The Big Fibber

Fortnight Publications Ltd.

The Big FibberAuthor(s): Austin MorganSource: Fortnight, No. 356 (Dec., 1996), pp. 23-25Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25559105 .

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Fiction speaking louder * than history? -a scene

C form Neil Jordan's Michael

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Neil Jordan's Michael Collins is a dangerously untruthful film. Defensively brandishing his UCD history degree,Jordan claims he set out to make an epic Irish film about the man-of-violence-who-turns to-peace. But Michael Collins is a Hollywood action

movie-The Godfather with shamrocks-which has encouragedAnglophobiain the Republic, reinforced ignorance in the United States, and, in Northern Ireland, threatens to stir up sectarianism.

Jordan, protesting pacifism, has played into the hands of contemporary Republicanism. At one level, this can be seen as the film of the 1994 ceasefire, with

Collins the role model for Gerry Adams. At an other-more prosaic-level, Bugs Bunny gets into bed with Martin McGuinness (Warner Brothers hav ing put up the $28 million). How can an artist of

Jordan's calibre, working in the most powerful me dium of human culture, have got it so wrong?

Part of the answer lies in artistic licence: a buddies' movie (Collins and Harry Bland), with a-tame-sex angle (Kitty Kiernan); a more elevated rivalry be tween Collins, the epic hero, and de Valera, the villain, where the killing of the former (by the IRA, not British agents!) might have been replaced by republican reconciliation, and-according to awish fulJordan-peace. Such is the cinematic language of romantic heroism, the sort of stuff that gets artists

a bad name. But most of the answer has to do with Jordan

swallowing the (long discredited) Sinn Fein version of history-' 1916 and all that'. I don't know what he read in 1983 (Tim Pat Coogan had not then de scended from the Irish Press), butJordan can have studied very little scholarly Irish history; much of this, admittedly, eschews the interests of Dorothy

McArdle's Irish Republic with Collins substituted for de Valera, but there is a respectable left revision ist tradition (to which I belong) which has tackled the revolutionary period head on and found it want ing.

Three questions may be asked. Was violence-as Jordan claims-inevitable in 1916-23? Did Collins become a man of peace? What would have become of the Big Fella if he had survived BeM na mBlath?

On the first question, Jordan has been rightly criticised by historians for leaving out all of the context: the home rule era of Parnell and after,

when an Irish parliament was promised; Ulster re sistance after 1910, which led to partition; the 1914

Act postponed by the great war; 1916 as an unpopu lar German-aided revolutionary putsch; the 1918 anti-conscription campaign undermining parliamen tary nationalism; the first world war of 1914-18 is totally absent from the film.

Historically accurate or dangerously flawed?

Michael Collins has attracted huge amounts of contro versy and even bigger crowds. Here AUSTIN MORGAN attacks the "dangerously untruth ful" film, while overleaf ANTHONY O'KEEFFE and SIMON PARTRIDGE offer their comments

DECEMBER 1996 FO R T N I G H T 23



COVER STORY

Jordan does not even mention the 1918 election, when Sinn Fein got a majority of the seats with a minority of the votes. This amounted to a confirma tion of Fenian righteousness for de Valera as well as

Collins, not a democratic mandate to pursue self government as war gave way to peace. What there was of a guerilla campaign in 1919-21 is reduced in the film to a few urban episodes in Dublin. And politics are again left outwhen Griffith and Collins negotiate the treaty in London in 1921.

In their place, as the film's production notes show, is Manicheanism and sectarianism; 700 years of Eng lish oppression (also in the film's opening caption); plantation by protestants from the twelfth century (!!); native starvation; 1916 as the answer, and IRA

violence bringing the post-war British Empire to its knees. Comic book history with a-literally-deadly kick.

The audit of constitutional versus violent national ism reads in contrast: the parliamentarians did most to achieve self government, and Ulster protestants effectively claimed minority rights; the 1921 treaty granted dominion status (which de Valera, ironi cally, transformed, after a period of time, into the Irish republic) but this was not much more than the devolved parliament of the 1914 Act; Sinn Fein/the IRA's historical contribution was the gun in Irish politics, a fratricidal civil war, a separate political culture rooted in (catholic) Gaelicism, and North ern Ireland as a-sectarian-devolved administra

The real Michael Collins tion. A malignant contribution then and now.

There was political violence in 1916-22, with the Irish doing more to each other than the British ever

managed (I include the frequentlyoverlooked north ern sectarian violence of 1920-22, which came to an end when the IRA went off to fight the Free Staters). This is a historical fact.

