Michael Collins, unemployment, & mass immigration

Auxiliary troops stop and search civilians during the War of Independence

“The keynote to the economic revival must be … that the people have steady work, at just remuneration, and their own share of control. ”
– Michael Collins 1922

Michael Collins grew up in an Ireland plagued by mass unemployment and mass immigration.  There was famine in the year of his birth, 1890; and its spectre of starvation continued to haunt everyday life.

As a young banking professional in London, a “glass ceiling” kept himself and other Irish hopefuls in the relatively menial clerical sector.  There was no hope of advancement: due to unwritten British policy that the Irish were not to be considered for management positions.

How ironic that this young man, passed over as unfit for management, would go on to manage a nation so effectively; much to London’s cost.

What parallels might be found today in Ireland, and in the rest of the world?   Are we not surrounded by general unemployment, poverty, hunger, and desperate mass immigration for survival?

Have we not seen, in our own lifetimes, how multitudes, once excluded from employment, from management, from professional and government positions, have suddenly broken down socio/political barriers which confined them to menial work and poverty wages?

People of color, and women of all nations, have proven themselves again and again, in fields so recently barred to them.  This writer remembers well the day when it was seriously debated in scholarly circles whether women were biologically incapable of discharging the duties of a government official.  When it was generally believed that women could never be police.  When chaos and mayhem were seriously posited as the results which must be expected if people of African descent were allowed to attend the same schools as those of a lighter complexion, or to follow the same articled professions.

Surely, all things considered, we must ask ourselves whether the immigrating, jobless Irish of today, might manage things well enough, given equal opportunity.  And could desperate millions, now herded into camps,  separated from schools, jobs, homes, all hope of building a life, do their own jobs well enough … if only those in responsible positions did theirs?

Can we not do better?  Is mass extreme poverty, unemployment, and refugee-ism so unavoidable?

#WWMCD : What would Michael Collins do?

“…to stop the national hemorrhage of emigration for the whole of the year.  There you have the practical politics of our new day.”
– Michael Collins 1922

Read more
“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”
by S M Sigerson
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www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714

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Northern Ireland, Michael Collins, and mysterious shootings

McMahon family murders, Belfast, Northern Ireland 1922

What do mysterious shootings & political crises in Northern Ireland have in common with Michael Collins?

No one ever took responsibility for the suspicious killing of Michael Collins in 1922. His sudden death changed the government and the future of his country.

As David Neligan put it, (Collins’ “spy in the Castle,” later a founder of Dublin’s own law enforcement system):

“By means of an old police trick: pretending that his comrades had betrayed him”

Or, in this excerpt from
“The Assassination of Michael Collins: What Happened At Béal na mBláth?“:

“With Collins removed, subsequent Dublin governments were content, or reduced, to leave northern nationalists twisting in the wind.

“Thus it may be seen that removing Collins would have been critical to the fulfillment of British imperialist agendas for the north: agendas which such elements proved demonstrably willing to kill for, and to go on killing for, indefinitely.”

Qui bono? Who gains?

Read more 

“The Assassination
of Michael Collins:
What Happened
at Béal na mBláth?”
by S M Sigerson
Paperback or Kindle edition here:
www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714

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The Spy in the Castle
by David Neligan
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Spy-Castle-David-Nelligan/dp/0953569705

 

 

The Mcmahon Family Murders
and the Belfast Troubles 1920-1922
(Belfast’s secret history series)
by Joe Baker
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mcmahon-Murders-Troubles-1920-1922-Belfasts/dp/B001A4FYMY

(The photo at the head of this post is courtesy of this book by J Baker.  Its amazon link is provided with apologies: as this interesting work can be difficult to obtain.)

 

Arthur Griffith & Michael Collins: Were their deaths connected?

Arthur Griffith 1871-1922)

(The following is an excerpt from the book
“The Assassination of Michael Collins: What Happened at Béal na mBláth?”)

Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein, is considered by many to have been the leading strategist of Ireland’s 20th century independence movement … After ages of continual battle against British imperialism, it was his genius for uniting Ireland’s internal divisions, which brought nationalism into a new, ultimately victorious phase …

… The chances seem astronomical against there having been anything either “accidental”, “random”, or “natural” about the sudden death, within days of each other, of Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, and Harry Boland. Even in the dangerous environment of the Civil War, it would be about equivalent to being struck by lightening while holding a winning lottery ticket.

P S O’Hegerty quotes Griffith himself as saying, in their interview on June 30, “Of course, those fellows will assassinate Collins and myself. DeValera is responsible for this, for all of it. There would have been no trouble but for him.”

