Collins Centenary Setpiece

Nice to see the leaders of FF and FG commemorating a member of Sinn Fein.

Regards...jmcc

I'd say it was the heat alright. Those soldiers would have been on parade for 6am, going through this routine for hours before arrival then to stand in position at the event for hours before it even started in that heat. Fainting is quite common in those circumstances.

I don't think that Ireland would have went Fascist. The book is quite interesting though it has been a long time since I read it and Tim Pat Coogan's biography. Collins was a far more complex character than many who may have been attracted to the philosophy of Facism. He had also worked in the UK and that gave him an edge in negotiations. If anything, some of those who succeeded Collins and Griffith were closer to Fascism (FG's first leader). The innate conservatism of Irish voters would have made it much more difficult for continental fascism to have taken hold here. Had Collins lived, there might have been a T.K Whitaker effect decades before it actually happened. Given the family connections with the US and the UK, Ireland might even have entered WW2 on the Allied side. That said, Ireland's neutrality in WW2 was not quite as simple as it is made out.

Regards...jmcc

Open top car, limited protection, wide open road. And not only that they STOPPED and returned fire! Instead of getting out of there as quickly as possible. Made zero sense, and Collins the CnC who was not used to combat.

Maybe it's all they had at the time. Funds were not exactly floating around back then.

Also maybe there 30mile per hour if even model Ford T would simply not have been fast enough to escape the bullets being fired at them so it would have made no difference.

It's not just us with open top cars though. Seems to have been a problem in the 20th century. Franz Ferdinand, Collins, Kennedy, Pope JP2.

Yeah it's a pity we never got to find out I don't think we would have been any worse off today either way.

It's worth pointing out though there was big pro axis sentiment among the public even towards the end of the war when reports about the camps began to come out.

You had figures like Dan Breen and Sean South speaking out in favour Hitler and National Socialism, we had riots in Dublin on VE day, a fairly successful Fascist party Ailtirí na hAiséirghe gaining 9 seats in a local election despite being heavily censored. Go back a few years before and you had 100 thousand people attend a rally in Dublin supporting Franco.

It was an interesting period those first 20 odd years of the free state it's a pity theres not more wrote about it.

EXactly. It was simply the way to do it in the 20th Century.

I am sure Collins too had his reason for it. Maybe he thought when he got to Cork there would have been hundreds of supporters out to greet him but he never got there.

I think an Ireland with Micheal Collins might have been a better one and I even think there would have been no troubles or at least less and that we would be a Unified Country now. There is no way to know do unless someone figures out how to go to alternate Universes.

We'd be the same little god-bothering, book-banning, priest ridden state, but with Collins at the head.

Collins was a good Catholic boy who said his prayers too, as were pretty much most of the population at the time. The people would never stand for anything else.

That is only one angle. The problem is it is less about the celebration of achievements. More of a hijacking of a memory and shoehorning a modern narrative into the remembrance. All political parties do this depending on which narrative they wish to spin it to.

Pearse made great use of O'Donovan Rossa's Funeral to make a political point. To paraphrase Pearse he was the modern start of the use of the 'Fenian Dead' as political playthings. I think commemorations such as these lack sincerity. They are only used as convenient symbolism to make a political point.

FG know what is coming, a whole new generation shown the facism at their roots as their centenary arrives.

This desperation to attach themselves to Collins while pretending his 'terrorism' was somehow more benign than that of others is hilarious to behold.

Looking for a big sofa to hide behind here as Joe Duffy indulges his hypocrisies at our expense in the next hour or so. What a show the weekend was!