Intro

August 22, 1922. Ireland is at war, but not with Britain. Just months earlier, with the stroke of a pen, 800 years of brutal colonial rule had come to an end, thanks to a treaty negotiated by this man: Michael Collins. So why today, is he in Cork, assessing the state of his military? Because now Ireland is at war with itself, and men who months earlier were Collins' brothers in arms against the British now want him dead. To them, Collins is a traitor. They’d fought a war to win an Irish republic, but Collins with his treaty had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by conceding that Ireland would merely be a dominion like Canada or New Zealand—functionally independent yet still sworn to the Crown which had terrorized the island. But Collins didn't see it that way. Even as he admitted the treaty was imperfect, he believed it was the effect of the thing that mattered, and the British were gone. He'd seen enough blood shed under the banner of grand ideals.

“In my opinion it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire and develop to, but the freedom to achieve it.” (B, pg. 32)

Yet the treaty’s opponents took up arms, and Collins, with the political and military power of Ireland concentrated in his hands at the age of just 32, had no choice but to fight. This is why he was in Cork. Days earlier his pro-Treaty forces recaptured Ireland’s second-largest city. This could be his chance to bring his old comrades to see sense, or else soon strike a final blow. But he would not survive the day.

At 6AM Collins left Cork to survey troops and installations in the region, going first to Macroom, and then to Bandon, stopping along the way to confirm directions with a man on the side of the road, near Béal na mBláth. Collins’s outfit had no idea the man was an anti-treaty scout. On the road for the rest of the day, Collins stopped in his home village of Woodfield, before heading on to Rosscarberry and Skibereen, inspecting troops, meeting old friends and, by some accounts, having a number of drinks along the way. (C, ch. 7)

Finally, in the late evening, Collins and his men began the winding journey back to Cork, along the way they’d come. Around 8pm, the motorcade—a transport truck, armored car, motorcycle scout, and Collins’s touring car, top down—reached Béal na mBláth, where they’d asked for directions. But the road was blocked. Shots began to ring out. It was an ambush.

Emmet Dalton, riding with Collins, shouted at the driver, “Drive like hell!” But Collins overruled, booming over the gunshots, “Stop! Jump out and we’ll fight them!” (C, ch. 7) For thirty minutes, the two sides exchanged fire. When the gun-smoke finally cleared, only one man lay dead: Michael Collins.

It was an absurd death. Collins had been a leader of the Irish revolution since its inception. It was he who raised the money to run the war, he who managed Ireland’s network of spies and assassins, he who was more feared by the British than any man in Ireland, and he who had managed to negotiate an end to all the bloodshed and a new dawn of Irish freedom. Yet here he lay: shot dead in a battle he could have avoided and should have survived.

Moreover, it didn’t fit with Collins’s reputation as a pragmatist: a label used to denigrate his life’s work and the compromised treaty which never lived up to the measure of idealists. Why would such a man stand and fight? The truth is that Collins was an idealist of a kind so profound few then and fewer today could comprehend him. This is his story.

I: Irish Soul

Not far from where he died, on a farm in Woodfield, Michael Collins was born in 1890. It wasn’t long, however, before the ambitious young man felt called to leave the rolling country hills behind. So he applied to work for the British Postal Service and, thanks to a solid education, got the job. Not yet 16, Collins moved to London, where he lived with his older sister Hannie. It would prove a formative period (C, ch. 1).

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Now, back to Michael Collins.

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Consumed by his urge to achieve ever more, on top of long hours at the Post Office, Collins took night classes at King’s College, composing for one course a telling essay on ambition.

“In the history of the world’s most famous men we find that all of them were ready to venture even their existence on the attainment of their ends. Washington played for a large stake, and it was only by venturing everything that he was master of, that he won it.” (C, ch. 1)

Yet after several years stuck clerking in the back rooms of dusty London offices, Collins hardly felt like Washington. The burning ambition which brought him to London couldn't be quenched here—he was an Irishman in an Englishman's world. In turn, he began to drift. According to one of Collins’s mentors from these days, he lacked direction and purpose. “He fell into spasmodic association with a hard-drinking, hard-living crowd from his own place, and their influence on him was not good.” (E, pg. 15)

