Collins, Michael (1890-1922)

Collins, Michael (1890-1922), Irish soldier, politician, and chairman of the Irish provisional government (1922).

Born in Clonakilty, County Cork on October 16, 1890, and educated locally, he went to London in 1906 to work as a clerk in the post office and later for a firm of stockbrokers. In London he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a revolutionary secret society dedicated to the establishment of an Irish republic. Returning to Ireland in early 1916, he took part in the Easter Rising and was subsequently interned at Frongoch prison camp in North Wales. While in prison he established himself as leader among the survivors of the rising and made contacts throughout Ireland from among the other internees which he was later to use during the War of Independence (1919-1921). On his release in December 1916, he set about involving himself in the new republican Sinn Féin movement the Easter Rising had inspired. He also began reorganizing the Irish Volunteers, of which he became adjutant-general.

Elected to the revolutionary assembly in Dublin known as Dáil Éireann in 1918, he was made Minister for Home Affairs, later Minister for Finance, in which capacity he launched with considerable success the first National Loan. Simultaneously, Collins was organizing an intelligence system within the Irish Volunteers, who were becoming increasingly known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As the war between the IRA and British forces escalated during 1920 Collins' intelligence system had a profound effect on the military campaign in Dublin. With the help of sympathizers working in Dublin Castle, the seat of British power in Ireland, Collins was able to access the internal workings of the British intelligence system in Ireland. Collins also developed a team of ruthless and efficient assassins known as the “Squad” who were dispatched to kill British agents once identified. On Sunday November 21, 1920, on Collins' orders eleven supposed British agents were assassinated in Dublin. In reprisal later the same day British forces shot dead and wounded over 70 football supporters attending a match in Dublin.

After a truce between the IRA and British forces had been arrived at in July 1921, Collins was chosen to attend negotiations with the British in London. Though a reluctant participant, Collins helped negotiate and signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty on December 6, 1921. Collins, supported by Arthur Griffith, became the most forceful and influential proponent of the treaty within Sinn Féin. In the Daíl debates he argued that although the treaty did not offer the republican state that most in Sinn Féin and the IRA had desired and fought for, it did promise an important measure of freedom which could be developed into the full freedom they desired at a later date. Collins used his personal influence and contacts through the IRA to secure the support of key political and military figures for the treaty within Sinn Féin and the IRA. The treaty was accepted by the Daíl by 64 votes to 57 on January 7, 1922.

Collins became chairman of a provisional government which was established under the treaty to take control of the civil administration in Southern Ireland from the evacuating British. Within the first six months of 1922, the provisional government had successfully taken over the old regime's civil service and had begun to build up its own army and police force. A general election in June gave the provisional government and the treaty a mandate. In a bid to assert its authority, and under British pressure to remove any military threat to the treaty, the provisional government's troops attacked the anti-treaty IRA in Dublin on June 28. The ensuing civil war lasted until May 1923.

On July 12 Collins became commander-in-chief of the provisional government's forces. Provisional government forces experienced a number of military successes during the first two months of the war, which forced the anti-treaty IRA to retreat from all urban areas in Southern Ireland. Collins subsequently went on a tour of inspection to his native Cork and was killed in an ambush by extremist republicans near Bandon, on August 22, 1922, at the age of 31.