Michael Collins was not opposed to sectarian killings, rather he unleashed them

In the News Letter of Saturday, August 27, a letter appeared under the heading, ‘Michael Collins would not have backed later IRA murders’ (see link below). The writer was a Mr Gerry Cullen.

The notion set forth by Mr Cullen would be laughable, were it not seen as part of the ‘sanitising’ of the murderous agenda of Irish republicanism, both in the early and middle part of the last century.

Michael Collins did not sign the Anglo Irish Treaty in December 1921 in order to avoid the “inevitable sectarian slaughter of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland”, as claimed by Mr Cullen.

Rather, he did so because on the night of December 5, 1921, Lloyd George brandished two letters in front of the Irish delegation and warned them that a train was waiting at Euston Station and a destroyer at Holyhead to take one of the letters to Belfast to the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig.

One letter stated that agreement had been reached between Great Britain and the Irish Republic; the other stated that the talks had broken down. In the latter case Lloyd George threatened there would be “immediate and terrible war within three days”.

That is what prompted Collins to sign! No one knew better than he that the IRA, enfeebled after years of conflict, would be utterly wiped out under such an unshackled assault by the British Army.

As he signed, he was heard to say, ‘I am signing my death warrant’.

Collins was not prepared to sign his death warrant for the sake of the Protestants or Roman Catholics of Northern Ireland. He was thinking of others, himself included, facing the threatened British Army assault.

Michael Collins was deeply involved in the terrorism unleashed on the Protestants of Northern Ireland following the signing of the ‘treaty’.

Sir Arthur Hezlet, in his history of the Ulster Special Constabulary, records how Collins was on a republican platform at a rally in Armagh on September 4, some three months before he signed the ‘treaty’, and it was said from that platform that the IRA ‘threatened the lead’ against the Protestants of Northern Ireland who resisted its demands.

The desire of the IRA, led by Collins, was to ‘smash the Ulster Parliament’ and if that could not be achieved politically, ‘it would have to be smashed otherwise’.

Sounds familiar.

An intensified IRA campaign in Ulster, based upon the IRA’s tactics in the south, began in May 1922. By ‘assassination, arson, fomenting of riots, intimidation, kidnapping and boycotting’ they hoped to force an acceptance of Sinn Fein rule. The IRA used the same plan in the Troubles that began in 1968.

Providentially, the IRA split over the ‘treaty’ and civil war ensued in the southern counties. Michael Collins was shot dead by his former compatriots in that civil war on August 22, 1922. He reaped the murderer’s reward, decreed of God. ‘Then said Jesus unto him (Peter), Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,’ Matthew 26:52.

General Sir Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready, upon the death of Collins said: “Michael Collins was, and must for ever be, the embodiment of a campaign of ruthless murders carried out by men styling themselves soldiers of the Irish Republic, but who systematically ignored every condition of warfare recognised among civilised nations.”

That aptly and succinctly describes Collins and his terrorist acolytes, McGuinness and others.

Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd), Kilskeery, Co Tyrone

Michael Collins would not have backed later IRA murders

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/letters/michael-collins-would-not-have-backed-later-ira-murders-3821745