[The Cabinet “junta’s”] first step was to isolate Arthur Griffith … shortly before his death [P Moylett] found Griffith sitting alone with not even a secretary or typist available to him.  –  John M Feehan 

Collins, who was working intimately with Griffith on a daily basis at the time, by no means took his death so much for granted as historians have been willing to do. As shown in his personal correspondence:

The death of poor Mr Griffith was indeed a shock to us all, more so naturally to those of us who had been intimate with him, and who thought that his illness was a very slight thing indeed. We shall miss for many a day his cheerful presence and his wise counsel … He had sounder political judgement than any of us, and in this way we shall feel his absence very keenly. 

Although no bounding youth like the C-in-C, Griffith, at 51, was hardly decrepit. The negotiations with Britain, the deterioration of the country into Civil War, certainly would place a tremendous strain on anyone in his highly responsible position. Yet, lest we forget, since the founding of Sinn Fein in 1905, Griffith had lived in the eye of a political storm. His life had consisted of unending controversy, continual persecution; in the course of which he endured years of imprisonment, and constant threat of arrest or assassination.

Yet P S O’Hegerty was even more shocked at Griffith’s demise:

Until the last few months, he never lay in a sickbed. Whoever else died, we felt sure that it would not be Griffith – Griffith with the iron will, the iron constitution, the imperturbable nerve. Griffith, whom we all thought certain to live to be one hundred and write the epitaph of all of us.  Griffith, upon whom we all leaned and depended.

At the time of Griffith’s death, the Civil War was in full swing. A list appears to have issued from some quarter, indicating that members of the Dublin government were to be shot on sight at the first opportunity. Government Buildings became for Griffith and other ministers “a place of internment,” for their own safety…

As for DeValera, that ambitious statesman would never have the most potent political voice in Ireland, as long as Griffith still lived.  Nor would any post-war government led by Griffith ever be supine to British interests …

Read more
“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”
by S M Sigerson
Paperback or Kindle edition here:
www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714

All other e-reader formats:
www.smashwords.com/books/view/433954

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The bombardment of Four Courts: Who gave the order?

The bombardment of Four Courts, June 1922

There clearly seems to be a need for a definitive study on the
actual commencement of hostilities [in the Civil War ]. 

– John M Feehan

Did Michael Collins give the order to begin the bombardment of Four Courts?  Historians have presumed so; but no more.  The evidence casts considerable doubt as to whether the order ever came from Collins himself…  There is no record as to precisely who gave it.

(Excerpts from the book
“The Assassination of Michael Collins: What Happened at Béal na mBlath?“:)

“…a conflict of comrades … would be the greatest calamity in Irish history, and would leave Ireland broken for generations…”

– “The Army Document” signed by Michael Collins, along with an equal
number of prominent pro- & anti-Treaty officers, May 1922
May 1922 – Leaders Strive to Prevent Civil War in Ireland

The hindsight of history demonstrates that he was among the leaders who clearly foresaw just how terrible a disaster these hostilities would bring. Amidst all the trigger-happy factions, baying for blood at that juncture, in London, in the Free State government, and in anti-Treaty camps, Collins by far most strenuously and continually resisted giving battle…

As subsequent events proved, his judgement on this was excellent. It was that explosion of the Four Courts, which he was so keen to avoid, that set off the chain of events which, ultimately, took his own life … he outlived the first shells to hit Inns Quay, by only fifty-five days.

In this sense, the mysteries surrounding the bombardment of Four Courts are directly related to the death of Collins: who may with justice be called one of its first casualties.

This came at a moment when pro- and anti-Treaty throughout Ireland had reached agreement to avoid civil war. Inextricably linked with the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, the shelling of Four Courts shattered the fragile peace, commencing the Irish Civil War… and setting the stage for Collins’ own death.

Who was responsible?

Read more
“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”
www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714
by S M Sigerson
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Wolfe Tone and Michael Collins

Respect our existence: or expect our resistance

 

“ To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection of England – the unfailing source of all our ills – and to assert the independence of my native country … these were my objects.”

 

 

When Michael Collins quoted Wolfe Tone’s words, above, in a 1918 election speech, he knew they would be instantly recognized by his audience. That motto had formed the original seed and core of Ireland’s nationalist independence movement, of which Tone was the idealogical father.

This uncompromising call to action had an impact equivalent to Malcolm X’s pithy summation, over a century later,
“… by any means necessary.”

It was a line drawn in the sand: political change would no longer be a mere debating point.  It was a question of survival.  It was a seizure of the moral high ground, and the right to defend it; in arms if need be.  From this point on, the evil of violent conflict might be considered by nationalists as lesser than the evil of continuing under a regime with genocidal consequences.

