MÍCHEÁL Ó COILEÁIN: IRISH COURAGE TO FREEDOM

Michael Collins

Mícheál Ó Coileáin (1890-1922) was a soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the struggle for Irish independence in the early 20th century. Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, politician, Minister for Finance, Director of Information, and Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Adjutant General, Director of Intelligence, and Director of Organisation and Arms Procurement for the IRA, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood from November 1920 until his death, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. 

Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army. Collins was shot and killed in an ambush in August 1922 during the Irish Civil War.

Born in Woodfield, Sam's Cross, now the Michael Collins Birthplace, near Clonakilty, County Cork, Collins was the third son and youngest of eight children. Most biographies give his date of birth as 16 October 1890, but his tombstone cites 12 October 1890. 

The struggle for Home Rule, along with labour unrest, had led to the formation in 1913 of two major nationalist paramilitary groups who would launch the Easter Rising: the Irish Citizen Army was established by James Connolly and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), to protect strikers from the Dublin Metropolitan Police during the 1913 Dublin Lockout. 

Michael Collins in a meeting

The Irish Volunteers were created in the same year by the IRB and other nationalists in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (UVF), an Ulster loyalist body pledged to oppose Home Rule by force. 

Collins became one of the leading figures in the post-Rising independence movement spearheaded by Arthur Griffith, editor and publisher of the main nationalist newspaper The United Irishman, which Collins had read avidly as a boy. 

Like many senior Sinn Féin representatives Collins was elected as an MP, for Cork South, with the right to sit in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London. Unlike their rivals in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Sinn Féin MPs had announced that they would not take their seats in Westminster but instead would set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin. 

On 22 August 1922, during the Irish Civil War, Michael Collins was killed in an ambush here by anti-treaty IRA forces while travelling in convoy from Bandon. The ambush was planned in a farmhouse in Béal na Bláth close to The Diamond Bar.

Brendan Behan wrote the poem The laughing boy lamenting the death of Collins. This poem was translated into Greek in 1961 by Vasilis Rotas. In October of the same year, Mikis Theodorakis composed the song Tο γελαστό παιδί, The laughing boy, using Rotas' translation. The song was recorded by Maria Farantouri in 1966.

More information: BBC

 Early this morning, I signed my death warrant.

Michael Collins