IRB ties diminished Collins, says lecturer

Michael Collins's membership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood made him "two faced" and unable to delegate power or responsibility in a democratic manner, a historian has claimed. Mr Nollaig O Gadhra, speaking at the Daonscoil na Mumhan in Co Waterford yesterday, said that when Collins came back to Ireland to consult colleagues about the Treaty negotiations in London "his prime concern was not Dev or the Sinn Fein cabinet or the Dail, but his IRB friends down in the docks". However, to say Collins was "an anti-democrat conspirator" would be going too far, he said.

Mr O Gadhra, a lecturer at Galway Regional Technical College, said Neil Jordan's film about Collins was "essentially a fine action film in the best Hollywood tradition". He said the "one-way street of media hype" surrounding Jordan's film had been more damaging to the cause of historical truth than the inaccuracies of the film itself. Section 31 and political correctness had created a "truth deficit" in the media's representation of 20th century Irish history, he claimed, and anyone who attempted to correct this or to explain the complexity of particular issues was regarded by the media as a crank or as being motivated by his own political agenda.

Mr O Gadhra said that RTE and the Irish media in general had devoted more time and space to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of British withdrawal from India than it had to the 75th anniversary of the death of the founder of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffith. Mr O Gadhra described Griffith as "in many respects an Irish Gandhi". The 75th anniversary of the end of the Civil War next April should be a time for "national stocktaking", he concluded.