Roger Casement

Template:Infobox revolution biography Roger David Casement (Template:Lang-ga; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), (Sir Roger Casement CMG between 1911 and until his execution for treason in August 1916, when he was stripped of his British honours), was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary and nationalist. He was a British consul by profession famous for his reports and activities against human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru, but better known for his dealings with Germany before Ireland's Easter Rising in 1916. An Irish nationalist and Parnellite in his youth, he worked in Africa for commercial interests and latterly in the service of Britain. However the Boer War and his investigation into atrocities in the Congo led Casement to anti-Imperialist and ultimately Irish Republican and separatist political opinions.

Early life and education

Casement was born near Dublin living in very early childhood at Doyle's Cottage, Lawson Terrace, Sandycove. His Protestant father, Captain Roger Casement of (The King’s Own) Regiment of Light Dragoons, was the son of a bankrupt Belfast shipping merchant (Hugh Casement) who later moved to Australia. Captain Casement served in the 1842 Afghan campaign. Casement's mother Anne Jephson of Dublin (whose origins are obscure), had him rebaptised secretly as a Roman Catholic when he was three in Rhyl; she died in Worthing when her son was nine. By the time he was thirteen, his father was also dead, having ended his days dependent on the charity of relatives. Roger was afterwards raised by Protestant paternal relatives in Ulster, the Youngs of Galgorm Castle in Ballymena and the Casements of Magherintemple and was educated at the Diocesan School, Ballymena later Ballymena Academy. He left school at 16 and took up a clerical job with Elder Dempster, a Liverpool shipping company headed by Sir Alfred Jones, later an enemy on the Congo issue.

The Congo: The Casement Report

In 1903, Roger Casement, then the British Consul in Leopoldville, was commissioned by the British government, and delivered in 1904, a long, detailed eyewitness report exposing human rights abuses in the Congo Free State: the Casement Report. The Congo Free State had been in the possession of King Leopold II of Belgium since 1885, when it was granted to him by the Berlin Conference. Leopold exploited the territory's natural resources (mostly rubber) as a private entrepreneur, not as Belgian King. Casement's report would be instrumental in Leopold finally relinquishing his personal holdings in Africa.

When the report was made public, the Congo Reform Association, founded by E.D. Morel, with Casement's support, demanded action. Other European nations followed suit, as did the United States, and the British parliament demanded a meeting of the 14 signatory powers to review the 1885 Berlin Agreement. The Belgian Parliament, pushed by socialist leader Emile Vandervelde and other critics of the King's Congolese policy, forced Léopold to set up an independent commission of inquiry, and in 1905, despite his efforts, it confirmed the essentials of Casement's report.

On 15 November 1908, four years after the Casement Report, the parliament of Belgium took over the Congo Free State from Leopold and its administration as the Belgian Congo.

Peru: Abuses against the Putumayo Indians

In 1906 Casement was sent as consul to Pará, transferring to Santos, Brazil and lastly was promoted to consul-general in Rio de Janeiro. He had the occasion to do work similar to that which he had done in Congo among the Putumayo Indians of Peru when he was attached as a consular representative to a commission investigating murderous rubber slavery by the British-registered Peruvian Amazon Company, effectively controlled by the archetypal rubber baron Julio César Arana and his brother. Public outrage in Britain over the abuses against the Putumayo Indians had been sparked in 1909 by articles in the British magazine Truth. Casement paid two visits to the region, first in 1910 with a follow-up in 1911. In a report to the British foreign secretary, dated 17 March 1911, Casement detailed the rubber company's use of stocks to punish the Indians:

Men, women, and children were confined in them for days, weeks, and often months. ... Whole families ... were imprisoned--fathers, mothers, and children, and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside of them to watch in misery themselves the dying agonies of their parents.

After his return to Britain he repeated his extra-consular campaigning work by organising Anti-Slavery Society and mission interventions in the region which was disputed between Peru and Colombia. Some of the men exposed as killers in his report were charged by Peru and others fled. Conditions in the area undoubtedly improved as a result but the contemporary switch to farmed rubber in Malaya etc was a godsend to the Indians as well. Arana himself was never prosecuted. He instead went on to a successful political career. becoming a senator, and died in Lima, Peru in 1952 at age eighty-eight.

