Book Review
Mick- The Real Michael Collins, Peter Hart, Viking, New York, 2006
This is the 100th Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916- Chocky Ar La
I have spent a fair amount of my adult political life fighting for a just solution to the national question in Ireland and for justice for the Catholic minority in the North (and any Protestant workers who will listen) thus I am no stranger to the name Michael Collins. However, as Peter Hart has gone to pains to describe in his well-thought out biography Mick is a very contradictory man both in his expression of his personal aspirations for Ireland (and himself) and the political choices that he made in the important 1920-22 period just before his death. The consequences of his actions (and others, notably Eamon de Valera) are still being played out today as the struggle for that just solution to the national question continues.
For those who are not familiar with Collins’s biography (affectionately known as the Big Fellow) or have not seen the fairly recent commercial film about his life (starring Liam Neelson) Collins represented that next generation of leaders who survived the Easter Uprising of 1916- the event that is the real start of the modern national liberation struggle in Ireland. Mr. Hart spends some useful time detailing Mick’s schooling, upbringing and the development of his administrative skills that would prove very helpful in his rise to the top of the Irish revolutionary movement. The real meat of the book, however, describes the rocky road to the top in the struggle to break Ireland from English domination.
This period from about 1917 to his death in 1922 is both where his huge reputation was made but also where the limits of his capacity to lead Ireland to real independence from the British are displayed. That failure, exemplified by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, has caused no little ink to be spilled on both sides of the divide that ultimately led to the civil war that tore the republican camp apart. This is hardly the place to have a full discussion of that question but I confess that I am still baffled by Mick’s decision to sign the treaty. To a great extent he, more so than de Valera, was the very Irish face of the military struggle lead by the then current version the Irish Republican Army.
Despite Collins' well-informed and industrious intelligence apparatus formed in his role as ‘commander-in-chief’ of the republican military forces I believe that he overrated the ability of the British to stay in Ireland in the immediate post World War I period. That miscalculation, among other issues, led to the signing of the treaty widely seen as a betrayal of the republican struggle and the abandonment of the peoples in the North. While Collin’s historically has had the best of it on this question though the efforts of his many biographers this thorny issue is still with us. Too much blood has been spilled to ignore it. Read on.
Mick- The Real Michael Collins, Peter Hart, Viking, New York, 2006
This is the 100th Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916- Chocky Ar La
I have spent a fair amount of my adult political life fighting for a just solution to the national question in Ireland and for justice for the Catholic minority in the North (and any Protestant workers who will listen) thus I am no stranger to the name Michael Collins. However, as Peter Hart has gone to pains to describe in his well-thought out biography Mick is a very contradictory man both in his expression of his personal aspirations for Ireland (and himself) and the political choices that he made in the important 1920-22 period just before his death. The consequences of his actions (and others, notably Eamon de Valera) are still being played out today as the struggle for that just solution to the national question continues.
For those who are not familiar with Collins’s biography (affectionately known as the Big Fellow) or have not seen the fairly recent commercial film about his life (starring Liam Neelson) Collins represented that next generation of leaders who survived the Easter Uprising of 1916- the event that is the real start of the modern national liberation struggle in Ireland. Mr. Hart spends some useful time detailing Mick’s schooling, upbringing and the development of his administrative skills that would prove very helpful in his rise to the top of the Irish revolutionary movement. The real meat of the book, however, describes the rocky road to the top in the struggle to break Ireland from English domination.
This period from about 1917 to his death in 1922 is both where his huge reputation was made but also where the limits of his capacity to lead Ireland to real independence from the British are displayed. That failure, exemplified by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, has caused no little ink to be spilled on both sides of the divide that ultimately led to the civil war that tore the republican camp apart. This is hardly the place to have a full discussion of that question but I confess that I am still baffled by Mick’s decision to sign the treaty. To a great extent he, more so than de Valera, was the very Irish face of the military struggle lead by the then current version the Irish Republican Army.
Despite Collins' well-informed and industrious intelligence apparatus formed in his role as ‘commander-in-chief’ of the republican military forces I believe that he overrated the ability of the British to stay in Ireland in the immediate post World War I period. That miscalculation, among other issues, led to the signing of the treaty widely seen as a betrayal of the republican struggle and the abandonment of the peoples in the North. While Collin’s historically has had the best of it on this question though the efforts of his many biographers this thorny issue is still with us. Too much blood has been spilled to ignore it. Read on.
