Customer Reviews

Killing Rage

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

...but I would not recommend this as a first book on the Northern Ireland conflict. The conflict is incalculably more complex, polemically as well strategically, than is generally understood. If you are a reader from Great Britain or the United States, your media has grossly oversimplified its analysis of The Troubles of a span of years. In view of this disservice, you would benefit from reading a detailed, objective overview of the situation before taking on "Killing Rage".

As others here have said, one cannot come away from this book with the feeling that the Provisional IRA's campaign is justified. This is unfortunate. What the reader can miss is the fact that there once were sound political positions behind the campaigns of the PIRA, most Loyalist paramilitary groups and the British Army. The duration of The Troubles stems directly from the fact that these sound positions were mutually excusive of each other. But because this is primarily a story of Eamon Collins' personal redemption, the PIRA's violence takes center stage among that of all the combatants. Thus the reader may feel encouraged to villify the PIRA exclusively because of the recantations of a former member. (The IRA did nothing to counteract this misimpression by murdering Collins.) But really fact the PIRA was, next to the British Army, merely the richest and best organized player (though not the most violent) in what amounted to little more than a street war between rival gangs.

A second problem lies with Collins' contextual interpretations of the IRA's political stance. The IRA's violence is set against its stubborn belief -only recently abandoned- that Loyalism was an artificial construct of British political and economic interests. This is not Collins' fault, since he was after all a PIRA member. Indeed, until the late 1990's the IRA's Army Council simply couldn't believe that a majority of people in the Six Counties had no desire to be part of the Republic. This context gives us great insight into the delusions the PIRA perpetuated to motivate itself and its young trained killers. It doesn't tell us that such blindness perpetuated all parties to the conflict, or that absurdity of the violence was the result of a 30-year degenerative detachment of the violence from its justification as opposed to some philosophical weakness in particular combatant groups.

This is not to say that the book is flawed. It's excellent. But it provides an incomplete picture of the issues at work. I would recommend Jack Holland's "Hope against History" as a good survey of the recent 30-year round of the The Troubles, and a good basis for more personal accounts. In light of Holland's moderate overview, "Killing Rage" would be one of several interesting and thought-provoking second steps. Ultimately, "Killing Rage" is a vivid story of an element always extant in paramilitary groups: relatively naive, regular guys with the honorable desire to fight for freedom, whose sense of personal honor saves their souls when that fight drifts from principle.

I just got done with this book, and just got done reading some of the criticisms aimed at it.

First, this isn't a prolonged analysis of the IRA stuggle. There are serveral book/sites that will give you that in cold, unemotional detail.

Second, this isn't a balanced, objective look at the problems of Northern Ireland involving the IRA, Loyalists, RUC, and the British Army.

This is an autobiographical account of ONE MAN's tale of being in the IRA. Collins isn't out to make friends here. He states honestly and openly about his cold heartedness of his vicitims and at other times about his agony over incorrect targets. And when you think he should feel guilty or upset, he tells you he doesn't. That is what makes this an honest tale for me.

Collins made a career for himself in the IRA. About the time he was getting promoted, both in the IRA "nutting" squad and in Sinn Fein, he was really starting to feel used by the IRA, but couldn't find a way to quit. This was his state of mind when he was arrested by the Brits and held for 7 days, a policy designed to crack suspected terrorists, and one which he had held up under before.

I really enjoyed this book. I'll never look at the IRA again the same way. The movies tend to glamorize them, making them out to be a crack army of professionals. Read this book and you'll never think that way again.

In the summer of 1982 three gun shots narrowly miss off-duty RUC policeman Alfred White. As their sounds still resonate through the Newry neighbourhood and absorb, stifle and stop all other human activity, White runs for his life. Chased and in mortal agony he resorts to instinct and darts towards his home. There the hit man steps forward, "his Browning .38 pistol extended." At this fleeing threshold of death White takes his umbrella and starts in an insane dance trying to fence with his killer. A few days later, after the mourners have left, the young IRA volunteer Eamon Collins, who set White up for assassination, kneels down at his grave, "not to pay my respect, but to read the messages on his wreaths to see whether his RUC colleagues had left any useful details."

