What's the real legacy of Michael Collins?

'Because he was cut down so young, you can paint whatever idealised image of Michael Collins you want onto that blank canvas'

As we mark the centenaries of the ending of the War of Independence, the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the beginning of the Civil War, it's a good time to assess the legacy of revolutionary, soldier and politician Michael Collins. Prof Diarmaid Ferriter recently joined the Today With Claire Byrne show on RTÉ Radio 1 to look back at Collins' life and how he's now viewed. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been lightly edited for length and clarity - full discussion can be heard above).

Ferriter believes that there will be something of a battle between political parties over Collins' legacy. "This has gone on since the beginning of the State. I remember when I was looking at the commemoration of 1916 for the 100th anniversary. I came across an editorial that was published in the 1930s in one of the Irish newspapers that suggested it was all was unseemly, if not indecent, when political parties engage in a figurative scramble for the bones of the patriot dead.

We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

From RTÉ News, Valentine's Day cards were left on Michael Collins' grave in Glasnevin

"In a sense, Collins belongs to various parties or he belongs to none of those parties. You've got to remember that Fine Gael was formed after the death of Collins, as of course was Fianna Fáil. The Sinn Féin that we have now is the fifth iteration of the Sinn Féin party since its establishment as a movement in 1905. If you're looking at it in that strict academic sense, you could say that none of them have a right to claim the legacy of Michael Collins.

"On the other hand, he does represent the legacy of that contested period and the parties arose out of the divisions of that period that he was centrally involved in and is always going to be associated with. Inevitably they are going to be looking at who can make the best claim and that's been going on for decades."

One of the reasons for the many myths around Collins is because he was killed at the age of 31. "He becomes a blank canvas because of the myth of the lost leader", says Ferriter. "Because he was cut down at such an early stage that you can paint whatever idealised image of Collins you want onto that blank canvas. You can rally the name of Collins or the legacy of Collins, according to the particular project at the time.

From RTÉ Radio 1's The Business, Ian Whyte from Whyte's auctioneers on why items belonging to Michael Collins, such as a pair of cobalt blue slippers emblazoned with the head of a wolf, always cause a stir

"Even in 1924, when there was mutinous conduct by army officers at a time when the State was still so fragile, they claimed that the reason why they were so unhappy was because the government wasn't doing enough to deliver on the legacy of Collins. The same government, of course, that had championed Collins and what he represented."

Then, there was Éamon de Valera. Ferriter says de Valera was "prickly and sensitive" about Collins. "In many ways, de Valera eclipsed Collins. He stayed around for so long and he was in power and he was ironically able to prove the veracity of what Collins had argued about the treaty, that it could actually be a stepping stone to greater freedom. That was very difficult for supporters of Collins and Fine Gael to stomach that it was ultimately de Valera who proved him right.

"De Valera was prickly and sensitive about Collins and he could be quite mean. When the Collins family in the early 1930s wanted to erect a monument over the grave in Glasnevin, the Fianna Fáil government was very mean about it and said that they had to have the veto over the inscription and there couldn't be any public fundraising or a public unveiling."

From RTÉ Archives, Gareth O'Connor reports for RTÉ News on the 4,000 extras on the set of the Michael Collins film in August 1995

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Neil Jordan's film on Michael Collins (and it turns out that presenter Claire Byrne was an extra in that film). Ferriter says this Hollywood treatment of his life was the first introduction for some people to Collins. "The historian Anne Dolan raised this point that the original publicity poster for the film had him holding a rifle, but it was changed then to Collins, the passionate politician statesman who had made the compromise, making the case for politics. It fit the peace process theme of that 1990s period that this was about a move away from violence towards politics.

"Jordan was quite explicit that that was the message of the film, but it also raised questions then as to whether it made a cartoon villain of de Valera in order to build up Michael Collins. Alan Rickman, who so memorably plays the part of de Valera, gave interviews in which he said 'I was trying to make the case for de Valera not to be depicted in this way, but you'd need 12 hours really to do justice to the complexities of that period.' It's one of the challenges, of course, of bringing a history to film or to screen."

Collins' name tends to be brought up around different crisis points in Irish history. "The Collins22 Society was established in 2002 to perpetuate the memory of Collins. Looking at some of the contributions to their website, there are all sorts of claims about Collins who would have made common cause with a first-time house buyers who were drowning under stealth taxes, that Collins wouldn't have allowed national finances to get to the point where we needed a bailout. Collins would never have allowed that kind of calamity to occur.

From RTÉ Radio 1's Liveline in 2016, the bloodied rug which was used to cover Michael Collins when he died has gone missing

"People like Enda Kenny made the point that they saw their mission in 2011, 2012, as on a par with Collins' challenge of 1922, trying to rebuild the State after a period of great crisis and upheaval. Again, totally divorcing him from the context of the time. Then you have Simon Coveney, for example, making the claim that Collins was the great modernist, that he would have championed Ireland's place in Europe and Ireland's competitiveness in the international markets, that kind of argument."

The main issue, says Ferriter, is that Collins was not fully formed. "How could he have been? This is where we have to factor in what he didn't live to develop. The maturity that isn't there when someone is cut down at such a young stage, when they don't have much experience of the realities of governing in this new free State.

"We have this image, of course, of him in the military uniform, but he wasn't an experienced soldier and whatever was being said publicly, because even some of his opponents found his death very difficult to absorb and cope with, they could be quite scathing in private. He wasn't an experienced soldier. He was a very effective strategist and coordinator. He was good on military intelligence, but there've also been attempts over the years to present him as some kind of a feminist champion. That's a very partial reading. He was firmly Edwardian in his attitudes to women, according to his biographer, Peter Hart, and he didn't approve of women getting involved in intelligence operations.

"He was firmly Edwardian because that's what he was, that's what he was a product of. We don't need to contrive to make him something he was not and that's what happens with the passage of time and the demands of particular periods, that people will decide that that's what Collins was."

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

More stories on