Casement wrote extensively (as always) in those two years including several of his notorious diaries, the one for 1911 being unusually discursive. They and the 1903 diary were kept by him in London with other papers of the period, presumably so they could be consulted in his continuing work as 'Congo Casement' and the saviour of the Putumayo Indians. In 1911, Casement was knighted by George V as Knight Bachelor for his efforts on behalf of the Amazonian Indians, having been reluctantly appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1905 for his Congo work.

Irish revolutionary

Roger Casement's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Casement resigned from the consular service in 1912. The following year, he helped form the Irish Volunteers with Eoin MacNeill, later the organisation's chief of staff. In July, 1914, he journeyed to New York City in an effort to promote and raise money for the Volunteers. Through his friendship with men such as Bulmer Hobson, who was a member of the Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Casement established connections with the exiled Irish nationalists particularly in Clan na Gael.Elements of the Clan did not trust him completely, as he was not a member of the IRB, and held views considered by many to be too moderate although others like John Quinn regarded him as extreme. John Devoy, who was initially hostile to Casement for his part in conceding control of the Irish Volunteers to Redmond, in June was won over, while the more extreme Clan leader, Joseph McGarrity, became and remained devoted to Casement. The Howth gunrunning in late July 1914 which he had helped to organise and finance further improved Casement's reputation.

In September 1914, after the First World War broke out, Casement attempted to secure German aid for Irish independence in New York negotiation with the German Ambassador to the US, sailing for Germany via Norway in October. He viewed himself as an ambassador of the Irish nation. While the journey was his idea,Clan na Gael financed the expedition. In Christiania (Oslo) his companion Adler Christensen was taken to the British legation and, according to him, offered a reward if Casement was "knocked on the head." The British Minister, in contrast, advised London that Christensen had approached them, and also said that he “implied that their relations were of an unnatural nature and that consequently he had great power over this man.” It was this episode that first provided London with the intimation that Casement was homosexual.

In November 1914, Casement negotiated a declaration by Germany which stated, "The Imperial Government formally declares that under no circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that country. Should the fortune of this great war, that was not of Germany’s seeking ever bring in its course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would land there not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by goodwill towards a country and people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom.” He negotiated in Berlin with Arthur Zimmermann then Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office and with the Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.

Most of his time in Germany, however, was spent in an attempt to recruit an "Irish Brigade" consisting of Irish prisoners-of-war in the prison camp of Limburg an der Lahn, who would be trained to fight against Britain. During the war, Casement is also known to have had involvement in the Hindu–German Conspiracy, recommending Joseph McGarrity to Franz von Papen as an intermediary for the plot. The Indian nationalists may also have followed Casement's strategy in attempting to recruit from amongst Indian prisoners of war for the nationalist cause.

Casement plaque commemorating his stay in Bavaria during the Summer of 1915

However, both efforts proved unsuccessful. The Irish plan failed as all Irishmen fighting in the British army did so voluntarily, and was abandoned after much time and money was wasted. The Germans, who were sceptical of Casement but nonetheless aware of the military advantage they could gain from an uprising in Ireland, offered the Irish 20,000 rifles, 10 machine guns and accompanying ammunition, a fraction of the amount of weaponry Casement had hoped for and no German officers.

Casement did not learn about the Easter Rising until after the plan was fully developed. The IRB purposely kept him in the dark, and even tried to replace him. Casement may never have learned that it was not the Volunteers who were planning the rising, but IRB members such as Patrick Pearse and Tom Clarke who were pulling the strings behind the scenes.

The German weapons were never landed in Ireland. The ship in which they were traveling, a German cargo vessel, the Libau, was intercepted, even though it had been thoroughly disguised as a Norwegian vessel, Aud Norge. All the crew were German sailors, but their clothes and effects, even the charts and books on the bridge, were all Norwegian. The British, however, had intercepted German communications out of Washington and knew there was going to be an attempt to land arms even if the Royal Navy was not precisely aware of where. The arms ship under Captain Karl Spindler was eventually apprehended by HMS Bluebell on the late afternoon of Good Friday. About to be escorted into Queenstown on the morning of Saturday 22 April, after surrendering, the Aud was scuttled by pre-set explosive charges. Her crew became prisoners-of-war.

