Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has been left red-faced – after bizarrely claiming that Rebel hero Michael Collins had brought Soviet communist leader Vladimir Lenin to Ireland.
The Fine Gael boss had to backtrack furiously after making the remarks at a ceremony in Cork to mark the 90th anniversary of Collins’ death.
Kenny had made history as the first Irish PM to address the annual commemoration at Beal na mBlath, the site where Collins was shot.
But his visit has been shrouded in controversy after he referred to Collins as: “the outstanding organiser who brought Lenin himself to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked.”
Kenny’s office has now admitted that the Irish leader got his facts wrong in his speech.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister told the Irish Independent: “The script contained an inaccurate reference.
“It mistakenly stated that Lenin came to Ireland but should have stated that it brought Lenin’s attention to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked.”
The spokesman also admitted however that the PM’s government department is unable to supply any historical records which showed that Lenin demonstrated any interest in the Irish National Loan before his own death in 1924.
The department has yet to reveal if the mistake was made by PM Kenny himself or his speechwriter.
Noted historian Tim Pat Coogan, credited as the author of the definitive Michael Collins biography, told the paper that he would have to question how the Lenin reference got into Kenny’s speech.
Coogan said: “I’m not aware that Lenin ever visited Ireland, let alone under the tutelage of Michael Collins.
“Any such meeting between Collins and Lenin would have been extremely controversial, given the Catholic Church’s hostility to Soviet communism.
“Those were the days when bishops were bishops and Lenin was a communist. How would that have gone down with the churchyard collections?
“It could also have been used by the British government to discredit the IRA’s campaign during the War of Independence as a drive to turn Ireland into a communist state.”
The report states that, as Minister for Finance, Collins was responsible for advertising the National Loan, asking sympathisers for money and issuing personal receipts to people who contributed.
The scheme was used to fund the IRA’s war against the British administration and raised around $600,000 in Ireland - an enormous sum at the time.
Experts believes Kenny may have got his stories mixed-up as the Provisional Irish Government gave a $25,000 loan to Lenin’s cash-strapped Russian regime in 1920 and got the Russian crown jewels as security.
Author Coogan added: “The Russian loan was organised by Pat McCartan, who was working as an envoy in the US.
“It wasn’t a Collins manoeuvre. They contacted us and they wanted loans, and Eamon de Valera wanted something for it.”
The report says the Russian crown jewels were handed over in the US to republican Harry Boland who gave them to his mother for safekeeping at her Dublin home.
She kept them after he was killed in the civil war and eventually handed them over to De Valera’s government in 1938. The jewels were finally handed back to the Russian government in 1950 in return for the repayment of the $25,000 loan.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.curtisjohnson | Aug 25, 2012, 09:17 PM EDT
Nationalism and bolshevism are incompatible.
WoundedKnee | Aug 24, 2012, 10:42 AM EDT
Edmundburke; I don't need to google Limerick Soviet. As a leftist and a student of Irish history I am quite familiar with it. For others who are interested in learning something, I recommend O'Connor Lysaght's short history which is available on line. The Limerick Soviet was just one element in a wave of radicalism that swept Ireland in the post-WW1 period. There were also interesting events in Tipperary, Galway, Waterford. In Dublin a group of Communists under Liam O'Flaherty occupied a building and proclaimed a Workers Republic. Earlier, 10.000 people had met in Dublin's Mansion House to welcome the Bolshevik Revolution. It was the tragedy of the Irish labor movement at this time that the great Connolly had been executed and that Larkin was in the USA. This left the leadership in the hands of mediocrities such as Thomas Johnson, an Englishman who had no understanding of the nationalism of the Irish working class.
IrelandNorth | Aug 24, 2012, 06:47 AM EDT
Don't ya just love the complexity of modern commerce. A loan given by a nascent nationalist/republican proto independence Irish government, (mainly Roman Catholic in proclivity). To a nascent Communist/internationalist superpower, (mainly atheistic in orientation). Using Romanov family crown jewels as collateral, received in the bastion of free enterprise. Catholic republicans lending public money from citizens bonds and emigrant remittances publicly to ostensible atheistic communists using the trappings of a monarchy as sureties. This tends to prove Karl Marx: The Materialist Messiah right that when it comes to materialism, opposing ideologies tend to fly out the window. (Were not Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin bosom buddies at Yalta for the post WWII global real estate carve-up?) Alas, 1916-1922 was a petit-bourgeois revolution, nationalism generally tending to be a middle-class phenomenon, with Connolly's hard-left very much the juniour partner. More's the pity! But, at least there were no professional moneylending usurers using debt entrapment as the new imperialism then, as there are now. If Ireland was/is to be sold, restrict shares in Ireland Incorporated IreInc) to its citizens, diaspora and/or progressive unionists/commonwealthers! And just think of the Troubles that would have been saved if the auld enemy (England) had been the first to recognise Ireland's independence ahead of its subsequent erstwhile arch rival Argentina/Malvinas and the CCCP/USSR.
