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Michael Collins 12 Apostles

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  • 21-05-2015 4:12pm
    #1
    Hermy
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 11,312 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    I'm told that someone in my family tree may have been one of the 12 Apostles and I'm wondering where to go or what to read to learn about them?

    Genealogy Forum Mod



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    #2
    William F
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭William F


    Tim Pat Coogan's Michael Collins is a good read. Also try the squad.


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    #3
    Arsemageddon
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,129 ✭✭✭Arsemageddon


    If you know the persons name you cam find their records in the military pensions archive

    http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection


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    #4
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    William F wrote: »
    Tim Pat Coogan's Michael Collins is a good read. Also try the squad.

    Yeah, it's a good read,very biased against De Valera tho.


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    #5
    Hermy
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 11,312 Mod ✭✭✭✭Hermy


    William F wrote: »
    Tim Pat Coogan's Michael Collins is a good read. Also try the squad.
    Tim Pat's books always get a mention so I suppose it's as good a place as any to start.
    Arsemageddon wrote: »
    If you know the persons name you cam find their records in the military pensions archive

    http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection
    Don't know why I didn't check the Military Archives before. Found him straight away though I can't yet say if he was a member of 'The Squad' - that might take a bit more digging.
    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    Yeah, it's a good read,very biased against De Valera tho.

    No harm - I'm not a Dev fan.

    Genealogy Forum Mod



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    #6
    William F
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭William F


    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    Yeah, it's a good read,very biased against De Valera tho.

    I agree. Coogan gives the impression that de Valera exasperated the conditions that brought about the Civil War.

    I find that hard to believe that one man could of been responsible for what happened.

    Almost three quarters of IRA combatants were against the treaty; that in my opinion was enough to bring about the war.

    He gives a favorable account of Griffith aswel. After the bombardment of the Four Courts, he mentions that Griffith condemned De Valera for starting it.

    Griffith was always going to accept less than a Republic considering he was advocating a dual monarchy not so long before it.


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    #7
    Leocolceathrar
    Registered Users Posts: 73 ✭✭Leocolceathrar


    I intend to look into the Coogan book. Thanks for pointers.


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    #8
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    Hermy wrote: »
    Tim Pat's books always get a mention so I suppose it's as good a place as any to start.


    Don't know why I didn't check the Military Archives before. Found him straight away though I can't yet say if he was a member of 'The Squad' - that might take a bit more digging.



    No harm - I'm not a Dev fan.

    Neither am I, he's one of the people I most blame for making Ireland such a conservative country when he was in power. But I still think he's usually portrayed very unfairly during the latter stages during the Tan War & early stages of the Counter-Revolution / Civil War.


    Probably Neil Jordan's strange hero-worship film about Michael Collins is the best case for this, atleast on a international scale.


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    #9
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    William F wrote: »
    I agree. Coogan gives the impression that de Valera exasperated the conditions that brought about the Civil War.

    I find that hard to believe that one man could of been responsible for what happened.

    Almost three quarters of IRA combatants were against the treaty; that in my opinion was enough to bring about the war.

    He gives a favorable account of Griffith aswel. After the bombardment of the Four Courts, he mentions that Griffith condemned De Valera for starting it.

    Griffith was always going to accept less than a Republic considering he was advocating a dual monarchy not so long before it.

    Exactly. I think it was something like 7 or 6 IRA Volunteers were against the treaty. Dev made a lot speeches about wadding in Irish blood I doubt there was even 1 IRA Vol. at these speeches. They were probably to busy recruiting & training new recruits to go to any political speeches.

    The IRA didn't give a crap what Dev had to say they were going to try & make the Republic survive by any means.


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    #10
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    William F wrote: »
    I agree. Coogan gives the impression that de Valera exasperated the conditions that brought about the Civil War.

    I find that hard to believe that one man could of been responsible for what happened.

    Almost three quarters of IRA combatants were against the treaty; that in my opinion was enough to bring about the war.

    He gives a favorable account of Griffith aswel. After the bombardment of the Four Courts, he mentions that Griffith condemned De Valera for starting it.

    Griffith was always going to accept less than a Republic considering he was advocating a dual monarchy not so long before it.


    Missed this part first time.

    Yeah, Griffith was never a Republican, he supported the bosses during the 1913 lockout sure, He just wanted a Irish government for elite Irish instead of elite British which is what he got. I'm a Republican but can't understand why a working class person would want that. Like Connolly said getting political independence is the easy pat gettting economic & social independence is the real struggle.

