Brugha vs Mulcahy/Collins
Introduction from Chronology
Following up his letter of September 6th (see Sep-06-21/1), Brugha writes to Mulcahy saying that unless he produced a
full dossier on the case of the man wrongly deported (see Jul-30-21/1) within
twenty-four hours then he would be suspended.
Brugha writes next day to Mulcahy saying that
his services would no longer be required.
Mulcahy forwards the correspondence to de Valera asking him to “estimate
and adjust the situation without delay”.
De Valera managed to calm the situation and Mulcahy is re-instated.
More Detail
Robert Barton said that Collins “bore resentment to de Valera for the
impartial attitude he adopted regarding this quarrel”. A member of GHQ, Fintan
Murphy, thought that, on the GHQ staff, the majority would side with Collins as
they were “all IRB”.
Sean Dowling thought that Brugha’s dislike of
Collins came from an envy of Collins’s ability saying that Brugha
“hated Collins like poison – it was pathological”. Pakenham asks how far Brugha
and Stack’s dislike of Collins came from “the bewilderment of men of taut and
rigid principles when confronted with an infinitely more fluent-minded and
adaptable colleague, we cannot tell”.
It is extremely difficult to get clarity on the origin of the Brugha’s enmity for Collins as the memory of those who
were privy to it was clouded by the bitter divisions that were to happen the
following year. Pakenham says that “by
the middle of 1921 both [Brugha and Stack] had become
antagonistic towards Collins”.
Commenting on Brugha’s hatred for Collins,
Townshend says that by the outbreak of the Civil War “whatever its origins, it
had become a paranoid obsession”.