Michael Collins

For the Apollo XI astronaut, see Michael Collins (Astronaut)

Michael Collins (1890-1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader, and the main commander of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and of the Irish Free State Army during the Irish Civil War (1921-1923).

Collins was born into a republican family in west Cork, in the south-west of Ireland; on leaving school he moved to London where he passed the examinations for the British civil service and in 1906 joined the Post Office. While in London he joined the local branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association, a sporting organisation closely associated with Irish republican politics, and through his GAA links was inducted into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a republican secret society. He returned to Dublin in time to participate in the calamitous Easter Rising of 1916; his experience of the failure of that romantic gesture was to affect his leadership of the IRA during the War of Independence, characterised by ruthlessness and professionalism.