    Out of interest what would have gave Ireland more independence dual-monarchy or the free State we got?


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    #11
    jonniebgood1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,577 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    ....
    I'm a Republican but can't understand why a working class person would want that. Like Connolly said getting political independence is the easy pat gettting economic & social independence is the real struggle.
    There is a difference in what you are saying that is socialist more than republicanism. The independence and Republic achieved in Ireland was never for acted upon with the working class person prioritised. Even today Ireland has a pro conservative attitude with the leading party always being of a conservative nature.


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    #12
    Hermy
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 11,312 Mod ✭✭✭✭Hermy


    William F wrote: »
    Almost three quarters of IRA combatants were against the treaty; that in my opinion was enough to bring about the war.

    What is the thinking as to what might have happened if the treaty hadn't been signed? Is it still as likely that there would have been a civil war?

    Genealogy Forum Mod



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    #13
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    jonniebgood1 wrote: »
    There is a difference in what you are saying that is socialist more than republicanism. The independence and Republic achieved in Ireland was never for acted upon with the working class person prioritised. Even today Ireland has a pro conservative attitude with the leading party always being of a conservative nature.


    Yeah I get what you mean but it was mainly working class who fought the British in !920 & 21. And was mainly working classing people who fought against the treaty & when the IRA took over & stopped taking orders from the Dail & regarded their Army council as the legit government of all Ireland their rhetoric & declarations became far more radical then & "RED" during the Civil War.

    It was the same with the troubles. It was mainly working class people who were fighting. My mother lived in a slightly upper middle part of Strabane (Tyrone) from 1969 - 1980. Strabane was the most bombed town in Europe during the 70's & my mother & her family were never caught up in a explosion or gunfight. She did see a deaf mute get murdered by the British because he couldn't hear them telling him to stop & shot him in the back of the head dead & besides a few carjackings & IRA patrols that was it.


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    #14
    DavidRamsay99
    Registered Users Posts: 521 ✭✭✭DavidRamsay99


    The founder members were Paddy Daly (leader), Patrick Buckley, Mick McDonnell, Ben Barrett, James Conroy, Sean Doyle, Joe Leonard, Pat McCrea, Jim Slattery, and Bill Stapleton.

    Later members were Mick Love, Gearoid O'Sullivan, Patrick Caldwell, Charlie Dalton, Mick O'Reilly, Vincent Byrne, Sean Healy, James Ronan, Tom Keogh, Tom Cullen, Paddy Lawson, John Dunne and Johnny Wilson.

    Sean Lemass, the future Taoiseach, and Stephen Behan, the father of Dominic and the playwright Brendan Behan were put forward as members.


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    #15
    William F
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭William F


    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    Out of interest what would have gave Ireland more independence dual-monarchy or the free State we got?

    I think united under home rule would have been a far better deal than partition under two different Christian ideologies.
    Hermy wrote: »
    What is the thinking as to what might have happened if the treaty hadn't been signed? Is it still as likely that there would have been a civil war?

    There was only one certainty and that was military defeat for the IRA. But I don't think anyone ever expected to win; the Russian's called it a Bourgeois revolution and this is why they it gave it little support and possibly the reason why so many soled out to the Freestate.


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    #16
    kildarejohn
    Registered Users Posts: 309 ✭✭kildarejohn


    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    but it was mainly working class who fought the British in !920 & 21. And was mainly working classing people who fought against the treaty QUOTE]
    Not sure how historically accurate that is. From various sources I have read, in rural areas the Republican activists tended to be sons of shopkeepers and farmers, in Dublin many were from occupations such as teachers and writers.
    So more lower middle class really. Not many labourers that I have come across (compared to the big no. of Irish labourer class in the ranks of the British Army in WW1)


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    #17
    DavidRamsay99
    Registered Users Posts: 521 ✭✭✭DavidRamsay99


    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    but it was mainly working class who fought the British in !920 & 21. And was mainly working classing people who fought against the treaty

    The overwhelming majority of IRA volunteers were well to do or middle class. They were educated by the Christian Brothers and if they were well off they were educated by the Jesuits and had a third level education. In rural areas they came from farming stock and in urban areas they were young professionals, the self-employed, tradesmen, clerks and so forth.

    The Anglo-Irish Protestant upper class were the majority of senior British Army and senior RIC officers.

