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—Michael Collins 4 страница
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In partial explanation of the British lack of intelligence, it must be said that prior to and even at the height of the IRA’s campaign the ‘G’ Division in Dublin employed fewer than two dozen men exclusively dedicated to political work, while the RIC’s Special Branch consisted not of a nationwide detective force along the lines of Scotland Yard but of a confidential records office based in Dublin Castle, staffed by several clerks, a detective inspector and a chief inspector. The vast bulk of intelligence gathered by Special Branch was collected by ordinary RIC men throughout the country and forwarded to Crimes Special Branch’s small office in Dublin Castle for analysis. Until the final year of Dublin Castle’s rule there was no ‘secret service’ in Ireland: Special Branch did not run undercover agents, rarely recruited informers and made little effort to penetrate the organisations of its enemies. The documents gathered there demonstrated the old-fashioned methods employed by the police: republican premises were kept under observation, train stations and other public places were watched, suspects were shadowed from town to town and their speeches were recorded by policemen.
Although some individuals in British service were dismissed on
dubious or malicious grounds of spying for the Irish, the files indicate that the quality of evidence demanded for prosecution, or even dismissal, was generally high: little action was taken in many of these cases despite the RIC’s efforts to gather incriminating evidence. Consequently, the British administration in Ireland remained penetrated by republican sympathisers despite its periodic attempts to purge potentially subversive employees.
Collins’s policies brought success not only in the intelligence wars but also in the eyes of the Irish people. One Volunteer said: ‘For the first time in the history of separatism we Irish had a better intelligence service than the British … This was Michael Collins’s great achievement and it is one for which every Irishman should honour his memory. ’115
There are, however, contrary views of the successes of Collins’s intelligence operation. For example, Peter Hart, one of Collins’s greatest critics in this regard, asks:
What did Collins’s remarkable achievements actually enable him to do? His sources rarely gave him useful operational intelligence other than warning of some raids and spies. He did not acquire any particular insight into British planning or intentions. The result was a particularly negative and partial one, largely confined to Dublin’s inner circles: security from G-Men and spies, not from British intelligence as a whole. 116
IRA intelligence results mostly exceeded the British counter-intelligence effort, but the IRA’s own counter-intelligence was less omnipotent than is popularly represented. The Bloody Sunday shootings killed not only intelligence officers but also legal officers who were required when the army became immersed in law enforcement. According to Peter Hart, the IRA killings of informers in Cork frequently missed the real targets as well. 117
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Further to that, Charles Townshend wrote:
Alongside organisation and armament, as the foundation of a guerrilla campaign, modern theory would place the creation of a comprehensive intelligence system. 118 The IRA’s achievement in this sphere is legendary—in both senses of the word, it now seems.
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In the first place, the organisation and functioning of the intelligence service within the IRA was far from faultless.
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Even the most celebrated achievements of IRA intelligence were not without flaw. The apogee of the organisation was Michael Collins’s own network in Dublin, which was responsible for the assassination of twelve British officers on ‘Bloody Sunday’. According to the IRA, these were members of a secret service group, which was about to put Collins’s organisation ‘on the spot’; while the Government, displaying the characteristic mentality, denied that any were connected with secret service work, which was not going on anyway. More detached verdicts have usually fallen somewhere between the two … 119
Townshend is correct: a ‘detached verdict’ is necessary. In reviewing Irish (and British) actions in the war, historians have too often viewed policies and results in terms of black and white, right and wrong, heroes and villains, and friends or foes. Such binary constructs are usually wrong. Moreover, results often do not reflect intentions.
A more objective review of the Irish intelligence effort reveals successes but also many failures. Likewise, there were many British intelligence failures but also successes. Collins did not recruit a single policy- making member of the British military, police or government. Furthermore, he knew little of the goings-on in the British Cabinet, and never attempted to penetrate it. Collins’s best insights into British government policy came from Andy Cope, who passed along information intentionally. Perhaps the best lesson learned by both sides was that, in the words of Ormonde Winter, intelligence ‘alone cannot win a war. It is merely an aid to force, and it is only by action that the desired end can result. ’120 Winter was also right when he concluded that ‘one of the outstanding difficulties in the suppression of political crime in Ireland was the fact that the British nation was not at war with Ireland, whilst Ireland was at war with the British nation’. 121 Britain was always one step behind the evolving Irish political situation.
In the narrative of the Irish War of Independence, credit/blame is usually apportioned according to one’s viewpoint. The first option is to hail
Collins (in particular, but the other Irish as well) as fighting a one-sided intelligence/military war and winning all the intelligence battles in Dublin and throughout the country. 122 In the second version, the British (and particularly Lloyd George and the hard-liners in the Cabinet and military) ‘lost’ Ireland by their incompetence and betrayed those who wished to remain part of the ‘Empire’ for their own selfish ends. 123 Like all absolutes, neither is strictly true. In fact, both the Irish and the British had successes and failures, and both the Irish and British evolved as the war went on. 124
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Collins should be given credit for possessing an evident appreciation of the necessity of the acquisition of information from disparate sources and its analysis as the primary elements of intelligence; for his penetration of the British intelligence service; for his understanding of the need for ruthlessness when required; and for maintaining the security of his own service. 125 His intelligence service did not contribute a great deal directly to the operations of units outside of Dublin, but that was mostly due to the existing circumstances in 1919–21. Most operations were on a local level, and each was planned and conducted in conjunction with local conditions and intelligence.
Collins was bold but not reckless. It should be understood that he was not a superman, that the IRA was vulnerable to British spying insertions, and that by the time of the Truce in 1921 Collins’s Irish intelligence operation was almost equalled by the upgrade in British intelligence. Such an objective review also suggests that had the Truce not gone into effect in July 1921 the British efforts to find and capture Collins within a short period could have been successful. Hart suggests that ‘time simply ran out’ on the British. In terms of a horse race, the British were in the lead at the start, the Irish caught up and actually pulled ahead in the middle, and at the end of the race the British recovered to almost a dead heat.
Nevertheless, even Hart conceded that ‘Collins was brilliant, and we must be aware of the limits of his reach. His secret service may well have bested his vaunted rivals, but theirs was one battle not the whole war. ’126 Credit is due to many of the Irish, but ‘it’s doubtful the revolt would have succeeded without the genius of one man: the Irish Republican Army’s de facto military commander, Michael Collins, described by one of his foes as a man “full of fascination and charm—but also of dangerous fire”. ’127
If one were keeping score, it could be said that the British lost the
intelligence war in tactical terms but that they were more successful strategically in determining just how far Collins and the Irish would go in Treaty negotiations. Collins’s goal was to get to those negotiations.
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