Quotes from Tim Pat Coogan

It has been done as part of the Boycott work until this affair in the North – these murders and so on – is stopped.82

I know for a good many months we did as much as we could to get property destroyed. I know that if a good deal more property was destroyed... I know they think a great deal more of property than of human life.

At the Parliamentary level Collins privately explored every avenue open to him to bring down the Northern Administration.

Three Protestants were shot at Dunmanway and over the next week the latent sectarianism of centuries of ballads and of landlordism (described in Chapter 1) claimed a total of ten Protestant lives.

ironically in view of the great volume of publicity given to the terms of the Boundary Clause and its impact on the 'wishes of the inhabitants', this was the period in which the Northern Government introduced the deceptively styled Representation of the People Bill (No. 2). In fact its effect would be to gerrymander Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh so that the wishes of the Catholic inhabitants of those areas could not be electorally expressed.

In all my life I have never experienced such orgies of murder, arson and looting as I have witnessed during the past 16 days with the RIC Auxiliaries. It baffles description. And we are supposed to be officers and gentlemen.

Unlike de Valera whose talent lay in getting and holding power, Collins asked himself the question, 'All this for what?', and tried to provide the answers.

And from there the various parties set out on their mission of destruction. Many who witnessed similar scenes in France and Flanders say, that nothing they had experienced was comparable to the punishment meted out to Cork.

Gaelic civilisation was quite different. Their unity was not of any military solidarity. It came from sharing the same traditions... They never exalted a central authority... The land belonged to the people... held for the people by the Chief of the Clan.

He wanted to restore a 'democratic social polity, with the exaltation of the things of the mind and character... the essence of ancient Irish civilisation... must provide the keynote of the new.

My personal safety does not count as a factor in the question of Ireland's rights. I thank no one for refraining from murdering me.