The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
THE SHANNON Omniplex and Fine Gael have come together to host a screening of the Neil Jordan biopic Michael Collins, marking the 100th anniversary of the death of the eponymous Irish hero.
It will take place on Tuesday, September 6, at 7pm, and at the same time it will be shown at 18 other cinemas around the country.
The film was released in 1996 to huge fanfare, while it provoked much discussion throughout the country.
Twenty-six years later, the screening will provide an opportunity for many people to see it for the first time on a big screen.
Tony Mulcahy grew up in a Fine Gael home in Limerick, before moving to Shannon where he represented the party on the local town council and Clare County Council. He also stood for election to the Dáil and won a Senate seat for the party.
He said that he hopes to attend the screening, and that Collins would certainly have been seen as an iconic figure in previous decades.
“He would in my house anyway, in my mother and father’s house!” he laughs.
The walls had pictures of the Sacred Heart, JFK and Collins, but there still wasn’t an excessive focus on Fine Gael, he added. “It was that kind of a house, but it was never kind of driven into us or beaten into us either.”
Tony said that there was actually relatively little taught of the civil war when he was a boy.
“It was a very troubled and difficult time as we all know now. We went to school and when it came to Irish history we got it up to the late 1800s but not a lot from there on. In later years we’re getting more of an understanding.”
He remembers that in his youth there was very little talk of the Civil War.
“They kept everything very quiet. I don’t think they wanted to talk about it, the wounds were too raw. It was brother against brother, my father’s father was in the Old IRA, my mother’s father was in the Military Police, on the Collins side.”
He said that his mother’s father had been involved in the protection of Collins at certain times, but wasn’t around on the day of his death.
Not very long ago it would have been unthinkable that the leader of Fianna Fáil would be invited to speak at the annual commemoration at Béal na Bláth.
But times change and with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael now sharing power, the fact Micheal Martin addressed the crowd on Sunday wasn’t groundbreaking at all.
“I think Sunday was a very good day and a very positive day. I would certainly welcome the Taoiseach and Tánaiste giving a joint commemoration speech. I’m delighted he was invited, wounds need to be healed and we need to move on, it’s 100 years now, we need to travel away from it.”
While the Covid lockdowns were very onerous and depressing, he feels that they may have given a way out from facing some divisive moments in history.
“I wonder did Covid maybe save us a bit from ourselves, with a lot of the commemorations that should have been had.
“Over the last few years I’m sure there were many events that could have been commemorated, but I wonder did it get us through a period where we didn’t have to face up to some stuff.”
He remembers the banter between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil supporters years ago, and that he was identified as being of one persuasion even before he got politically active.
“It was John Crowe who asked me to run for the Council when I was 34, about 20 years after I left Newcastle West. At the time he said to me ‘I know your mother’, maybe he was going to tell her if I didn’t run!” he laughs.
While the Civil War divide was very obvious throughout his political career, with FG and FF always at loggerheads despite having similar policies, he says that division didn’t prevent co-operation.
“Anyone who I met that got elected, from all parties and independent, everyone I met worked for their own community together.
“There were a lot of tough negotiations and a lot of toing and froing, but all colleagues worked together. The Civil War was there in the background, but it was never discussed.”
Even 15 years ago it would have been common in local politics for whole families to be labelled as voters of a certain party, but that has changed fairly dramatically and Tony feels that it was time for politics to move on.
“We’ve moved a long way from that and to be honest we needed to move a long way from that a long time ago.”
When it was released in 1996 Michael Collins was the highest grossing Irish film in history.
While it received broadly positive reviews and Liam Neeson’s performance was widely praised, there was much debate about its historical accuracy.
Tickets for the Shannon screening went on sale on Monday through Eventbrite, while they are not available from the Omniplex.
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked for a number of other regional titles in Limerick, Galway and Cork.