But soon Collins found the antidote to his isolation and marginalization: engagement with Irish culture and community. He began studying the Irish language seriously, earning a certificate of proficiency. Moreover, he took up hurling, a traditional Irish sport which like the native language had been illegal for centuries, and rose to secretary for his club. Here was a sign not just of vague ambition, but the grit and determination needed to realize it. Secretary was tedious, unglamorous work, and his club wasn't known for its success on the field. But Collins was willing to do what it took to keep the organization alive: filing paperwork, managing the schedule, collecting dues. (C, ch. 1)

Beyond serving as an outlet for his ambition, here Collins also found a ‘north star’ of sorts, a motive for his ambition beyond mere self-advancement. Because at this moment, the Gaelic Athletic Association or GAA — the parent organization for hurling and other Irish sports — was deeply divided on a critical issue known as “the ban:” a policy which barred from GAA membership anyone who played or defended the play of “foreign” sports.

This was Irish cultural chauvinism, plain and simple, but it stemmed from an earnest desire to guard the gains made in the resuscitation of Irish culture from the brink of extinction. Though "the ban" had more than a few critics, Collins loved the policy. At a semi-annual club meeting, he took the floor to motion a condemnation of the GAA county board for commuting the suspensions of men who’d violated the ban. (C, ch. 1)

Collins’s motive was clear: he had a love fore Irish culture and a wish to see it restored and flourishing once more. This focus on a national or cultural "spirit" was a little old-fashioned. It had been popular decades ago among so-called Irish Romantics but by the 1900s, Irish nationalism had taken on an increasingly ‘political’ flavor — prioritizing particular ideas of republican political institutions, shunning any mention of “spirit” or “soul.” (C, ch. 5) They would never understand Collins’s idealism.

But whatever his idiosyncrasies, Collins found kinship with the Irish Republican Brotherhood or IRB, a secret society which sought independence for a republican Ireland. There were a number of IRB men in the GAA, and in 1909 Collins was initiated. Though the group was then more ceremonial than militant, by 1913 things were heating up. In response to the formation of pro-English militias, nationalists founded the Irish Volunteers. Collins joined right away. The next year, war in Europe exploded.

To the young nationalists in London like Collins, this was not their fight, and when in 1915 they all suddenly became eligible for conscription, they fled back to Ireland en masse.

II: Bungled Terribly

With this sudden influx of thousands of dedicated young men, the Dublin IRB and Volunteers knew they had to seize the moment while Britain was distracted by war in Europe. Collins immediately threw himself into the planning, and on Easter Monday April 24, 1916, the Rising began. Joining more than a thousand rebels, Collins marched in military uniform through the streets of Dublin, as the men occupied key points around the city. (A, ch. 2)

An aide to the Volunteers' military chief, Collins was stationed at the Rising's headquarters, the General Post Office building. (A, ch 2) There, he witnessed Patrick Pearse—poet, teacher, and leader of the Rising—declare,

”We hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the case of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.”

In closing, Pearse added,

“In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour…prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.” (K)

No longer would Ireland suffer under the might of the crown; now, she would be a free and independent republic…or so the revolutionaries said. It was a grand, symbolic statement befitting the Rising's grand, symbolic action. But bold promises now met the strength of the British Empire who, despite being caught off guard, immediately marshaled thousands of trained soldiers to descend on Dublin. It wasn't hard to blast the rebels out, when they advertised and held to static positions in Dublin. Though they held out for a full week, they had no choice but to surrender. (A, ch. 2)

Collins and the other revolutionaries were arrested and dispersed to prisons across Britain. Within weeks, imperial authorities ordered the executions of Pearse and the other Rising leaders by firing squad. (A, ch. 3)

Dodging execution himself, Collins immediately began thinking about what had gone wrong in the Rising, how not to repeat its mistakes. In a letter, he wrote:

I do not think the Rising week was an appropriate time for the issue of memoranda couched in poetic phrases, nor of actions worked out in a similar fashion. Looking at it from the inside …it had the air of a Greek tragedy about it…On the whole I think the Rising was bungled terribly, costing many a good life. (H)

For Collins, those “poetic phrases” from Pearse and the corresponding actions—trying to square off against a world superpower as though the Irish were a trained regular army—were not just impractical but profoundly tragic and costly. But it wasn’t the revolutionaries’ republican romanticism that he thought was misplaced. Their error had been failing to think strategically about how to transform their ideals into reality, and adopting the wrong methods for the moment.