Eamon Collins is not a kind man. As an information officer for the IRA he was involved in some of the most abhorrent murders in Northern Ireland. For years he ruthlessly staked out people that the IRA deemed "legitimate targets". Often for months, he followed them to find the essential bit of regularity in their lifes and movements (their "fatal routine") that made them vulnerable and open to attack. At some later point in his life, Collins sits down to talk about political violence - and we better listen.

In the first part of his book Collins gives the insider's account of the IRA. Subdivided into "operations" it largely dismisses the idea of a highly disciplined and trained army fighting exclusively for the ethereal cause of Irish freedom. Instead, he presents an organization pervaded by bunglers and lowlifes. Oblivious to any questions about the military and political exigencies - if not any moral concerns - of their doing they kill most of their victims out of revenge, rage or routine. The others die - sort of - accidentally, due to wrong identification or sloppy bomb work. However, despite all its sordidness, Collins' fast-paced story is also an engrossing tale of reckless adventure, of shoot-outs, hideouts and skidding getaway cars. On side roads accross the border, past grisly loyalist gangs in Belfast, underneath the hovering army helicopters in South Armagh, Collins sneaks the reader to truly bizarre places: to training camps, secret commander meetings, blown up customs stations, to "safe houses" and to"death houses".

This breakneck existence ends with an explosion. After a bomb detonates in Newry and kills nine police officers, Collins, who was not involved in the operation, is immediately arrested and whisked off to the infamous Gough Barracks. On the fifth day of interrogation and torture at the hands of the RUC two officers lie beside him on the floor, "one at each ear, shouting in unison: 'Murdering dog, Murdering dog. You're going away for life, you murdering dog.' They screamed at the tops of their voices for at least half an hour. ... . Suddenly, as I lay there, I began to feel like a participant in a spectacle from an absurdist play. ... . In that moment, as I floated in unreality, I realized that I had lost my will to resist." Collins gets up, sits down and starts talking, first to the Crown forces and then to anyone who cared to listen. Unflinchingly, he details his role in the IRA and the suffering he has brought to his victims. He confronts and betrays his former comrades and then - during the legal proceedings that ensue - zealously strives to enrage everyone who could harm him: the Provos, the loyalists, the army and the RUC. In the end, the boy who wanted to be a Brit, become a lawyer, rise in the ranks of the IRA and who eventually not even made it as a "grass" takes them all on.

The essential weakness of Collins' book is its style. It too strictly abides to the conventions of the factual account. It does not adequately convey the immediacy, drama and speed of the action. At times, in an effort to create a poignancy the story already carries, it slides into the melodramatic. Despite these shortcomings it is astonishing that so far no film director has stumbled over the book, given the visual power of Collins' memory.

As it is, "Killing Rage" is not passionately optimistic about lasting peace in Northern Ireland. In fact, if there is any hope at all to be found in the book it lies in Collins' unconditional belief in the idea of justice - even although this idea, more often than not, arrives with a vengeance.

This is not an easy, or enjoyable read. Perhaps it is a necessary read to anyone wanting to understand what the IRA does and why. Shockingly honest, while Collins tries to explain his actions he does not try to justify himself. Though turning his back on terrorist violence, Collins did not turn to fight it as an informer or agent, and this may make his message more palatable to nationalists. However his honesty and frankness in what he had to say is what probably resulted in him being murdered, presumably by nationalist terrorists. Collins clearly became a changed man, and the reason I only give the book 4 stars is that I would have welcomed more about his later community work in Dublin and Edinburgh, which by the acknowledgements listed at the end of the book clearly meant a lot to him. However, the purpose of the book is to show the depths and pointlessness of the 'armed struggle', and that it does. Eamon Collins may have been murdered, but his testimony remains.

I bought this book for research purposes, but was pleasantly surprised at the hold it quickly put on me. Collins certainly had the story telling ability the Irish are so famous for. If you have any interest at all in the situation (is that a euphemism or what) in Northern Ireland, this is definitely a book that belongs in your library.

