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Post by Waverley on Mar 5, 2008 20:09:05 GMT 1
Peter I have to thank you for the newspaper articles you dropped off for me. Absolutely fascinating that a ex-British soldier from Parkhead could have been the man who fired the fatal shot that killed Michael Collins. I will condense it and paste it on here...it seems he was born in Belvidere Hospital as there is no 1368 London Road thesedays I checked it out tonight when I finished work...however, on reading further it seem he and his family lived in Dervaig Street.
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Post by Waverley on Mar 6, 2008 9:01:27 GMT 1
Had a good read at the articles this morning Peter. Intriguing to say the least and has all the mysteries of the JFK Plot. Was interested to read about the Tollcross Chapel Raid that McPeake was involved in and it highlights how much illegal gun-running was being carried out by the 'Glasgow Shinners' and how active the Fenians had been in the city prior to Easter Rising and immediatedly prior to and during the Irish Civil War. Of course there is the claims that he could have been a double-agent...will try and cut it down a bit and post it as soon as possible.
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Post by pwm437 on Mar 6, 2008 21:33:30 GMT 1
Charlie, I can confirm that a John McPeak lived at 104 Gray Street (Dervaig Street) and appears on the 1913-14 Valuation Roll, Ward 3, page 192.
His occupation is listed as labourer.
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Post by Waverley on Mar 7, 2008 0:33:31 GMT 1
Charlie, I can confirm that a John McPeak lived at 104 Gray Street (Dervaig Street) and appears on the 1913-14 Valuation Roll, Ward 3, page 192. His occupation is listed as labourer. Haw Wee Man I am telling ye we are digging up history that some folk have never heard of before....long may it continue. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Post by pwm437 on Mar 7, 2008 9:10:16 GMT 1
Did a wee Wikpedia on Michael Collins. They offer two assassins ;
Denis 'Sonny' O'Neill
and
'Jock' McPeak, who they say was one of Collins' men.
The plot thickens !!
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Post by justjoe on Mar 8, 2008 1:00:46 GMT 1
Look forward to reading it. It will be nearer the truth than the film anyway.
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Post by Waverley on Mar 8, 2008 10:49:47 GMT 1
I will need to get my copy of the film back out and see what angle they put on the ambush...surprisingly after a shoot out which lasted almost an hour only Collins was killed.
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trotsky
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Post by trotsky on Mar 8, 2008 14:33:05 GMT 1
In the film it was a wee Irish guy who was acting as a go between Collins and Devalera when they were trying to set up a meeting but instead drove into an ambush, I think the film shows that it was the wee guy who fired the rifle, will look at it the night.
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Post by Waverley on Mar 8, 2008 22:58:39 GMT 1
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Post by Waverley on Aug 31, 2008 17:00:10 GMT 1
As promised the article which appeared in the Scotsman several years ago.
Motive that points to conspiracy.
Concluding the investigation by John Linklater and Bob McLean into the killing of Michael Collins, a member of John McPeak's family reveals another version of events.
John McPeak belonged to a big and diffuse family, with relations in Tyrone, Cork, Belfast, Glasgow, and Stirling, The name is pronounced McPake, and the spellings vary between McPeak, McPeake, and McPake, Through one of the branches of the family, on the side of his sister, Elizabeth, a version of the events surrounding the assassination of Michael Collins was passed to us on condition it would not be attributed,( All legends connected with the assassination have to be treated with caution, but this one is interesting. McPeak, who changed his name to Logan after his release from prison in 1928, was known by this branch of the family as "Uncle James", He had confided a version of events which was very different to the story he gave to interrogators and repeated in 1971 to the Irish Independent,
In the confided version, "Uncle James" McPeak described how the signing of the Anglo-lrish Treaty by Collins on December 6, 1921, had shocked and horrified the group of Sinn Fein activists to which he belonged in Glasgow. For McPeak, personally, it represented a terrible betrayal because of the plight of Tyrone as one of the six counties of the North that would be partitioned. The family came from Strabane, and they faced the prospect of becoming a Catholic minority and residents of what would be created into a frontier town.
Here might lie the motive. Tyrone was a particularly contentious part of the Treaty, as its Catholic population outnumbered Protestants by some 15,000 in 1921. Partition was an emotive issue, even if pro and anti-Treaty elements believed in 1922 that the Boundary Commission promised by the Treaty would ensure that substantial areas with nationalist/Catholic populations in Northern Ireland would eventually join the Free State. If an incensed McPeak took a cynical view of Tyrone ever being wrested from the North, hindsight would support him.
His own account to the Irish Independent in 1971 stated that he and others had been approached by IRA contacts in Glasgow. As a result he enlisted in the lrish National Army. In his private account to the family he is said to have claimed he infiltrated the convoy to escort Collins to south-west Cork by changing places with a regular.