III: The Collins Method

Upon release from prison at the end of 1916, Collins eschewed any flashy gestures of resistance, looking for work that could only be described as mundane: organizing funds for the dependents of the Rising’s dead and imprisoned. (A, ch. 3) Yet this was no retreat from the north star of Irish independence. As in his work for the hurling club, Collins was doing the boring but necessary work to keep the movement alive, as the funds he raised kept up the rebel spirits and financed inspiring public funerals for the fallen.

At the same time, Collins now began to climb the ranks of Sinn Fein, an Irish republican political party which stood in the British parliamentary elections of 1918, following the end of World War One. Across Ireland, Sinn Fein candidates like Collins—standing in his home county of Cork—swept the vote, winning 73 of 101 seats. (A, Ch. 3)

But instead of going to London to take their seats in a Parliament irreconcilably opposed to all they stood for, Collins and his colleagues stayed in Dublin. There, on January 21, 1919, they convened the Dáil Éireann, a new parliament of, by, and for the Irish. (A, ch. 3) That same day they ratified Pearse's Rising proclamation and declared the independence of Ireland:

We, the elected Representatives of the ancient Irish people in National Parliament assembled, do, in the name of the Irish Nation, ratify the establishment of the Irish Republic and pledge ourselves and our people to make this declaration effective by every means at our command. (N)

That last part—”every means at our command”—could only mean one thing: war against Britain.

There was just one problem: they had no way of making such a war. They needed weapons, ammunition, above all, money. To get it, the Dáil issued a bond, raising money on the promise of repayment when they triumphed over the British. Just escaped from prison, the Dáil's President Eamon de Valera headed to America to raise funds, while the young finance minister Michael Collins was tasked with drumming up contributions throughout Ireland. (A, ch. 4)

Despite London's best efforts to obstruct the fundraising, Collins was in his element—doing the boring work that kept the machine alive—and by the summer of 1920 he'd amassed over £370,00: surpassing the target of a quarter-million by nearly 50%. It was more than enough to fund not only armament but also allowed the Dáil to begin working like a real government with a civil service and administration. (A, ch. 4) They weren't just issuing grand proclamations.

But Collins wasn’t just a financial bureaucrat; he was the Irish Republican Army or IRA’s director of intelligence, too, recruiting and managing a network of spies inside the feared Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police. Beyond mere espionage, Collins's so-called squad were feared as the most ruthless men in Ireland, known to seize pivotal men of the crown off sidewalks, trams, and out of their beds for summary executions. (A, ch. 4) It was grimy work, without the appearance of "valour" for which Padraig Pearse had called in 1916, but unlike Pearse, Collins kept Irish soldiers alive and struck fear into whatever enemies he didn't kill. In turn, he had few compunctions about the brutality.

"For myself, my conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting and destroying, in war-time, the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin." (I, pg. 106)

This, of course, made Collins a wanted man, and resulted in a series of clever escapes from authorities that made him a hero at home and a slippery villain in the British press, the romantic figure of the war. Yet Collins remained the diligent manager, shuttling around Dublin on his bicycle between a variety of hidden offices, evaluating extensive financial and intelligence reports with his fastidious eye for detail.

All of this was characteristic of the new Irish way of war, which Collins was instrumental in developing. Though de Valera advocated for pitched battles with the British, Collins and the IRA were intent on avoiding the follies of 1916, and so they waged a guerrilla war with part-time soldiers undertaking lightning attacks on police stations and military barracks, only to slip into the wilderness or back to their day jobs. This strategy made life a fearsome hell for those agents of British power tasked with keeping the Irish people pacified, and in doing so forced the British government into an impossible dilemma: either react with extreme force, cementing their reputation as a brutal occupier, or just withdraw their men to safer territory, leaving swathes of the country under Irish control.

And indeed, that’s exactly what the British did: waver between these two strategies for two years, repression and withdrawal, unable to commit to either. There were no pitched battles, no climactic engagements between the Irish nation and the forces of the Crown, just lightning raids, grisly street murders of British agents, and brutal reprisals.

IV: Path to Freedom

But after 18 months of this gruesome conflict, in July 1921 Britain signaled something momentous. They wanted to negotiate. So the two sides made a truce.

It was an enormous victory for Irish nationalism, unlikely anything else achieved in hundreds of years, but as the Dáil began assembling its negotiating team to send to London, Collins wanted no part in it. This wasn’t out of opposition to a deal; unlike some who thought the truce was a sign Ireland was truly winning the war, Collins knew that there was no way Ireland could checkmate King George and dictate terms to London.