angrypaddy | Aug 24, 2012, 01:08 AM EDT
It's just so sad that this is the best that Ireland can produce as a leader,it has now come to bear that since the foundation of the state a shower of serpents on both sides is all we got.All the true patroits were forced to emigrate or died fighting for freedom What did Cosgrove Lynch Garrett Albert C.J. Bertie Biffo Enda ever do for Ireland except line their own pockets none of them were ever even in a fist fight in school
edmundburke | Aug 23, 2012, 08:47 PM EDT
When will the Irish political love affair with the hard Left ever end? I suppose Kenny thought that since De Valera had Hitler (e.g. De Valera condolences to German Embassy on the "death" of Hitler in '45), Fine Gael has to scrounge around for its own dictator. Why Kenny ever thought that associating Collins with Lenin was a plus, I'll never know. Does he want to put Mayo in competition with Galway for that statue of Che Guevara? Regardless, @ Woundedknee, the Communists were always a small minority within Ireland. During the time of the War of Independence, the experience of the no-more-than-a-week long "Limerick Soviet" (Google it) was clear demonstration of general Irish distaste for Marxism and Communism. Sadly, too many Irish politicos think otherwise.
curtisjohnson | Aug 23, 2012, 07:33 PM EDT
This is just wacky.
TayandCake | Aug 23, 2012, 06:52 PM EDT
Next week he'll say "I AM THE BATMAN".
aloistmartin | Aug 23, 2012, 06:51 PM EDT
Edna Kenny is a Lilly Lolly Wall Paper Flower !
aloistmartin | Aug 23, 2012, 06:49 PM EDT
Edna Kenny is David Cameron`s Shoeshine Boy !
aloistmartin | Aug 23, 2012, 06:48 PM EDT
Irishmen Demand Gerry Adams !
Searlit | Aug 23, 2012, 06:30 PM EDT
I agree with Mairint, you're no rebel if you're fighting against foreign occupiers - Michael Collins was a patriot, in every sense of the word!
KevinKehoe | Aug 23, 2012, 04:03 PM EDT
And the ass before him was even dumber, no wonder we are in another fine mess as Oliver Hardy would say.
KevinKehoe | Aug 23, 2012, 03:59 PM EDT
And this dump ass is running our country ?
WoundedKnee | Aug 23, 2012, 02:33 PM EDT
In fairness to Kenny, or to whomever wrote his speech, there may be a half-digested memory of certain dealings the nascent Soviet Union had with Ireland. One is of the fact that Sinn Fein Ireland lent the Soviet Union a substantial sum of money. Another is that the Soviet Union recognized the Irish Republic at a time when may other countries held back. (I believe Argentina was the first country to recognize the Irish Republic). And yet another element is the famous welcome that V.I Lenin gave to news of the Easter Rebellion: "The misfortune of the Irish is that they have risen prematurely when the European revolt of the proletariat has not yet matured". History shows that Lenin erred in looking to a Europe-wide workers revolt, but at one time this is what seemed imminent. Had such a thing happened Irish workers could have struck a lethal blow against imperialism and capitalism.
cillowen | Aug 23, 2012, 12:19 PM EDT
moron supreme - a simple schmuck whom shatter feeds lines to
TisEyerish | Aug 23, 2012, 10:48 AM EDT
That's just sad. One would think that the leader of a country would know a bit more about the patriots who helped achieve independence for Ireland (especially since he wouldn't have his job if they didn't).
mairint | Aug 23, 2012, 10:18 AM EDT
What next from An Taoiseach? Also, I do not think the term Rebel hero is complimentary to Michael Collins. He was a National hero fighting for freedom for his own country from the occupying alien forces.
pilib04 | Aug 23, 2012, 09:56 AM EDT
PM Kenny? Who wrote this? Patrick Counihan, try using the proper title, Taoiseach. As for Kenny's error, he probably got so excited about speaking at Beal na mBlath, that he felt he had to enhance a bit. What was he afraid of, that Collins might not have been bigger than life after all?