    The overwhelming majority of British Army sergeants, corporals and privates were from the rural and urban laboring classes.

    The fighting in Tipperary and in Cork was in some of the wealthiest farming areas in the country.


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    #18
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    William F wrote: »
    I think united under home rule would have been a far better deal than partition under two different Christian ideologies.

    Dual Monarchy was what Austria-Hungary had wasn't it & both countries were equal in status? So if Ireland got dual monarchy they would be equal to Britain. That sounds like a better deal & probably would have saved a lot of bloodshed.


    There was only one certainty and that was military defeat for the IRA. But I don't think anyone ever expected to win; the Russian's called it a Bourgeois revolution and this is why they it gave it little support and possibly the reason why so many soled out to the Freestate.

    The Russian's then where ones to talk at that point. Like Chomsky said - Leninism had nothing to with traditional socialism & was criticized for it by people like Rosa Luxemburg & even Trotsky (until 1917) for what they considered a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement & this militant opportunist vanguardism. Lenin's first moves after he gained state power were to move against & close down the socialist institutions that had been established during the course of popular struggle & totally re-created the Tsarist systems of oppression even more brutally, KGB, Cheka etc... they were claiming this destruction of socialism was socialism The core of socialism is that workers have control over their own production that's what you begin with then move on to other things but that's the core basic. There ones to talk about Bourgeois revolutions. I wouldn't call the October "revolution" a revolution it was more of a coup to move against the liberal government they were sharing power with & seize state power & any opposition was quickly crushed.

    Leninism was a precursor for later forms totalitarianism. Marx would have been spinning in his grave if he seen what the USSR called socialism, well probably Marx never really talked about socialism that much more about the bad things of capitalism which they are. I don't think socialism has failed I don't think it existed in the first place to fail & I just don't think it's ever been established anywhere properly.


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    #19
    DarkyHughes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭DarkyHughes


    DavidRamsay99 wrote: »
    The overwhelming majority of IRA volunteers were well to do or middle class. They were educated by the Christian Brothers and if they were well off they were educated by the Jesuits and had a third level education. In rural areas they came from farming stock and in urban areas they were young professionals, the self-employed, tradesmen, clerks and so forth.

    The Anglo-Irish Protestant upper class were the majority of senior British Army and senior RIC officers.

    The overwhelming majority of British Army sergeants, corporals and privates were from the rural and urban laboring classes.

    The fighting in Tipperary and in Cork was in some of the wealthiest farming areas in the country.

    Maybe that's case. Tom Barry (unless he's making it up) talks in his book about how for every small cottage or house the Brits burned his unit burned 2 big houses. Seems a litttle strange that the British would go to the trouble of burning down small cottages if they weren't atleast protecting Volunteers.


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    #20
    djh2009
    Registered Users Posts: 121 ✭✭djh2009


    Hermy wrote: »
    I'm told that someone in my family tree may have been one of the 12 Apostles and I'm wondering where to go or what to read to learn about them?
    Hermy, I too recently found out that someone in my family tree was a member of The Squad. So I have bought " The Squad " by T. Ryle Dwyer and look forward to reading it in the next week or so.


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    #21
    Farmer Pudsey
    Registered Users Posts: 6,326 ✭✭✭Farmer Pudsey


    There is different theory's about Dev's level of responsibility for the civil war. To begin with even though Loyal George the British PM headed the British delegation he refused/delegated the leadership of the Irish one. There was a certain thinking by some historians and senior IRB/Sinn Fein figure that he should have lead it and left Collins at home as a smoking gun to point at.

    There is a theory that he always knew a compromise would have to be reached with his famous triangular scetch he once drew. However when the delegates signed( and they all signed) he was livid. There was a theory that he was waiting for talks to break down so that he could them reap the benifit of going to londand and coming back with a compromise solution.

    The real rancour was that even though he he lost the Dail vote he refused to accept the it outcome and refused to accept the election result that ensued. It was felt that if he had not walked out of the Dail and had accepted the 1922 election result that a lot of bloodshed would have been avoided. He gave a political legitimacy to the anti-treaty side and carried other along with him that might well have accepted the legitimacy of the result while having opposite views.

    For the pro treaty side the price it paid with the death of Griffits and Collins early in the Civil war and the shooting of Sean Mchale left it taking options that it may well not have had to take if Dev accepted and followed the democratic route that the Dail vote and 1922 election result that the country gave.

