This Day in History: 22 August 2020
22 August 1922
98 years ago, today, Michael Collins, an Irish revolutionary and Sinn Fein politician, was assassinated in west County Cork, Ireland. Collins had joined Sinn Fein, an Irish political party striving for Irish independence, in the early part of the century. The party became the unofficial political wing of militant Irish groups in their struggle against British rule. Irish Home Rule was approved in 1911 by the British Liberal government but was opposed by the Conservative Party in Parliament. The outbreak of World War One further delayed discussion on Irish self-determination, which Collins and other Irish nationalists responded with by staging the Easter Rising of 1916.
Sinn Fein was finally given a majority in national elections in 1918, when Ireland was threatened with the imposition of conscription. The party established an independent Irish parliament, Dail Eireann, which declared Ireland as a sovereign republic. Collins led the Irish Volunteers, a prototype of the Irish Republican Army, in 1919, in a large guerrilla campaign against British forces. Collins was also one of the architects of the historic 1921 peace treaty with Great Britain, which granted autonomy to southern Ireland. When Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein, was elected president of the newly established Irish Free State, Collins was appointed as his finance minister, until he was assassinated by Republican extremists.
Want to find out more about the life and death of Michael Collins? Click here for more information, or here for facts that you may have not known about him.
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