Collins’ connection with Tone was not merely rhetorical.  He grew up among those who had fought in the Fenian rising of 1867, and whose grandfathers had risen with Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald in 1798.  Collins’ own father had received his education surreptitiously, before the repeal of the Penal Laws; from a cousin, a hedge school master, who had been a school friend of Tone’s.

Tone helped bring Irish politics intellectually out of feudalism, and into the age of modern republicanism.  Along with other thinkers and doers of the 18th century Enlightenment, he promulgated the idea of a democratic society based on universal human rights, and the consent of the governed.

In 1798, the concept of government by and for the people challenged the age-old order of things.  In previous centuries, people had frequently risen up en masse against tyranny and injustice.  But once risen, had nowhere to go; except to choose between one lord or the other, one king or the other.

Human rights and democracy are ideas which many have the happiness to take for granted now.  Even while, in some parts of the world, they remain very much at issue.

We have also lived to see the flaws in democratic systems.  In two centuries of popular insurrections, and the establishment of modern republics, many things have changed.  And many things have not changed.

Yet there is still much to learn from the thinkers and doers for social justice who’ve gone before.  And from their fate.

Wolfe Tone was taken prisoner in the 1798 rebellion, and died in a British prison.  Michael Collins was shot to death under suspicious circumstances; at the close of a war with England, which could with justice be called a continuation and consummation of what Tone began in 1798.  Both their promising careers were cut off in the bloom of young manhood.  Under current Irish law, too young to run for president.

Both have left an undying legacy of courage, innovation, ideas, writings, achievements, which continue to inspire present and future generations.

*****

Why revolution? Why democracy? See previous post:
Revolution and Democracy
https://collinsassassination.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/revolution-and-democracy/

Read more:
“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”

by S M Sigerson
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www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714
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Michael Collins: “Threats” played no part in signing the Treaty

Michael Collins speaking, Clonakilty, County Cork, 1922

A number of historians and biographers have reiterated the erroneous contention that the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was signed in response to threats of extraordinary military action by the British.

However, this was roundly refuted by Michael Collins himself; who, excepting only Arthur Griffith, certainly carried the lion’s share of work, responsibility, and decision-making in those negotiations.

Others’ writings about Collins often seem to be more readily before the public these days, than the unquestionably more valuable writings of the man himself.

His own cogent statements on this issue are characteristically blunt and penetrating:

“It has been variously stated that the Treaty was signed under duress.  

“I did not sign the Treaty under duress, except in the sense that the position as between Ireland and England, historically, and because of superior forces on the part of England, has always been one of duress.  

“The element of duress was present when we agreed to the Truce, because our simple right would have been to beat the English out of Ireland.  There was an element of duress in going to London to negotiate. But there was not, and could not have been, any personal duress.  

“The threat of “immediate and terrible war” did not matter overmuch to me.  The position appeared to be then exactly as it appears now.   The British would not, I think have declared terrible and immediate war upon us.  

“… The threat of immediate and terrible war was probably bluff. The immediate tactics would surely have been to put the offer of July 20, which the British considered a very good offer, before the country, and if rejected, they would have very little difficulty in carrying their own people into a war against Ireland.

“I am not impressed by the talk of duress, nor by threats of a declaration of immediate and terrible war.  Britain has not made a declaration of war upon Egypt, neither has she made a declaration of war upon India.  But is the conflict less terrible because of the absence of such a declaration?  

“We must not be misled by words and phrases.  Unquestionably the alternative to the Treaty, sooner or later, was war, and if the Irish Nation had accepted that, I should have gladly accepted it.  …

“To me it would have been a criminal act to refuse to allow the Irish Nation to give its opinion as to whether it would accept this settlement or resume hostilities.  That I maintain, is a democratic stand.  It has always been the stand of public representatives who are alive to their responsibilities
…
“The Irish struggle has always been for freedom – freedom from English occupation, from English interference, from English domination – not for freedom with any particular label attached to it.  

“What we fought for at any particular time was the greatest measure of freedom obtainable at that time, and it depended upon our strength whether the claim was greater than at another time or lesser than at another time.

“When the national stiuation was very bad we lay inert; when it improved a little we looked for Repeal of the Union; when it receded again we looked for Home Rule under varying trade names;  when it went still worse we spoke of some form of devolution.  When our strength became greater our aim became higher, and we strove for  greater measure of freedom under the name of Republic.  But it was freedom we sought for, not the name of the form of government we should adopt when we got our freedom.”

