Your report (Welsh village summons ghosts of Ireland’s revolutionary past, 28 December) says Michael Collins was a military strategist when he was imprisoned in the Frongoch internment camp in the aftermath of the 1916 rising in Dublin. Collins had spent his previous work life in a variety of office jobs, mostly in London, including a stint as a counter clerk in the post office in Olympia. He returned to Ireland early in 1916, and that year’s uprising was his first military endeavour. I would suggest that it was in Frongoch, the “university of the revolution”, that Collins honed his military expertise and his leadership abilities developed. His criticism of the “blood sacrifice” nature of the rising, with its hope that the martyred deaths of the leaders would provoke a general uprising, was the impetus for his development of a guerrilla war campaign, which eventually proved successful in getting Britain to the negotiating table. It was his spy network that underpinned Collins’ success; there was little of political and military significance happening in Ireland that he wasn’t aware of.
Sean O’Donoghue
Hay on Wye, Powys
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