This book was hard to put down. The author, Eamon Collins, was murdered shortly after the book was published. Collins touches every emotion as he takes you inside of the inner workings of the IRA. Not only do you learn how the IRA plans and carries out its missions, you receive a great deal of insight into human nature and the political conflict that has held Ireland in a grip for hundreds of years! I highly recommend this book. My copy has already been loaned out to a friend.

"If I had to choose between my country and my friend, I hope I would have the courage to choose my friend" EM Foster. Collins chose the 'siren call' of tribalism, or country, and ending up killing at least one man who could have been his friend. He later hauntingly meets the man's daughter briefly. He admits that his Protestant neighbours had more in common with him than the Southern Nationalists with which he was supposed to be trying to unite. A deeply moving book, that makes one uneasy with what one thought were the certainties of Northern Ireland. One cannot read this book and come away thinking the IRA campaign justified, whatever the grievances suffered in the 1960s by Catholics in Northern Ireland. As good a memoir of a 'dirty war' as 'Despatches' about Vietnam, made worse by happening among Collins' workmates and in his home town.

Killing Rage is a personal look into the methods and motivations of an IRA soldier during the height of the modern conflict in Northern Ireland. Eamon Collins at times shows excitement, satisfaction, and cold, heartless devotion to the cause of killing his enemy. But he also shows remorse, especially towards the end of the book. The story reveals how internal conflict within the units can be as much a detriment as the actual enemy. The book is an easy read, and is a unique look inside the modern IRA during its most active period. See also: Belfast Diary. Highly reccomended.

Eamon Collins memoir is the emotional Odyssey of how one young, intelligent, educated Catholic man from northern Ireland, with a good job, was filled with such a killing rage that he became a ruthless IRA operative and the epiphany that he experienced which ultimately led him to renounce all paramilitary violence. I believe his recollections to be the most important volume of the troubles written by a former paramilitary specifically because it let's us into his inner emotional world. Sadly, in 1999, Eamon's former comrades exacted a terrible revenge for his outspokenness by assassinating him in what one hardened detective described as 'one of the most gruesome murders of the entire Troubles'.

This along with Ed Moloney's Secret History of the IRA, gives a huge insight into what sustained the conflict in Northern Ireland for so long. Collins was an intelligence gather for the IRA in South Down, his task being to gather details on the movements of security force personnel which could be used to plan their assassinations. He did this from at least 1979 until 1985, the first victim being a work-colleague. Collins was a union representative in the Customs and Excise, he set up the details of the assassination, went to his colleague's funeral, and had discussions with the (state) employer about security in the wake of the assassination. He details these contradictions without any pleas for sympathy, he describes how he was possessed by a cold hatred, and a desire to be as ruthless as possible. He disparages another IRA man who talks about only killing those security force personnel who had mistreated Catholics - Collins reckons that they all deserve to die, as representatives of the system, whatever their personal characteristics.

He is equally raw in his description of the foibles of his colleagues in the IRA. He describes some who are dishonest - stealing from a premises they are about to blow up ; stupid, clumsy and cowardly. He also expresses admiration for the acumen of others.
There is a contradiction at the heart of the book - he is addicted to ruthlessness, alienated from the forces within the IRA which want a political route, and simultaneously disgusted at the results of the ruthlessness. He describes a bombing which resulted in a child being killed due to an insufficient warning being given, this horrified him; however later when he sets up an assassination and finds out that his information had been incorrect and that an innocent man had been killed, he is quite numb.

The process of his moral decay and the stress involved in his secret life - throughout his time in the IRA he held down a job as a Customs officer - is very well described. His breakdown, while in custody, which led to him giving evidence (and later withdrawing it) against his former IRA colleagues is less well described, in my opinion. Eventually he came to an agreement with the IRA that if he left the area, he and his family would not be harmed.

The book does not cover the rest of the story , Eamonn Collins moved back to Newry in the mid 1990s. He became a critic of the IRA, though, I presume, a supporter of the peace process. He gave evidence, for the defence, in a libel trial taken by a senior IRA against the Sunday Times newspaper. The IRA man lost the case, suffering financial loss and humiliation. Collins was later murdered.

His was a rare voice, unflinchingly honest in his description of his own hatreds and motivations; unsparing of his colleagues faults; giving the view from the `engine room' of the conflict.