That's the question the movie
Michael Collins staring Liam Neeson poses.
Collins shaped the IRA out of a nest of
informants, drunks and melodramatic would-be martyrs into
a fighting force. But Collins was
murdered by his own people using the very tactics he had mastered.
However the movie opens not with the formation
of the underground army skilled in sleuth and carrying on a cloak and
dagger war, but in failure: The failed attempt at uprising on Easter Sunday 1916.
Among those taken prisoner was Michael Collins, not yet the
`Big Feller' or `The Commandant,' only a lesserling.
The real life Michael Collins was born in County Cork in 1890,
the youngest of eight children. West Cork was the heartland of Fenianism,
the Irish nationalist movement. As
a youngster Michael would hear stories of earlier failed
Irish rebellions in 1798 and 1848. "My first tutors ***,"
Collins reflected, "infus{ed} into me pride of
the Irish as a race."
Irish-born Liam Neeson stars as the
Irish Patriot Michael Collins.
In Michael Collins Neeson has a hard act to follow, both
in terms of persuasively bringing to life a complex warior and
in competing with the eloquent portrait of a Rebel that
American actor James Cagney
created in the 1959 film Shake Hands With The Devil.
Although Neeson shares with real life Collins
and American James Cagney who starred in
Shake Hands With The Devil youthful laurels
in the ring as a boxer. Neeson, unlike Cagney, appears to have
been drawn to the stage without an interest in politics.
Neeson debuted in Belfast before moving on to
Dublin's Abbey Theater where he would
perform the classics. Although Neeson has starred in
films with Celtic themes such as Excalibur (1981)
and Rob Roy (1995), Neeson lacks
Cagney's allegience to the Irish cause.In 1999
Neeson joined mountebank Ronald Reagan as an Officer of the Order
of British Empire (OBE).
Michael Collin's times were without hope
of tributes between the ancient enemies.
Nationalist newspapers and
Sinn Fein ("We Ourselves"), a nationalist party fueled the ferment in
advocating
Home Rule and revival
of the Irish language. With the outbreak of the First World War,
The Irish Party in the British Parliament proposed in the House
of Commons that Irish
Volunteers serve in England's Cause. Some Irish did join
the British war effort, while others plotted armed rebellion.
On Easter Sunday 1916 the Irish Volunteers took over
the main buildings in the city of Dublin.
Michael Collins fought in the General Post Office alongside
the leaders of the Rising.
After five days of fighting the Volunteers were forced
to surrender. The leaders of the rebellion were executed.
"They have died nobly at the hands of the
firing squads. So much I grant. But *** the Rising
*** looking at it from the inside .... [lost] many a good life.
[to] panic decisions and a great lack of
very essential organisation and co-operation."
Collins and his fellow Volunteers were rounded up
and sent on a cattle boat to English prisons. Anxious to
defuse public sympathy and confident that nothing
more than the usual silly
and flowery speeches would follow,
the British released the
remaining prisoners.
Michael Collins, at the graveside of a prisoner who starved
to death in a hunger strike, orated:
"Nothing additional remains to be said. That volley which
we have just heard is the only speech which it is proper
to make at the grave of a dead Fenian."
However as a warrior Collins carefully weighed the risks, avoided
rash moves, direct confrontation and pitched battle.
In the peaceful interlude, Collins organized an effective intelligence gathering operation and penterated
G division of Dublin City Police. The G-men
fronted for British military intelligence in Ireland.
In the war of words Irish politicans railed
against conscription. The arrests which followed fuelled
nationalist
resentment. Uncompromising
Sinn Fein dominated the snap election
called at the end
of the First World War. Only 6 seats were won by advocates of compromise.
the Irish MPs met in Dublin's Mansion House as Dail Eireann
(Irish Parliament) and
declared independence.
The shooting war was not far behind. In September 1919,
Sinn Fein, the Volunteers and
the Dail were driven underground. Collins concentrated
on a guerrilla war conducted by flying squads
which carried out their mission and melted away.
A select group of Volunteers,
called `The Squad,'executed British agents. Demurely
Collins cycled around British police and soldiers in the guise of a
businessman.
Using an "invisible army" of plainclothes terrorists,
Collins began systematic assassinations of key British
figures. To quash collaboration,
Collins imposed a death penalty on friends of the Crown.
As his power and successes grew, Collins threatened
the position of the nascent Irish Republic's
president, Eamon de Valera.
Alan Rickman plays Eamon de Valera the way Collins described him:
a bespeckled nit picker, a marked contrast to the tough but unassuming Collins.
De Valera supporters sharply criticize the movie for portraying
De Valera as a weak though devious, mannered, sniveling prima donna,
an Irish villain to balance British atrocities.