In the family legend McPeak joined the convoy as a driver. This appears to be an error, but it is an interesting one which we will return to later.
The convoy had made a pre-planned halt at Beal na mBlath and the ambush had proceeded with fire coming from both sides of the road. This legend also made reference to Collins's own revolver, which was supposed to have played a part in the assassination, but our informant could not give any further details of the version he had received from his father, who had discussed the whole episode with "Uncle James" when he returned to Britain after a spell living incognito in 'America.
This version was not passed down through other branches of the family. Joe McPeak, a nephew of John McPeak, said he had met his uncle and stayed with hls family in South Ockenden, Essex, but the subject of the Collins assassination was a taboo subject. John McPeak's own son did not know that his father had been in the convoy which escorted Collins to his death. But Joe McPeak admitted that, during a seven-year spell working in Dublin, he had met police officers who remarked: "So, you're the nephew of the man who shot Michael Collins."
Joe McPeak discounts his uncle's involvement. He is also the source of the denilal, in James Mackay's new biography of Collins, of the claim that John McPeak received an lrish government secret service pension after 1934, and admits he has no evidence. "I just don't think my uncle was the kind of man who would do that," says Joe McPeak. "I have no other grounds. My uncle never talked to me about it."
But the legend in the other branch of the family believes McPeak was part of a bigger conspiracy, motivated by anti-Treaty republicanism within Collins's own army and working in collusion with the IRA ambushers. How much' of this conspiracy theory can be supported by the known facts?
There were personnel changes in the convoy. The normal driver of the Crossley tender, Private Lyons, was replaced by a Captain Conroy. The normal driver of the armoured car, Jimmy McGowen, reported sick and was replaced by private Jim Wolfe. Machine-gunner John McPeak was making his first operational mission
Collins never voiced suspicion about the convoy, but he did make a memo in his notebook about its "lack of preparation".
On the same day as the assassination, five officers of IRA battalions and several divisional officers had been called to attend a meeting at Beal na mBlath. Eamon de Valera was at the ambush site earlier in the day and was staying nearby when the ambush occurred. During the ambush, three separate contingents of IRA military happened to converge on the scene and took part in the action at a distance from the other side of the road.
The revolver carried by Collins is reputed to have fallen out of its holster when his body was being put in the touring car, and some versions state this revolver was left by the side of the road. The military cap displayed in the National Museum as that of Collins is disputed to be genuine. It is said to be two sizes too small. The real one, it is alleged, would show an entry hole near the badge.
The only person killed in the ambush was Michael Collins. Among these points, the first is interesting when it is compared with the legend that came through a branch of the McPeak family. A more thoroughly rehearsed version, drawn from the available sources, would have got the point right that McPeak joined the convoy as a machine-gunner and not as a driver. But it could be significant that it touches on the changing of drivers.
The interview that John McPeak gave to the Irish Independent contained one glaring error of chronology that could be highly significant, and could be seen as evidence of his wilful attempt to distort the truth. In his 1971 interview he talked about the Tollcross Raid (in which McPeak was arrested in a police raid on an arms consignment being packed in cases for Ireland). McPeak gave the date of that raid as October,1921, and he said that he was released when the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on December 6, 1921. Subsequent studies have accepted these dates unchallenged.
But the name of John McPeak appears in a Glasgow Herald report of the raid. The date of the rald was December 23, 1921. Even allowing for the falling memory of a man in 'his seventies his insistence on the correct date for the Treaty could be revealing, as is his wish to portray his involvement with arms before the Treaty. The family legend stresses his horrified sense of betrayal over the Treaty, and this gives a completely new implication to the politics of those involved in the Tollcross Raid. The probability of their being anti-Treaty republican activists increases, although it be stressed that no military breakaways in the fledgling Irish National Army until February. Nevertheless. arms were being poured into the North to resist the Treaty and to support the Catholic minority. Ironically, Collins himself was involved in these activities
Collins invented guerrilla warfare and be was the first to apply infiltration techniques and the use of double agents in his counter-intelligence against the British administration in Dublin. It is an intriguing possibility that he was a victim of the very techniques he invented.
The balance of evidence, discrepancies and inconsistencies supports a case that the assassination was a conspiracy. It employed infiltration by republican agents like McPeak, along with changes of key personnel. It relied on the trusted position of others on that convoy who were believed to be close to Collins. And it used a pre-planned guerrilla ambush as the cover to execute its aim.
We cannot name the man who pulled the trigger. We can only state that there is compelling evidence that John McPeak at least colluded in the assassination, and his full involvement was either underestimated by his investigators or covered up to keep the lid on what really happened at Beal na mBlath on August 22, 1922.
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Post by Waverley on Sept 1, 2008 6:48:01 GMT 1
Peter I have still to upload the first part of this conspiracy theory...I will do it as soon as I can locate it.
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