Sinn Fein/the IRA, however, made a negative contribution to Irish history. That is a historical judgement. Nothing in Irish historyjustifies the IRA of today. That is a statement of historical assessment containing a moral/political evaluation.

As for the second question-did Collins become a man of peace?-it is absurd to portray the military leader of the Free State as taking the gun out of politics. Collins helped mastermind republican vio lence in 1919-21, but was persuaded in London (in scenes left out of the film) to accept the Irish Free State. The treatyites-the Sinn Fein majority-set about the business of state formation.

Collins-in an episode mercifully not tackled by Jordan-collaborated with the IRA in Northern Ire land in early 1922. This, however, was a case of, one, trying to maintain republican unity, and, two, se cretly counter-terrorising the unionist regime in order to make things easier on catholics who looked to Dublin. With the IRA continuing to defy Free State law and

order, and the democratic process, Collins eventu ally turned on his erstwhile comrades. He pulled out of Northern Ireland, and turned his Free State forces loose on the IRA. This was more brutal, and resulted in much greater violence, than anything the

British did to Sinn Fein/the IRA (graphically exag gerated in Jordan's movie).

Collins was a man of order, of democracy when necessary-but hardly of peace. There is absolutely no evidence for the Jordan fantasy that Collins and de Valera could have been reconciled, and that this would have resulted in political cooperation in the new state. Reconciliation could only have meant the IRA reuniting to fight Britain once again for full republican separation (or de Valera's external asso ciation!).

Collins' possible psychopathology survives as a topic of serious intellectual enquiry. A cultural work such as Michael Collins that can only address the question of Ireland through romantic twaddle about the man-of-violence-who-turns-to-peace must be seen as deeply flawed.

Collins was killed by his sworn enemies, whom he had helped put in the field after 1916; if the IRA had missed at Beal na mBlath, the civil war would have continued until violent republicanism had been defeated. Neither Britain, nor the northern govern

ment, would have objected to Collins' methods. Thirdly, if Collins had lived, what contribution

would he have made to Free State history? Counter factual speculation ('what if?. ..' history) is often self indulgent, or self serving, especially in Ireland, but the following is highly arguable.

He would have become the strong man of govern ment, eliding political and military functions. The

'yob from west Cork' could well have ruled, through the 1920s and 1930s, as an Irish Marshal Pilsudski of Poland; he would have been under 50 in 1939, and

24 FO R T N I G H T DECEMBER 1996



*~ COVER STORY I

could have survived to the 1960s (which conjures up a different-Dantonesque-mythological Collins!).

The Free State would have been heavily catholic, and slightly Gaelic. Relations with Northern Ireland and Britain might have been better, but Collins' domestic policies would probably have been more right-wing than de Valera's (Fine Gael became the party of the 'haves', Fianna Fail of the 'have nots').

The big question is whether the de Valera political success story, between 1926 (when he quit Sinn Fein) and 1948 (when he scraped the issue of parti tion out of the barrel of national grievances), would have made such an impact on the Irish state.

Most likely, Collins would have run de Valera a tighter race. It is unlikely that Collins a la Pilsudski

would have made de Valera even greater. The politi cal dominance of Fianna Fail, and slightly constitu tional republicanism, would have been less. And that

would have been good for all the people of Ireland, in the 1920s and up to today.

No doubt NeilJordan will continue to protest his worthy motives.

Michael Collins-with its message of unrelenting anti-Britishness-is now public property this side of the Atlantic. By their friends, so shall ye know them is a good political principle. NeilJordan's admirers have turned out to be the usual band of republican apologists and fellow travellers (and naive English critics). Does he welcome or reject this support? +

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TOE ic HA? A rw WOEFOL ECTIOWOk FOR

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Finauly, NeilJordan has come of cinematic age with Michael Collins. My problem withJordan has always been that I foolishly began by reading his flawless novella The Dream Of The Beast, and then set about

watching his films. The power and poetry of the novella was such that I was inevitably going to be disappointed by anything that he produced on cellu loid (The Company Of Wolves being the exception, but only after the fourth or fifth viewing). That is, until now. His latest cinematic offering arrives here at long last-having already won the Golden Lion at

Venice, for both Best Film, and Best Actor (Liam Neeson).

If anything, Venice was a little flattered at having a film of such quality as Michael Collins on which to bestow its Golden Lion. By rights, the film should have been shown in competition at the more prestig ious Cannes Festival, where it would surely have won the Golden Palm, instead of Leigh's gloriously cin ematic Secrets And Lies. Collins would have been the ideal successor and companion piece to last

year's winner there, 'Yugoslavian" Emer Kusterica's

DECEMBER 1996 FO R T N I G H T 25



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The Big Fibber