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It is hard to ask the Irish to look clinically at the De Valera-Collins
fall-out. Objective reality often differs from a romantic story.
But of course, can we blame the Irish alone for such a failing?
In the retelling of American history, we either pretend
such things don't happen at least, "not here," or paint the loser as an evil
reproachable villian.
The return of Eamon de Valera, nominal president of Ireland,
on
Christmas Eve 1920, brought conflict in the heirarchy.
De Valera deplored the shot-in-the-back tactics
favored by Collins. A plan was laid over Collins' objection for a raid on
Dublin Castle. Collins who stessed hit and run and economy of lives
predicted a failure on the proportion of the siege of
the post office in 1916.
From a military prospective Collins was right. The raid
exacted a heavy toll on irreplaceable Volunteers. However
de Valera correctly predicted that
the raid would prove to be the final blow for British authorities.
The burning of the customs house proved
to the British that no target, however
well defended, was immune from attack.
The Michael Collins, played in the Liam Neeson movie
, accurately portrays a man
devoted to the cause. His strength in fighting
a well-entrenched enemy is concentrating on
vulnerable points with minimal damage to his own men.
When the enemy tires from battles, Collins
proves not to be as expert in the war of diplomacy
and political machinations.
Lloyd Geroge invited de Valera
to London for talks. De Valera chose Collins and
the moderate nationalist Arthur Griffith to negotiate.
The treaty which ensued created an anomonolous relationship with
Britain: Ireland was free or in the Empire depending on
perspective. Faced with an ultimatum to sign or to resume
hostilities, Collins told
Lord Birkenhead: "I have signed my death warrant."
De Valera the crafty politican from American shores
had duplicitly urged both a peaceful settlement with the Crown
and continued war. Collins went to London
as a hero who had out-foxed the greatest military
power on earth and returned home as the scapegoat
with a treaty creating a state nominally neither independent
nor tied to The Crown, but somewhere in a grey zone in between.
Anxious to declare victory and restore peace,
Dail Eireann (The Irish Parliament) supported Collins.
Its ratification of the Treaty
established an Irish Free state in southern Ireland which
included 26 of the 32 Irish counties. As a Free State
Ireland enjoyed dominion status together with Canada,
Australia and South Africa.
As Chairman of
the Provisional Government, Collins took command
of evacuated British posts.
At Dublin Castle, the symbol of British domination,
Collins arrived seven and a half minutes late for
the change of command, one minute for
each century of occupation. Collins remarked to the British general
"after seven and half centuries we won't begrudge you
seven and a half minutes."
Not shown in the film is the Guardia's protest against the treaty:
They refused to post their colors until the British left the
stronghold, an official military insult.
Collins would have little time to bask
in the moment.
Where the revolution ends, the civil war begins.
Tension mounted between the pro- and anti-Treaty factions
throughout 1922. IRA units had taken over the Four
Courts in Dublin in April. Collins would have left the IRA fester.
However faced with Churchill's threat to oust the IRA
or face re-occupation, Free State troops (The Guardia) bombarded the building
with British artillery. The Civil War
had begun. The Provisional Government began
to retake cities and towns held by the Republicans.
On August 22, shortly after the death of Arthur Griffith,
Michael Collins under the cover of an inspection in Cork area
was on his way to a peace parlay with the Rebel rebel DeVelera
when his convoy was ambushed. Thousands of people lined the streets of Dublin for the
funeral of Michael Collins. His adversary de Valera would
later reflect:
"It's my considered opinion that in
the fullness of time, history will record the greatness
of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense."
From Da Valera's ascension to power until 1965 Collins
remained un-person in the country
he helped create. In the Jimmy Cagney movie of 1959,
Collins is never named; he is referred to as `The Commandant' and seen only as
a shadow. But no stone wall can contain such a legend.
The Director Neil Jordan could not have imagined anyone other than
Liam Neeson in the lead role. Tall Neeson
has the good-bad guy charm the American actor
James Cagney believed necessary to such a role:
the swagger of a street brawler, with the deceptive innocence
of a boyish face. Neeson assumes Collins' passion,
a man aflamed in his cause yet in fatalistic tears over the aftermath.
The film did draw some favorable reviews
in American papers but was resoundingly bashed as "leprechaunic" by the
semi-official voice of the pretend Establishment Anglos in the New York Times
"- no culture so steeped in romantic failure and rigid
Catholicism could ever truly conquer America -"
Not so, say their cousins (who are, despite pretensions,
lets be truthful, in Israel, not Britain)!
A leader of
Israel's War for Independence (1946-1947) adopted the code name "Micah"
as a tribute to the Irish Commandant.
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