Monumental Honor for Slain Irish Leader

Eighty years after former comrades assassinated Michael Collins, the pragmatic rebel mastermind of Ireland’s fight for independence was honored Thursday with his first public statue--a measure of how long it has taken for the wounds of civil war to heal.

Senior figures from Ireland’s two major parties, drawn from opposite sides of that brutal 1922-23 conflict, joined more than 5,000 visitors and actor Liam Neeson to unveil a bronze likeness of Collins in Clonakilty, his home village on the south coast of County Cork.

“In Collins’ day, the buck always seemed to stop with him. He is my hero. He still inspires me,” said the Northern Ireland-born actor, who portrayed the Irish Republican Army commander in the 1996 film “Michael Collins.”

Historians and politicians increasingly laud Collins, who was killed Aug. 22, 1922, in a roadside ambush. Just 31 but already a general, he commanded the army of the fledgling Irish Free State.

“He was the George Washington of Ireland,” said Tom Morrissey, a retired American policeman who led U.S. fund-raising efforts for the 12-foot, $100,000 Clonakilty monument. “It’s crazy that he’s never had a proper statue before.”

All sides agree Collins helped organize the Irish Republican Army into an effective guerrilla force in the 1919-21 war of independence against Britain. He became an expert intelligence gatherer, directing a wave of assassinations of senior police agents in Dublin.

But Collins was branded a traitor by hard-line colleagues when he accepted a 1921 treaty with Britain that fell short of independence but laid foundations for the modern Irish state. Collins acknowledged that by agreeing, “I may have signed my own death warrant.”