units supported Collins and 524 individual volunteers came south to join the National Army in the Irish Civil War. After he was shot the fire from the ambushing party quickly fell off and they withdrew from the scene.