(Excerpted from “Advance and Use Our Liberties” from the Treaty debates, 1922; included in:)

“A Path to Freedom”
by Michael Collins
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157332.A_Path_to_Freedom

 

 

 

 

 

Read more:
“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”
by S M Sigerson

 

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Reviewed in Best Reads of the year – Rabid Readers Reviews
http://www.rabidreaders.com/2015/01/05/best-rabid-readers-reviews-reads-of-2014/

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Soloheadbeg: the shot heard round the world

Dan Breen

January 21 marks the anniversary of the Soloheadbeg raid:
first action of Ireland’s War of Independence.

Volunteers Dan Breen, Sean Treacy, & Seamus Robinson of Tipperary took a momentous decision to sieze the day, which proved a good judgement call.  Their timely blow opened an historic guerilla campaign, which ultimately led to the withdrawal of British forces from most of Ireland, after 700 years of military occupation.

In his entralling autobiography, My Fight For Irish Feeedom,  Dan Breen explains how it came about.  His unit set the pattern for how the flying columns would take the lead: assessing the situation in their own regions, and planning tactical operations independently, according to local knowledge, and their own strengths.

Breen also recounts the ordeal he and his comrades in arms suffered in the wake of their daring action.  For months they dodged an intensive manhunt, with next to no official support from the political leadership of the independence movement.

When the first support came at last, it came directly from Michael Collins

“The Volunteers were in great danger of becoming merely a political adjunct to the Sinn Fein organization.  Treacy remarked to me that we had had enough of being pushed around and getting our men imprisoned while we remained inactive. It was high time that we did a bit of the pushing.  We considered that this business of getting in and out of jail was leading us nowhere. At the moment we had nothing definite in mind, but we proposed to engage in some enterprise that would get the ball rolling in Tipperary. We had previously discussed the feasibility of attacking the RIC escort which accompanied consignments of explosives on their way to Soloheadbeg quarry.  The Volunteers were in need of high explosives for grenades and demolition work.  Apart from that, Treacy believed that the forcible taking of the gelignite from a police escort would have a salutary effect on the morale of the Volunteers. In this mood the Soloheadbeg ambush was planned … ”

Read more

My Fight For Irish Freedom
by Dan Breen
http://www.amazon.com/Fight-Irish-Freedom-Dan-Breen/dp/0947962336

 

The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?
by S M Sigerson

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www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714

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Michael Collins in James Joyce’s Dublin

Portrait of the Irish poet Oliver St. John Gogarty painted by Sir William Orpen in 1911. Currently housed at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

(Dr Oliver St John Gogarty – companion of James Joyce and of Michael Collins)

On Bloomsday people all over the world celebrate the Dublin of Michael Collins’ life and times.

Is there any other work of fiction which has spawned its own international commemoration day? 

Many James Joyce fans know by heart the opening scenes of his seminal novel “Ulysses”.   Devotees may be aware that Joyce himself once shared an apartment in that same fabled tower with friends, including Oliver St John Gogarty. 

Gogarty, “a surgeon and man of letters,” was a noted poet of his day.  He published fictionalized accounts of Dublin life (Tumbling in the Hay, 1939), as well as a number of other works.

Joyce’ flatmate Dr Gogarty was also a close friend of Michael Collins.  It was he who fulfilled the sad duty of preparing his boon companion for lying in state.  It is believed that he also acted as official medical examiner, and may have produced an autopsy report … now apparently lost to history.

Gogarty’s  Witness Statement to the Bureau of Military History may be read in its entirety here .

Read more:

“The Assassination of Michael Collins:
What Happened At Béal na mBláth?”

by S M Sigerson

Paperback or Kindle edition here:  
www.amazon.com/dp/1493784714

For all other e-book formats see Smashwords

page:  www.smashwords.com/books/view/433954

Best Reads of the Year – Rabid Readers Reviews
http://www.rabidreaders.com/2015/01/05/best-rabid-readers-reveiws-reads-of-2014/

Ulysses by James Joyce
amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/1494405490
Project Gutenberg ebook online
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm

 

As I Was Going Down Sackville Street
by Oliver St. John Gogarty

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1163144.As_I_Was_Going_Down_Sackville_Street

21 January: The First Dáil & War of Independence

This gallery contains 1 photo.

On this date in 1919, Dáil na hÉireann, Ireland’s national legislature, met for the first time, as an outlawed body, in defiance of the British imperial establishment.  Michael Collins represented Cork South in the First Dáil; while also taking part in organizing the armed campaign for self-determination. (Excerpts from the book:) “On the day of […]