No, he resisted because Collins knew negotiating wasn't his strength. In his own words,

“For several years—rightly or wrongly makes no difference—the English… pictured me a mysterious active menace – elusive, unknown, unaccountable… If and as long as the legend continued to exert its influence on English minds, the accruing advantage to our cause would continue. Bring me into the spotlight of a London conference and quickly would be discovered the common clay of which I am made!” (F, pg. 106)

Yet despite Collins's objections, de Valera appointed him to the team, and in October they all headed to London, where the delegation faced a daunting challenge. Not only were these rebels inexperienced negotiators facing down experts such as Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Colonies Secretary Winston Churchill, de Valera had dispatched them with impossible orders.

If the British held firm against a republic, he could tolerate “external association” with Britain—essentially a status of informal friendship—but nothing more. It quickly became clear, however, that London would never allow this, either. Still the team held to de Valera’s increasingly unrealistic demand until by November it became clear talks would fall apart if they maintained their insistence. And that would mean a return to war.

Back in Dublin, Collins and others pleaded with de Valera, and in response he gave them a perplexing directive. Though they were instructed to insist on external association, they were legally authorized to sign a deal as they saw fit. More confusing still, despite this authorization they were still asked to return and present the deal to the Dáil before doing so. (C, ch. 4)

Empowered yet undercut, on the afternoon of December 4, 1921 the team met once more in London with their British counterparts. One man was missing: Michael Collins. He knew that despite some members’ objections, they would follow de Valera’s line, and talks would collapse. He was right.

But by staying away from this calamitous meeting, Collins got the negotiators a second chance. The next morning he met with Lloyd George and convinced the Prime Minister to invite the team back for another meeting. (L)

That afternoon until late in the night, the two sides met one last time. Here, they hammered out a number of sticking points. Importantly, external association remained a pipe dream. Dominion status—like that held by Canada or New Zealand and which promised practical independence alongside symbolic deference to the crown—was the only option on the table. Still, thanks in part to Collins the Irish delegation secured significant improvements to the treaty: amendments to the oath of allegiance to the crown, full fiscal autonomy, the possibility of a future Irish Navy, and improvement of language surrounding the Irish military.

Following these concessions Lloyd George promised the delegates “immediate and terrible war” if they refused to sign. They acquiesced and returned to Dublin with not another draft but a treaty bearing their signatures. (C, ch. 4)

De Valera was incensed, and though ratification was up to the Dáil, not to him, he was hardly alone. Many representatives were outraged at the oath of allegiance to the crown which they would have to take to serve in the new government. So, for nearly a month straight, the Dáil debated the terms. Countless speeches were made against and for it, including many by Collins, until finally on January 7, 1922 the Dáil held a vote. Of the 61 votes necessary for ratification, the treaty received 64. Ireland would have freedom, even if it was imperfect. (M)

In response, the treaty's opponents, including de Valera, quit the Dáil in protest. In his absence, chairmanship of the Provisional Government—the executive in charge of transition—fell to Collins. He worked strenuously to win back his long-time colleagues and comrades-in-arms, even drafting a constitution so republican that Lloyd George rejected it out of hand and accused Collins of evading the terms of the treaty (J, 329). But it would never be enough. In June, despite Collins’s desire to preserve his nation, he was forced to fight a war against his own countrymen.

A mere two months after its outbreak, on August 22, 1922 he left Cork to survey the state of his troops in the area.

V: Pragmatism - Idealism

Collins, in a word, was methodical: a patient, diligent worker willing to do the unglamorous tasks necessary to achieve the objective. Yet this Collins has been largely forgotten, because it doesn’t sit with our expectations of what heroism looks like. Even as he lived, his reputation—gunslinger, spymaster, escape artist—swelled into a mythology both amongst his enemies and his allies, to say nothing of its enlargement in the century since his death.

And in adhering to this mythos we don't merely distort Collins's memory, we lose sight of that which makes him worth remembering: his dedication to national unity and progress, in principle, ahead of any particular short-term political objectives.

As a young man it was his nation's restoration—the rejuvenation of its soul—to which he felt called, before any policies. Hardly starry-eyed, however, in the revolution he rejected the poetic instincts of the Rising and de Valera, that the British must be fought head-on for reasons of dignity and valor, because Collins knew this would destroy his nation. And face-to-face with Lloyd George and Churchill, Collins secured Irish independence, even if it was imperfect, because he knew that obsessing over the political details risked undoing all their progress.

