Greatest Irishman: Michael Collins or Eamon de Valera?

rossie1977

Eamon de Valera

Hmmmm let me think; a man who fought and died to gain and perserve Ireland's freedom or an american who treated Ireland as his own personal plaything and kept the population living in the dark ages until his death.

gimmick

Rob_l wrote:

and it was in the munster republic you lot shot michael collins

Thats was Devs militia

which muppet?

kermit perhaps?

is that your eyes because i have not stated it as so and so are you said muppet?

Touchy aren't we. I didn't actually mention you in this thread. So you took offence to something which wasn't even directed at you.

gimmick

DesF wrote:

I'll come down to give you a hand.

I know a good place to hire machinery and all.

Nothing good ever came out of Cork. Apart from the road to Dublin.

PROC = Bitter
Roy Keane = Quitter
Michael Collins = Britter
Sonia O'Sullivan = Shítter

Apart from consistent success

PROC = Bitter? No, just superior.

Roy Keane = Quitter? Just becase the rest of the country accepts mediocrity and being also rans (Dubs should know all about the plenty promise little delivery adage), doesn't mean us Cork folk do.

Michael Collins = Britter? Thats just wrong, but as my history aint what it was Im not able to elaborate

Sonia O Sullivan = ****ter? Why do you think we sent her to exile? She was an embarrassment to Cork glorious progeny.

scruff321

im not voting, arguements for either,one thing for sure is that they are both 2 of the greatest irishmen who ever lived

TheJoker

Eamon de Valera

Greatest Irishman?

I am!

storyhorse

Liam Lawlor. He didn't let what society thought stop him from doing what he wanted. Ditto Ray Burke.

rebelcork

Eamon de Valera

Dev was a foreign coward who showed the yankee passport to dodge the bullet when real Irish patriots died for what they believed in.The biggest mistake was that his mother didn't f*ck him out the porthole on the way from America.
Collins was a man of substance who was sent to do a fools errand.

A-Train

Eamon de Valera

Collins defo Dev the man held this country back so many years with his vision of
Diddly Eye crap with maids dancing at the crossroads wouldnt expect anything more off an American.

Steve_o

chopperbyrne wrote:

Bill O'Herlihy.

That is all.

Good call, he is one of the greats alright......live.....

Ruu_Old

Eamon de Valera

Bono. \o/

/me hides from angry mob

Steve_o

Ruu wrote:

Bono. \o/

/me hides from angry mob

Oi lads....he's over here!!!!

Rob_l

Eamon de Valera

gimmick wrote:

Thats was Devs militia.

Dev's militia in cork made of cork men fighting collins free state army made of Irish men(as opposed to cork men)

gimmick wrote:

Touchy aren't we. I didn't actually mention you in this thread. So you took offence to something which wasn't even directed at you.

Dont worry Im never one to let a grudge go with out making my opinion of a man quite clear

Ekancone

Eamon de Valera

micmclo wrote:

Brian Boru ftw
Drove the Vikings from our shores.

Collins will win this poll and the reason is many think the Neil Jordan film is all true factually:eek:

Ireland in 1920:

Michael Collins - Minister for Finance, Acting President, President of IRB, President of Dail Loans, and for all intents and purposes head of GHQ. That man ran the war of independence. And no, i didnt get that from the movie.

Pherekydes

Ishmael wrote:

I would have said Robert Boyle or Nicholas Callan.

But hey, obviously crooked politicians and warmongers are more important!

Good man!

I'll throw Hamilton into the ring. It's a no-contest in my opinion.

I'd put Eamon Coghlan, Ron Delany, Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly way ahead of Collins or Dev.

_blank_

Atari Jaguar

Dunphy for the win.

Dyr

Coughlan was a smarmy git

Don conroy is undoubtedly the greatest irishman to have ever lived

patrickc

Eamon de Valera

Dev is a traitor and shafted Collins simple as...