    The idea that there was a working class/ middle class divide is not shown in the Volunteers where the Dublin Brigade followed the Treaty in mass alot of them workingclass where by the biggest anti-treaty area was rural area's in Munster.


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    #22
    William F
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭William F


    kildarejohn wrote: »
    DarkyHughes wrote: »
    but it was mainly working class who fought the British in !920 & 21. And was mainly working classing people who fought against the treaty QUOTE]
    Not sure how historically accurate that is. From various sources I have read, in rural areas the Republican activists tended to be sons of shopkeepers and farmers, in Dublin many were from occupations such as teachers and writers.
    So more lower middle class really. Not many labourers that I have come across (compared to the big no. of Irish labourer class in the ranks of the British Army in WW1)

    The bulk of the new freetstate army was made up of soldiers who didn't even fight in the war of Independence. A lot were ex British Army and others had no political affiliation.


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    #23
    jonniebgood1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,577 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    William F wrote: »
    kildarejohn wrote: »

    The bulk of the new freetstate army was made up of soldiers who didn't even fight in the war of Independence. A lot were ex British Army and others had no political affiliation.

    Do you have a source for this information. Please provide it.


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    #24
    William F
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭William F


    jonniebgood1 wrote: »
    William F wrote: »

    Do you have a source for this information. Please provide it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Army_%28Ireland%29#cite_note-2

    ''approximately 20 percent of its officers and 50 percent of its soldiers were Irish ex-servicemen of the British Army.''


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    #25
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,092 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    William F wrote: »
    jonniebgood1 wrote: »

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Army_%28Ireland%29#cite_note-2

    ''approximately 20 percent of its officers and 50 percent of its soldiers were Irish ex-servicemen of the British Army.''
    This doesn't mean that they hadn't fought in the War of Independence, though, since many ex-British servicemen, demobilised in 1918, later became Volunteers.

    But, just on the figures, it was impossible for the majority of members of the National Army to have served as volunteers in the War of Independence. At its height, in May 1923, the National Army stood at 58,000. This was many times the estimated 15,000 who ever participated in the IRA during the 1919-21 period.


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    #26
    Santa Cruz
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,126 ✭✭✭Santa Cruz


    DavidRamsay99 wrote: »
    The overwhelming majority of IRA volunteers were well to do or middle class. They were educated by the Christian Brothers and if they were well off they were educated by the Jesuits and had a third level education. In rural areas they came from farming stock and in urban areas they were young professionals, the self-employed, tradesmen, clerks and so forth.

    The Anglo-Irish Protestant upper class were the majority of senior British Army and senior RIC officers.

    The overwhelming majority of British Army sergeants, corporals and privates were from the rural and urban laboring classes.

    The fighting in Tipperary and in Cork was in some of the wealthiest farming areas in the country.

    The wealthiest farms were not in the hands of the families of volunteers though. In Cork, Tipp Kerry the volunteers from rural areas were drawn from small landowners and general workers. In the towns like Mallow Tralee a lot of factory workers, railway workers were active. They certainly were not well to do or middle class. Check the 1911 census against the names of volunteers and you will see the family backgrounds


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    #27
    Thomas_.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 164 ✭✭Thomas_.


    djh2009 wrote: »
    Hermy, I too recently found out that someone in my family tree was a member of The Squad. So I have bought " The Squad " by T. Ryle Dwyer and look forward to reading it in the next week or so.

    I´ve read that book by T. Ryle Dwyer apart from some other books I´ve by that author and in compare to Coogan, I prefer Dwyer as the better historian and writer.

    The book "The Squad" tells much about the background of the "12 Apostles" and the names of the members, including the parts of interviews they have given back in the days when this survey was made by the Irish Army and kept classified for decades. I´m not sure whether it is the proper source to trace back any family relations to them unless there is a obvious link by the name of some of the interviewees there.


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    #28
    naasrd
    Registered Users Posts: 2,408 ✭✭✭naasrd


    William F wrote: »
    jonniebgood1 wrote: »

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Army_%28Ireland%29#cite_note-2

    ''approximately 20 percent of its officers and 50 percent of its soldiers were Irish ex-servicemen of the British Army.''

    They were known as Truciliers.


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    #29
    Dr.Nightdub
    Registered Users Posts: 108 ✭✭Dr.Nightdub


    No, the Trucileers were those who joined the IRA after the Truce of July 1921, when it was a lot safer to do so, nothing to do with the Free State army


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