Editing Michael Collins (Irish leader) (section)

==1917–1918==
Before his death, [[Tom Clarke (Irish republican)|Tom Clarke]], first signatory of the [[Proclamation of the Irish Republic|1916 Proclamation]] and widely considered the Rising's foremost organiser, had designated his wife [[Kathleen Clarke]] as the official caretaker of Rising official business, in the event that the leadership did not survive. By June 1916, Mrs. Clarke had sent out the first post-Rising communiqué to the IRB, declaring the Rising to be only the beginning and directing nationalists to prepare for "the next blow". Soon after his release Mrs. Clarke appointed Collins Secretary to the National Aid and Volunteers Dependents Fund and subsequently passed on to him the secret organisational information and contacts which she had held in trust for the independence movement.[[File:Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.jpg|right|upright=1.35|thumb|Michael Collins and [[Arthur Griffith]]]]

Collins became one of the leading figures in the post-Rising independence movement spearheaded by [[Arthur Griffith]], editor/publisher of the main [[nationalist]] newspaper [[The United Irishman]], (which Collins had read avidly as a boy.)<ref name="Coogan, TP Michael Collins 1990">Coogan, TP. ''Michael Collins'', 1990</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2020}} Griffith's organisation [[Sinn Féin]] was founded in 1905 as an [[umbrella organization|umbrella group]] to unify all the various factions within the nationalist movement.

Under Griffith's policy, Collins and other advocates of the "physical-force" approach to independence gained the cooperation of Sinn Féin, while agreeing to disagree with Griffith's moderate ideas of a [[dual monarchy]] solution based on the Hungarian model.<ref name="ReferenceC">Feeney, Brian. ''Sinn Fein: a Hundred Turbulent Years'', Dublin; O'Brien Press Ltd., 2002</ref> The British government and mainstream Irish media had wrongly blamed Sinn Féin for the Rising. This attracted Rising participants to join the organisation in order to exploit the reputation with which such British propaganda had imbued the organisation. By October 1917 Collins had risen to become a member of the executive of Sinn Féin and director of organisation for the Irish Volunteers. [[Éamon de Valera]], another veteran of 1916, stood for the presidency of Sinn Féin against Griffith, who stepped aside and supported de Valera's presidency.<ref name="ReferenceC"/>