Rob_l

Eamon de Valera

patrickc2006 wrote:

Dev is a traitor and shafted Collins simple as...

and so are cork people cause collins was one of their own and a hero and they shot him

Pherekydes

Bambi wrote:

Coughlan was a smarmy git

Don't know him. Who is he?

dlofnep

Eamon de Valera

lol @ stephen roche and sean kelly. "ohhh look at me, i can ride a bike". i accomplish more before breakfast than both of those two.

HammerHeadGym

Tom Crean

More balls than any any smelly cork man.

watna

Steve_o wrote:

Lets keep words like that to ourselves shall we....

I'm glad someone else said that, I find that word very offensive.

i was just talking about this Dev/Mick thing last night. I was trying to explain it to a visitor fron NZ we have staying with us. After talking about it with him my head is all confused and I don't know anymore!

HammerHeadGym

gimmick wrote:

...The sun always shines in Cork...

That's actually a common misconception among Cork people. You see, they think the sun shines out of their arse and since they are constantly whining out of it, they assume they are illuminating the country.

And Dev was a crook, that paved the way for a long line of crooked little ****s who take it in turns to fuck a few quid from the irish people.

Tar.Aldarion

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was born at Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford. Boyle, sometimes called The Father of Chemistry, is a in the history of science. In 1661 he published The Sceptical Chemist. Alchemy, the pseudo-scientific predecessor of chemistry was questioned by Boyle, who taught that the proper object of chemistry was to determine the composition of substances. He coined the term ‘analysis’. In 1662 he formulated Boyle’s Law which states that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely related at constant temperature.

Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) was born in Navan, Co. Meath and became the British Navy’s greatest hydrographer and mapmaker. He is best known as the author of the table which classifies the velocity and force of winds at sea – The Beaufort Scale. He also developed a system of classifying the weather’s various states by letters of the alphabet.

George Boole (1815-1864), born in Lincoln, England, was the first Professor of Mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork (University College Cork today). Boole, sometimes called The Father of Computer Science, developed his system of Boolean Algebra while in Cork. This is used today in the design and operation of electronic computers and electronic hardware responsible for modern technology.

William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1864), born in Dublin, became Professor of Astronomy at TCD and Royal Astronomer of Ireland. At the age of 9 he knew 13 languages. Hamilton introduced the terms scalar and vector into mathematics and he invented the method of quanternions as a new algebraic approach to 3-D geometry, which turned out to be the seed of much modern algebra.

John Tyndall (1820-1893) was born in County Carlow, he became one of greatest scientists of 19th century. Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics) at The Royal Institution, he did pioneering work on radiant heat, germ theory of disease, glacier motion, sound, and diffusion of light in the atmosphere. He was the first to explain how scattering of light in atmosphere causes blue colour in sky. He explained how the gases in the atmosphere trap heat and keep the earth warm. He invented the light pipe which later led to development of fibre optics.

William Thomson (1824-1907) (Lord Kelvin) first Baron Kelvin (1866). Born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics), Glasgow University. World renowned physicist. Introduced the absolute scale of temperature – the Kelvin scale. His work on conversion of energy led to Second Law of Thermodynamics. Closely involved in laying first successful transatlantic telegraph cable under sea between Ireland and Newfoundland in 1866.

George Francis Fitzgerald (1851-1901) was born in Dublin and became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at TCD. He is best remembered for his proposal that a moving body contracts in the direction of its motion, but that this contraction cannot be measured because moving rulers shrink in the same proportion. This was a significant step towards Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.

George Johnstone Stoney (1826-1911) was born in Dun Laoghaire and became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queen’s College, Galways (NUI Galway today). His most notable scientific work was his conception and calculation of the magnitude of the ‘atom’ of electricity, for which he proposed the name ‘electron’.

J.D. Bernal (1901-1971) was born in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. Professor Physics, Birbeck College, University of London. Developed the technique of modern X-ray crystallography and led a group that used the technique to work out the 3-D structure of proteins, nucleic acids and viruses.

Ernest Walton (1903-1997), born in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, was a pioneer nuclear physicist and is Ireland’s only science Nobel Laureate. He built the first successful particle accelerator with John Cockroft at Cambridge with which they disintegrated lithium (‘split the atom’) in 1931. Walton became Professor of Natural and Experiemental Philosophy at TCD in 1947. He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for physics with Cockroft.

Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) was born in Newbridge, Co. Kildare and became Professor of Chemistry at University College, London. She did much important work in X-ray crystallography, including a demonstration that the benzene ring is flat. She was the first woman elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1945. She was a dedicated pacifist and suffered a short term in jail in 1943 for her convictions.

Denis Burkitt (1911-1993) was born in Eniskillen, graduated as a physician, and became world renowned pioneer in public medicine. Worked in public service for many years in Uganda. First described a cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma and showed that it is spread by mosquitoes who transmit the disease by spreading the Epstein-barr virus. Returned to London 1966 and led campaign advocating the importance of fibre in the diet.

John Bell (1928-1990) was born in Belfast. He joined CERN (the European Research Organisation) in Geneva in 1960. Here he developed a set of equations called Bell’s Inequalities that are of fundamental importance in quantum physics. Bell was a leading theoretical physicist of his generation.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943-) was born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh and is now Professor of Physics at The Open University. She discovered pulsars – rapidly rotating neutron stars – in 1967 when working as a research student at Cambridge. She continues to study pulsars today.


The two people in this pole are pointless men in an old time and will be forgotten. It's all happened before and will happen again.

Pherekydes

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1864), born in Dublin, became Professor of Astronomy at TCD and Royal Astronomer of Ireland [at age 21]. At the age of 9 he knew 13 languages. Hamilton introduced the terms scalar and vector into mathematics and he invented the method of quanternions as a new algebraic approach to 3-D geometry, which turned out to be the seed of much modern algebra.

Thank you NASA, Thank you NASA, Thank you NASA.

I rest my case.

Actually, thanks Tar.

Terry

Ruu wrote:

Bono. \o/

/me hides from angry mob

Don't worry, dude. I've got your back.

RiderOnTheStorm

HammerHeadGym wrote:

Tom Crean

+1

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

John Tyndall (1820-1893) was born in County Carlow, he became one of greatest scientists of 19th century. Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics) at The Royal Institution, he did pioneering work on radiant heat, germ theory of disease, glacier motion, sound, and diffusion of light in the atmosphere. He was the first to explain how scattering of light in atmosphere causes blue colour in sky. He explained how the gases in the atmosphere trap heat and keep the earth warm. He invented the light pipe which later led to development of fibre optics.

+1

I am from Carlow originally, and whenever people say (as they usually do) What has Carlow ever done?, I tell them about Tyndall.......and myself ;-)

Orange69

Phil Lynott

tallus

Eamon de Valera

dlofnep wrote:

lol @ stephen roche and sean kelly. "ohhh look at me, i can ride a bike". i accomplish more before breakfast than both of those two.

Kelly was the man, Shame on you.
I voted for Collins.

Ruen

Eamon de Valera

DesF wrote:

Collins was nothing but a sell out.

What he did was a direct cause of the troubles in the Northern part of this divided island.

DeValera sent his best man to do the job, the brits were running scared of him, and what does he do? Gives them the North? Spineless fúcker tbh.

Dev ftw. (not DeVore...DeValera)

He saved this country from a fate worse than the troubles in the North, David Lloyd George had threatened to send 250,000 troops into Ireland at that stage and we wouldnt have stood a chance.
You'll notice during the 1921 treaty negotiations that the British had their Prime Minister and all his senior negotiators including Churchill and Birkenhead yet the President of our provisional government, Eamon DeValera, was nowhere to be seen during the whole event as the big fúcking cowardly bastárd that he was knew he wouldnt stand a chance against the experienced and expert British negotiators like Churchill so the one good decision he made was to send Griffith and Collins. Spineless fúcker tbh.

_blank_

Atari Jaguar

RiderOnTheStorm wrote:

I am from Carlow originally, and whenever people say (as they usually do) What has Carlow ever done?, I tell them about Tyndall.......and myself ;-)

I'd say you're some craic at parties.

Lirange

Eamon de Valera

experiMental wrote:

Just think of what would we be diving if he wouldn't revolutionise mass production and design of cars...

What would we be diving?

