SHAWS Road author and former principal of Bunscoil Phobail Feirste, Diarmuid Ó Tuama is set to give a lecture on Michael Collins in St Galls GAC on Friday night.
The talk is the latest in a series which has been running at the club for a number of years and will be the second time that Diarmuid has addressed the club.
Speaking ahead of the talk, he told the Andersonstown News: “I will be looking at who shot Collins and why. I will go into a bit of depth about the myth around him. When he was mythologised, they say that if he had lived then Ireland would have been free, but I don’t think so.
“People have over emphasised the worth of Collins. Collins was alright in that when the Tan War was going on, he organised the intelligence war in Dublin, but he was Dublin-centric.
“I think that Collins called the Truce early because he thought that the IRA were going to be defeated in Dublin.
“The IRA were already winning in Cork, they were winning in the West and they were winning in different parts of the country but I think Collins jumped too quick,” he said.
Diarmuid told us that Collins wanted to be sure that he would be in a position of power following a truce.
He continued: “There are people who think the IRB actually manipulated the IRA to win and it was the IRB that accepted the Truce and forced it on the IRA.
“Collins was in charge of the IRB. He was the top man. The IRB thought that they were the government in waiting and that he was de facto President of Ireland.
“At the time De Valera was President of Ireland so there was always going to be a conflict.”
Diarmuid added that new information is coming to light all of the time and pointed to Brian Feeney’s book, The Revolution in Antrim.
“Brian Feeney castigates Collins for his activity in the North and I totally agree with what he says. Every time Collins put his foot into the North, he made it worse.
“He called for an IRA campaign against the new state in 1922 and just before it was to kick-off he pulled back and left the IRA dangling in the wind.”
Kevin Sheehan from St Gall’s added: “The idea of holding the series of talks came from chatting to Diarmuid about his Collins research.
“While his work is on a particular level there are so many in the community with other areas of expertise or experiences from the last fifty years who it would be beneficial to hear from. Some of those people are connected to events which are taught about in schools today.
“We have previously invited speakers from our recent history including ex-hunger striker Pat Sheehan, the late Bobby Storey to talk about the escape from Long Kesh, Joe Austin on bringing home the bodies of the three IRA volunteers from Gibraltar, Gerry Kelly on his experience on hunger strike while imprisoned in England along with the families of the Ballymurphy and Loughinisland massacres.
“We have also tried to address wider societal issues with invitations to speakers from the Rainbow Project, on women and trade union issues and the issue of suicide awareness.
“Sean Murray gave a talk on the attack on the Clonard area and the burning of Bombay Street in 1969 and we've also had a question-and-answer session with a panel comprising an ex-republican prisoner, ex-loyalist prisoner and an ex-British soldier.”
The discussion will take place from 8pm in St Gall’s Social Club on Friday 18 November.
