Who really killed Michael Collins?

Declan

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You are right, Irish politicians can be bought with just a pat on the head.
 

Declan

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They launch Artemis 1 this Sunday to fly around the moon unmanned and measure the radiation which may show that it is too lethal to pass through.
 

Declan

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Why would the irregulars not want to finish them all off??
 

scolairebocht

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Usually they say that the ambush was kind of a defensive measure, to delay the Free State from capturing all the big anti-Treaty that were around the area. Also that the ambush had been called off effectively with only about 5 or 6 people hanging around (not including Sonny O'Neill it seems) who were alerted to the convoy by one of them firing into the air as a warning. That was in turn perceived as hostile by the convoy and hence the short 15 minute or so exchange of fire with those 5 or 6 guys. In that time nobody was injured on either side, apart from one small injury to I think motor bike rider, except for the one fatal exact bullet for Collins.

But anyway officialdom/academicdom is now going the way you have indicated. Before this it was Sonny O'Neill and now its a great conspiracy by the whole anti-Treaty IRA to entrap and kill Collins.

I am not so sure of that really, it was the British who really wanted him killed!
 

scolairebocht

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But most of the people involved in this stage of the Irish Civil War had very extensive training. They typically emerged from either the First World War or War of Independence, and the latter veterans were training, quite intensively, from about 1913. Most of the time from the Truce to then would have been spent in training camps as well. My grandfather who fought in the Civil War was trained originally by a Boer War veteran in 1913/4.

In general the anti-Treaty side were not going to wait around and attempt to wipe out a convoy that had an armoured car with a heavy machine gun on a turret. You steered well clear of that armament unless you had artillery, which obviously they didn't.
 

Declan

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Was Collins in an armored car??

If so, why did he exit it.
 

scolairebocht

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No he was in an open "touring car", I think a Leyland. It was open meaning a canvass roof which was pulled down. True I don't think anybody had much training as sort of VIP protection, but for ambushes yes.

There were quite a few anti-Treaty people who were ex British army. The famous Sonny ONeill, not at the ambush but in the vicinity, as was Childers, an ex British Amy Major. Then you had Tom Barry, an ex BA Sergeant then in jail though, and believe it or not that side had a cavalry unit in Cork then. It was run by a cousin of Childers, I think Robinson, another ex BA Major.

The real role of Dev in this would be interesting to know. Some people say that in those years he was very much under the influence of Childers. Pat Moylett, who then or a short time later became head of the IRB, when he tried to contact Dev about negotiations with Lloyd George he was conducting, he was told only go through Childers, or some other ex British army officers.
 

scolairebocht

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This is from the 'Conspiracy Theories' book:

This was Pat Moylett, a Mayo businessman and long term political activist who conducted negotiations on behalf of Griffith with the British Cabinet in 1920, who described how Dev had set up a kind of kitchen cabinet including Childers, who was also a Major in the British army, as Director of Publicity, Major Robinson, his cousin “just retired from the British army”, as secretary of the White Cross and:
“We had a new star arise over the Republican horizon in the shape of John Chartres, a man who had been sent to Ireland by Lloyd George on a secret service mission in reference to munitions. We also had Mr.Smith-Gordon, an Englishman, who was appointed M.D. of the National Land Bank, and one or two other visitors of the same ilk. These were put up as an inner cabinet or advisory board by Mr. de Valera."
(p.121-2)
...
“I tried to see Mr. de Valera through various channels, but on each occasion I was sent back to Erskine Childers as I was informed he was the only man that could make an appointment for me with Dev.” (p.147.)
 

Anderson

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I would not thrust and ex army man. Most iof the members of the Irish Army were donkeys and the discipline system is archaic,

What were they all doing fighting for Britain ?
Did they not have a choice ?
 

Declan

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No he was in an open "touring car", I think a Leyland. It was open meaning a canvass roof which was pulled down. True I don't think anybody had much training as sort of VIP protection, but for ambushes yes.
That was always my understanding anyways.
 

scolairebocht

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I think he was even the producer for 'the spy who came in from the cold', shot in Dublin
 

Anderson

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If Collins had not died does anyone think Ireland would be different today?

Obviously, he would have long passed if he had a long-filled life, but he would have surely been instrumental in Ireland's affairs up to his retirement, would he have been President, Taoiseach, or just quit altogether?
 

Declan

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If he was still going at 75 it would bring him to 1966!!!!!!
 

scolairebocht

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I only go where the evidence leads me, I think a lot of that period is in need of a fresh look (which I did in the 'conspiracy theory' book.)
Realistically if he was in British Intelligence during the two World Wars, which seems reasonably well proven, then its got to be quite possible that he did this or witnessed it.

That he was killed by the 'Irregulars' is described on facebook as the 'simplest explanation'. Of course it isn't the 'simplest' explanation, its just the media and establishment one. It isn't simple at all to understand how one bullet silences instantly Collins' life while nobody else is scratched during that very brief engagement on either side, except one small injury to one other person.

It is in fact the 'simplest' thing for a person standing 6 yards from the victim to kill him, much simpler and certain than somebody 200 or 300 yards away. And its much simpler to understand a person doing this for money and on behalf of the British and Irish governments - there are always large numbers of Irish people who know no other motivation except money, and who believe that what is right is what those governments say is right -, because obviously they would then protect him, than somebody doing this to an Irish national hero (among both sides, as Tom Barry pointed out) for any other motivation.

When you understand how much your media is tied into intelligence agencies, who lie to you all the time about everything, you realise how much you have to let go of their explanation of events, no matter how reinforced it has been by the media/establishment then and since.

Anyway here is a fascinating debate that Patrick Mullooly, the quartermaster of the North Roscommon Brigade in the War of Independence, had about this. While working in a railway yard, and while in the IRA, he was nearly killed by two trains suddenly appearing out of nowhere, going opposite directions with him catastrophically in the middle. He was nearly killed and at the time thought it was just a coincidence and 'one of those things' but in after years he wondered further about it:
"In later years as I became, through experience, acquainted with the falsity, deceit, jealousy, treachery and devlish propensities of human nature. I often gravely doubted, that it could have been an attempt by my sinister superiors to get rid of an encumbrance, a danger to their gangster, and cheap tricks because of my innocent independence and refusal to lick their shoes and because in my defence I reported the incident of the Frenchman and the missing £4,000 from the mails.
...
The goods train was dispatched to meet the incoming passenger train and timed to a split second. This was not my experience before or after. Had not the country greenhorn kept a cool head, for him the end had come.

Such incidents sometimes happen by accident and sometimes by design but the fact remains that they did happen in the past and shall also happen in the future, and all this ruminating has brought another incident to my mind which in the hearts' belief of all decent-minded men and women was, is, and always will be regarded as a great national disaster and also a great national disgrace. I refer here to the death of Michael Collins. Was it intention, well premediated and according to plan or just an accident of war? Was it conceived in jealousy by former comrades, or by former comrades who feared Collins knew too much for their own peace of mind? Or was it the act of the English Secret Service in revenge for the shooting of General Wilson by the I.R.B. in London? I fear Mick was too trusting of friend and foe alike. I will leave it at that, but the time is ripe to have the truth revealed and his mysterious death thoroughly probed and investigated while some of them who surely must be aware of the facts are still alive. I swear there would be less Anti-Partition humbug and buncombe were he alive today. Such hypocrisy would neither be tolerated or necessary."
(Patrick Mullooly, Bureau of Military History Witness Statement no.1,087, p.2-4.)
 
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