Let me think. It's on the tip of my tongue ... Erm ... Mu ..... Mufflers? Er no.

Uh ... what was it? Ay ... I know. Muffs!

Anyway voted for Colly.

Black Swan

Jonathan Swift!

Terry

He lived in Leixlip for a while.

Anto McC

Eamon de Valera

Mick was da man before there even was a man.

Pherekydes

Terry wrote:

He lived in Leixlip for a while.

Hamilton passed through Leixlip on his "quaternion" walk.

Behind Lidl, past the amenities centre, along the back of Crunch fitness Westmanstown, etc.

Terry

Who?

Voodu Child

Rory Gallagher.

Broke his liver from drinking too much. If that's not Irish, I don't know what is...

Rosita

Atari Jaguar

humanji wrote:

The modern IRA are drug dealers and gun runners. They're hardly the same as the IRA of the time (or was it IRB then?).

The old IRA were not gun-runners? How do you work that out? How did they arm themselves?

They may not have been drug-dealers, but they killed police and robbed banks and post-offices to fund their activities.

The IRA name was coined in 1919, with the IRB and its people an integral part of the mix including National Volunteers/Irish Citizen Army which made it up. To all intents and purposes they can be considered the same.

Pepe LeFrits

loltroll!

Rosita

Atari Jaguar

Zambia232 wrote:

De valera should in the very least laid clear and concise instructions as to what was not acceptable to him/the state.

In the same line of thought Collins should have obtained clear direction from Dev and not given in before signing. But his is the lesser of the two mistakes.

What a load of bull.

How could Dev give clear and concise instruction as to what was or wasn't acceptable which would cover every possible eventuality in the talks?

He couldn't, but he gave the most explicit instructions he could and asked for any final settlement to be cleared with Dublin before signing. This was not done and is the single biggest mistake, arguably, in Irish twentieth-century history.

The true absurdity of this is shown in the fact that some who signed the Treaty actually voted against it in the subsequant vote in the Dáil. That's how shambolic the treaty was according to those who signed it. Why, if the the treaty was such a great achievement did Collins say he had signed his own death warrant? Had the treaty delegation made contact with Dublin before signing as Dev wanted a lot of torture would have been avoided.

Of course, having to deal with a double-crosser like Lloyd George did not help them.

It should also be pointed out that Arthur Griffith and not Collins was head of the Irish delegation at those treaty talks. And it should also be pointed out that a 32-county republic was not on the table at those talks. The Government of Ireland act has been brought in during the War of Independence which brought the state of Northern Ireland into existence and the only thing that was hinted in respect of this area by Lloyd George was that the Boundary Commission might by stealth reduce the statelet to such a small area so as to make it unviable, which of course was another fiasco and did not happen in the end.

Rosita

Atari Jaguar

Pepe LeFrits wrote:

loltroll!

If you knew your history you would actually know this is true.

It's amazing how much people are in denial about these things, but I suppose the old adage holds true - 'the first casualty of war is truth.'

But how on earth people who think this didn't happen think these guys' guns and general activities were funded beats me.

humanji

Rosita wrote:

The old IRA were not gun-runners? How do you work that out? How did they are themselves?

Obtaining weapons for your own purposes, and selling them on to other countries/organisations is not the same thing.

And I'm not saying that they were the good guys, only that at the time their goals were different. Today, they are no more than criminal gangs using the notion of a united Ireland to try and justify their crimes. Back in the day, although they were still killers and thieves, they at least were trying to unite Ireland in their own deluded way.

arybvtcw0eolkf

My vote for the greatest Irishman ever goes to Cllr Rotimi Adebari.

Mayor of Portlaoise.

hopalong85

Atari Jaguar

Mushy wrote:

Hope you're joking? Are you?

Dev didnt go to England for the negotiations cos he knew he wouldnt be able to win independence for Ireland. He kept his own hands clean, and sent Collins and others over to take the blame when they'd return. Genius move by him actually.

And sure Collins and the others were facing the people who negotiated the Paris Peace Settlement, pretty much professionals against amateurs in negotiating. Not even Dev could have won the North to make a Republic of Ireland at that stage.

