The Enduring Legacy Of Michael Collins 100 Years On

21 August 2022
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Luke SprouleBBC News NI


"What if Michael Collins had lived?"


That is the question every visitor to the Michael Collins Centre and Museum in Castleview, County Cork, desires to ask, according to its joint creator Tim Crowley.


Monday marks 100 years since Collins was killed in a gun battle between contending sides in the Irish Civil War.


A century on, there stays a big interest in "the Big Fella", his function in Irish self-reliance and his long-lasting legacy.


"A lot of our visitors are middle-aged and some have parents and grandparents who were involved 100 years back," states Mr Crowley, whose grandma was Collins' cousin.


"But then we also have got 14 and 15 years of age who are huge Collins fanatics who can be found in who know what he had for his last breakfast.


"They toss some really good questions at us."


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Collins was a crucial figure in the battle for Irish self-reliance and was director of intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the War of Independence with Britain, which lasted from January 1919 up until July 1921.


But the terms of the peace treaty with Britain, which he signed, were incredibly controversial and led to a civil war which broke out in June 1922, with the IRA splitting into pro and anti-treaty factions.


Collins was commander-in-chief of the pro-treaty forces, which ended up being the new Irish National Army, but on 22 August 1922 while he was travelling through his home county of Cork his convoy was ambushed by anti-treaty fighters.


Collins got out of his car to combat and in the gun fight which followed he was shot dead.


He was 31 years of ages.


At the time of his death he was chairman of the provisionary federal government of the new Irish Free State, along with leader of its militaries.


To this day people question what may have been if he had made it through and gone on to lead the brand-new state.


"People ask would he have tried to produce a 32 county settlement? Would he have permitted nationalists in the northern state to have been treated the way they were?" Mr Crowley says.


"I think he was the one leader at that time that the evidence suggests had genuine interest in the northern circumstance.


"In his mind the treaty was just the start."


He presumes Collins would have been more powerful when it pertained to the Boundary Commission, which was intended to select where the new border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland ought to lie.


In the end, although the commission recommended small transfers of land in both instructions, its suggestions were never ever implemented and the border stayed the same as it was in 1921.


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The civil war left a bitter legacy in Irish society, particularly the execution of lots of anti-treaty fighters by the brand-new provisional federal government.


The first authorities executions were brought out in November 1922 and they continued till May 1923.


But Prof Marie Coleman, teacher of 20th Century Irish history at Queen's University, Belfast, does not think this would have been any various had Collins not been eliminated.


"There has been a great deal of speculation that the course of the civil war might have been various, that perhaps the acrimony of the executions might have been different," she states.


"I see nothing to recommend that Collins would have prosecuted the war any differently.


"Arguably, he had more at stake in protecting the treaty settlement due to the fact that he had actually been a signatory of the treaty.


"He revealed absolutely nothing in between June and August 1922 to recommend that he would have been any softer on the republican side than Richard Mulcahy was after him."


Collins' killing came just 10 days after the death of Arthur Griffith - another crucial figure in the battle for Irish independence.


Other popular leaders such as Éamon De Valera were now on the anti-treaty side.


But Prof Coleman says those who filled the vacuum were also capable leaders.


"Griffith was changed by WT Cosgrave who was most likely the most knowledgeable politician in Sinn Féin," she says.


"Collins was changed by Richard Mulcahy, who had been the chief of personnel of the IRA during the War of Independence.


"So probably, in truth, he understood more about running the army than Collins would have done."


There is still no arrangement on who fired the fatal shot that eliminated Collins, which has left space for a variety of theories and conspiracies.


Mr Crowley states the events of Collins' final day are the most popular part of the museum and centre which he runs, with visitors always keen to inquire about who was responsible for his death.


"People are interested by the reality he died the way he did," he states.


"He passed away a with a gun in his hand, you could not make it up."


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On Sunday, Mr Crowley will go to the official ceremonies and on Monday the centre is running a journey to numerous places related to Collins, consisting of the scene of his death at Béal na Bláth where they will hold a minute's silence at the time Collins was shot.


One of the more controversial aspects of Collins' legacy stays the reality he agreed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty.


It created the Irish Free State but within the British Empire and with the British King as president, who Irish TDs (MPs) were needed to swear an oath of allegiance to.


It also confirmed the partition of Ireland and the development of Northern Ireland.


"Some individuals state to us that Michael Collins was not a republican politician," Mr Crowley says.


"But I would state he was a practical republican with a strategy that might actually be successful.


"He was the sort of leader who just occurs for a country once in a thousand years."