This attitude is often called pragmatism, a sort of patronizing label which suggests its practitioners may win small victories but lack the serious commitment to high-minded goals which constitutes...idealism. But the story of Michael Collins calls this dichotomy into question.

He didn't just win small victories, he employed his pragmatism in the achievement of the very ideals his critics claimed to champion yet declined the opportunity to realize. In this light, it seems perverse to regard as "idealistic" by comparison a man like de Valera who was willing to subject the Irish public to continued war and deprivation over a detail that could—and would—be corrected peacefully over time.

As Collins put it in 1922,

“Fidelity to the real Ireland lies in uniting to build up a real Ireland in conformity to our ideal, and not in disruption and destruction as a sacrifice to the false gods of foreign-made political formulas… We must be true to facts if we would achieve anything in this life. We must be true to our ideal, if we would achieve anything worthy. The Ireland to which we are true, to which we are devoted and faithful, is the ideal Ireland, which means there is always something more to strive for.” (G, pg. 15)

Though he left behind unfinished work, Collins’s treaty gave his nation the freedom to achieve freedom, and today Ireland is indeed the republic of which not only his critics but he too dreamed, even as it remains incomplete: Irish culture still full of British influence, the Irish language still a small minority to English, the north still held by the British crown.

Yet in his example, there is one crucial lesson to be learned. Among those who desire change or progress in society, it can be fashionable to shame those who focus on incremental advancement and embrace methods that lack high-flying rhetoric or instant moral clarity: to denigrate so-called pragmatism. But in the end, there isn't pragmatism or idealism. As Collins shows us, pragmatism is idealism. It’s an expression of durable faith in one’s ideals, faith that the ideal is strong and can withstand slow progress and setbacks and that, in the end, if we seize what opportunities, however small, to advance it, we may bend the long arc of history toward its achievement.

That may not be popular in this day and age, but I suspect if we allow this idealism to vanish, we’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Post-Roll

If you made it this far—first of all, thanks—but also you may be keen to learn more about Ireland, Irish history, or the potentially mysterious death of Michael Collins. In that case, I’ve got four watch recommendations for you.

For another look at Collins’s death, check out the fascinating deep-dive “Cold Case Collins.” If you want to dig into the details of the treaty debates that took place in 1921, try “Treaty Live” which reimagines the moment as though it were happening today. And finally, if you’re eager to learn about the history of how Ireland was colonized way back when, “Invasion: The Normans” is a super interesting peek into the 12th century. Or, watch that documentary I mentioned earlier in the video about Christianity in Ireland, “The Land of Slaves and Scholars.”

All these are available on RTE which, if you’re not in Ireland, you’ll need a VPN to watch. Luckily we’ve got a great discount on CyberGhost, who have sponsored this video and make it super easy to access all those shows and more. To get set up, just follow our link in the description to get that discount for only $2 a month, with four months free. Once you’re signed up, just look for Ireland RTE in the servers, and follow the links to each of those shows available in the description.

Sources

A. Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: A Biography. Head of Zeus, 1990.

B. Dáil Éireann Official Report: Debate on the Treaty, 19 December 1921. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/Dáil/1921-12-19/2/

C. Anne Dolan, William Murphy. Michael Collins: The Man and the Revolution. Ireland: Collins Press, 2018.

D. Dáil Éireann Official Report: Debate on the Treaty, 10 January 1922. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/Dáil/1922-01-10/2/

E. P.S. O’Hegarty, The Victory of Sinn Féin (Dublin, 1998; 1st ed. 1924)

F. Hayden Talbot, Michael Collins’ Own Story (Dublin, 2012; 1st ed. 1923)

G. Michael Collins, The Path to Freedom. https://cartlann.org/dicilimt/2021/07/The-Path-to-Freedom-1.pdf

H. Collins to Kevin O’Brien, 6 October 1916.

I. Rex Taylor, Michael Collins (London, 1964; 1st ed. 1958).

J. Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution, 1910-1922, United Kingdom: Faber & Faber, 2013.

K. Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Irish_Republic

L. Memorandum by Collins on meeting with Lloyd George, 5 December 1921, NAI, DE2/304/1. www.difp.ie/docs/1921/Anglo-Irish-Treaty/212.htm

M. Dáil Éireann Official Report: Debate on the Treaty, 7 January 1922. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/Dáil/1922-01-07/2/

N. Declaration of Irish Independence, 21 January, 1919. https://www.amrevmuseum.org/virtualexhibits/cost-of-revolution/pages/declaration-of-irish-independence