MICHAEL COLLINS is, of course. back in the news again thanks to a film which enjoys a highly selective guest list. I have not seen the film, belonging as I do to a tiny, tiny band which detests the deeds and legacy of Michael Collins. When I see it I will have to pay for the privilege, but I do know already that the film treats Collins as a hero.
He was no hero in my book. He organised murder and was unable to put back that genie of homicide in the bottle which he "had uncorked. We should now be asking hard questions about; its originator, and whether it was necessary for him and his generation to resort to violence.
I firmly believe not. And while imposing opinions and values from 1996 on events of 1919, when Collins's squad began its murders, is of only limited use in assessing people in their own time, it is absolutely vital in considering whether such people should be regarded as heroes by our own standards. By those standards, Michael Collins was a frightful man.
Gerald O'Nolan, of Limerick, disputes Garret FitzGerald's criticism of the Collins film for its allegation that the leaders of the Rising were roughed up. He quotes two sources in rebuttal, neither of which says that the leaders were roughed up.
One refers generally to indignities, the other says that Tom Clarke was stripped naked in the grounds of the Rotunda Hospital. No other source says this - none whatsoever - though so many people associated with the Rising gave their view of events in the following years.
Sent His Gunmen
Yet even if the allegations were correct, they do not justify murder. Virtually nothing does. To resort to the taking of life requires special circumstances - and those circumstances were not justified when Collins began to send out his gunmen.
This is not to justify the crass and blundering idiocies of the British Government, nor the brutalities and the homicides of its agents. But, after all, nobody is making films saying what fine fellows they were and whatever he was - and that certainly includes charming Michael Collins was not a fine fellow. He introduced to Dublin life the rule of the 20 year old killers - and few things are as terrifying as the righteous murders of a vigintocracy.
The first murder by The Squad occurred eight months before the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries arrived in Ireland. It was of Det Sgt Patrick Smith, from Cavan, who was fatally wounded outside his house in Millmount Avenue, Drumcondra. He was a married man and a father of seven, his oldest child being 17 years old.
He had just got off the tram at Drumcondra Bridge when he was shot by several men. The first person to his side was his 17 year old son, who dragged him into the family home, bleeding profusely. Patrick Smith's wife was away on holiday and his children had to cope with this appalling deed alone. His eight year old son ran after the assassins but they were gone, embarking upon a career which would see their cold blooded murders exalted and praised, and their victims forgotten.
Death Squad
What had Patrick "The Dog" Smith done to deserve this treatment? He was a policeman, to be sure. But he did not belong to a death squad. He was a member of G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and did his duty and merely because we might oppose the execution of such duties does not mean we should murder those we disapprove of.
Once we admit that principle for ourselves, then we admit it as acceptable for others - such as the later murders of "IRA men" by A, B, and C Specials.
I am not saying the security forces were not killing people at that time. But such killings were in spontaneous and occasional affrays, few in number. Times and tempers were heated; what was not needed was the warming of those tempers by cold blooded murder, exemplified by the attack on a group of soldiers attending church service in Fermoy. in which four were shot.
The Most Rev Dr Browne. the Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, said of this murderous attack on church goers: I read of no circumstance in the case to mitigate the savage atrocity of the crime. The little band of soldiers had given no cause of provocation. . (and) were proceeding in an orderly and inoffensive manner to their religious Sunday service... It was a fearful tragedy, a savage; crime, which cried for vengeance from God."
It was after this atrocity, and the subsequent sacking of Fermoy by maddened soldiery, that the British committed the cardinal and idiotic blunder of outlawing Sinn Fein and suppressing Dail Eireann. Collins responded by sending out The Squad to murder Det Daniel Hoey, who had participated in a raid for documents on Sinn Fein's headquarters.
Glass Of Milk
A bachelor who lived in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) Station, he had just returned from a holiday at his home near Edenderry. He popped into Furlong's shop in Townsend Street and bought himself a glass of milk. As he walked back to his quarters he was ambushed, his killers shooting him through the throat, the chin and the heart.
Murder was spreading through the land. Possibly the momentum was inescapable; whatever it did, the IRA campaign of insurgency did not hasten, but rather postponed, the process of talks, of peace. At the time when poor young Hoey lay dying round the corner from this newspaper, the British Government's Irish Committee was finishing its final report, which it then published.
Another 18 calamitous months had to pass before the report became the basis of the Treaty. As the report said: "In (our) judgment it is essential, now that the (Great) War is over, and the peace conference has dealt with so many analogous questions in Europe, that the government should make a sincere attempt to deal with the Irish question once and for all." (My italics).
Instead, futile, bloody war followed, whose primary victim was Ireland and its people. Those who brought about that war should not be lightly judged for the calamity they visited on their own land - not least because The Squad's heirs are with us still, and murdering still.