Ridiculous. Michael Collins made a terrible decision, it can't have been more obvious to him and the other treaty delegates that their decision would lead to civil war. I really hate reading (and hearing) this crap. The vast majority of the time it's being spewed from someone who took the Michael Collins film as historical fact. Eamon de Valera is the man who deserves credit for Ireland being a republic today. Fact.

Haven't a Clue

Eamon de Valera

Kevin O'Higgins FTW!

But, between these two, I'd have to vote for Collins. Dev was a coward who's only real positive contribution to this nation was dismantling the treaty, which was already more or less done by Cumann na nGaedhael anyway.

Haven't a Clue

Eamon de Valera

hopalong85 wrote:

Ridiculous. Michael Collins made a terrible decision, it can't have been more obvious to him and the other treaty delegates that their decision would lead to civil war. I really hate reading (and hearing) this crap. The vast majority of the time it's being spewed from someone who took the Michael Collins film as historical fact. Eamon de Valera is the man who deserves credit for Ireland being a republic today. Fact.

Yeah, but it was either a civil war or a continuation of the war against the Brits, which Collins had already run out of ammunition for. A catch 22 situation if ever there was one.

Rosita

Atari Jaguar

humanji wrote:

Today, they are no more than criminal gangs using the notion of a united Ireland to try and justify their crimes. Back in the day, although they were still killers and thieves, they at least were trying to unite Ireland in their own deluded way.

I would not be so sure that the families and widows of the many Irish people killed by the IRA during 1919-21 would see such a convenient distinction, but an acknowledgement that they were indeed killers and thieves (who incidentally killed far more efficiently than the post-1969 IRA ever managed) is a start. They killed 400 policemen in just 15 months in 1920-21. In 35 years in the North, with far greater ammunition and transport available to terrorists, the combined totals of the IRA/Loyalist/British Army killings only very occasionally threatened to match this level of ferocity.

It is also not true to say that these days they are just criminal gangs using the notion of a united Ireland to justify their crimes. Whatever one's view of them, by and large there has been acceptance of political agreements and cessation of violence. This conflicts with your view which implies that they would continue to find a justification for crime if they wanted to - assuming one believes that criminals ever feel the need to justify their crimes. The only real difference between the IRA 1919-21 and the post-'69 lot is simply that the former has a good 50/60 years of unchallenged nationalist propaganda to turn them into heroes. Even the fact that phenomenal killer (albeit in a supervisory capacity) like Collins enjoys hero worship among the same gullible souls who would condemn his successors - or try verbal gymnastics to suggest that they are not his successors, shows how extraordinarily successful this propaganda has been.

Rosita

Atari Jaguar

Mushy wrote:

Hope you're joking? Are you?

Dev didnt go to England for the negotiations cos he knew he wouldnt be able to win independence for Ireland. He kept his own hands clean, and sent Collins and others over to take the blame when they'd return.

If you believe this, can you explain why Dev laid down as a condition to the treaty delegation that anything they proposed to agree to should be discussed with him before anything was signed?

Surely, if he was trying to distance himself and keep his hands clean, then that was a strange way to go about it, wasn't it? The fact is that Dev's presence in Dublin (he had already negotiated with Lloyd George himself anyway) provided the treaty delegation with breathing space in London which they wouldn't have otherwise had. His arm's length plan was a masterstroke and would have been seen as such by history had the delegation not buckled and signed when Lloyd George turned up the heat.

But the fact remains that by dint of this veto on all negotiations as laid down for the delegates before going to London, Dev was in fact taking all responsibility for what was agreed there and not washing his hands as you seem to believe. In that sense, despite all the ahistorical nonsense you hear, his presence in London was irrelevant, except for the possibility that he might have showed more backbone when the crunch came and not befriended the likes of Churchill during the talks as Collins did. This is the same 'Winston' (as Collins called him) at whose suggestion Collins ordered the shelling of the four courts to commence the civil war.

Terry

I would like to thank Gavrilo Princip for bringing about the great war, which led to dwindled British resources and in turn led to the creation of the Republic of Ireland.
Cheers, buddy.