Capture, trial and execution

Casement confided his personal papers to Dr. Charles Curry, where he had stayed on Lake Ammersee, before he left Germany with Robert Monteith in a submarine, initially the U-20 which developed engine trouble and then the U-19, shortly after the Aud sailed. According to Monteith, Casement believed that the Germans were toying with him from the start and providing inadequate aid that would doom a rising to failure, and that he had to reach Ireland before the shipment of arms and convince Eoin MacNeill (who he believed was still in control) to cancel the rising. Indeed Casement sent a recently arrived Irish-American, John McGoey, through Denmark to Dublin, ostensibly to advise of what military aid was coming from Germany and when, but with Casement's orders "to get the Heads in Ireland to call off the rising and merely try to land the arms and distribute them." McGoey however was not to make it to Dublin, nor was his message. Mystery surrounds his fate. Despite any view ascribed to Monteith, Casement expected to be involved in the Rising if it went ahead.

In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the rising began, Casement was put ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Too weak to travel, he was discovered at McKenna's Fort (an ancient ring fort now called Casement's Fort) in Rathoneen, Ardfert and subsequently arrested on charges of treason, sabotage, and espionage against the Crown. He was taken straight to London, but not before he was able to send word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance.

Following a highly publicised trial, to their embarrassment, the government found little legal basis to prosecute Casement because his crimes had been carried out in Germany and the Treason Act seemed to apply only to activities carried out on British soil. However, closer reading of the medieval document allowed for a broader interpretation, leading to the accusation that Casement was "hanged by a comma". The court decided that a comma should be read in the text, crucially widening the sense so that "in the realm or elsewhere" meant where acts were done and not just where the "King's enemies" may be. After an unsuccessful appeal against the conviction and death sentence, he was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916, at the age of 51. He converted to Catholicism while awaiting execution and went to his death, he said, with the body of his God as his last meal.

Among the many people who pleaded for clemency were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who became acquainted with Casement through the work of the Congo Reform Association, W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw. Edmund Dene Morel could not visit him in jail, being under attack for his pacifist position. On the other hand, Joseph Conrad who had a son at the front could not forgive Casement for his treachery toward Britain nor did his friend the sculptor Herbert Ward. Members of the Casement family in Antrim contributed discreetly to the defence fund although they had sons in the army and navy.

The Black Diaries and Casement’s sexuality

Before his execution, photographs of so-called "Black Diaries" which the government claimed belonged to Casement were circulated to those urging commutation of his death sentence. The documents, which covered the years 1903, 1910 and 1911, showed Casement to have been a promiscuous homosexual with a fondness for boys and young men. In a time of strong social conservatism, not least among Irish Catholics, the Black Diaries undermined or at least stifled support for Casement. The Archbishop of Canterbury asked John Harris of the Anti-Slavery Society and a missionary friend of Casement's to view them. Harris was shattered when he realised they were authentic. As a result Archbishop Davidson did not sign the clemency petition and restricted his efforts to private representations. Though some believed that the diaries were forgeries, much as Charles Stewart Parnell had been the target of the Pigott forgeries implicating him in the Phoenix Park Murders, others did not. H. Montgomery Hyde, Ulster Unionist Party MP and barrister who campaigned for the release of the Black Diaries in parliament in the 1950s and who wrote a book on Casement's trial, had no doubt that Casement had been a pederast. In 2002 an independent forensic examination of the diaries, commissioned by a team of academics from Goldsmiths, University of London and funded by RTÉ and the BBC, was undertaken by Dr. Audrey Giles, an internationally respected figure in the field of document forensics. Giles compared Casement's White Diaries (ordinary diaries of the time) with the Black Diaries and concluded that the Black Diaries were genuine. American document examiner and expert, James Horan, later rejected Giles's conclusion on the grounds that the "control" material (the "authentic" handwriting of Casement) taken from the Morel archive at LSE, may have passed through the hands of British Intelligence after Morel's arrest in 1917. Horan's view was that the conclusion would not stand up in a US court. However such a test was not a requirement in the Giles report remit for judging authenticity, and Horan accepted he had not seen any of the material in question.

Students of Casement have increasingly treated the Black Diaries as genuine. Roger Sawyer’s 1997 work on the 1910 diary and Jeffrey Dudgeon’s massive and closely footnoted edition of all the Black Diaries in 2002, accompanied by a perceptive and empathetic biographical treatment, went a long way towards integrating Casement’s nationalist, humanitarian and gay lives, and Casement's most recent biographer, Séamas Ó Síocháin, accepts their authenticity as a matter of course. The Irish Historian & biographer Brian Inglis also states in his biography of Casement that there is much evidence to confirm that Casement was homosexual. The diaries may now be inspected at the British National Archives in Kew.

State funeral

The Carriage on which Casement’s coffin was drawn during the State funeral

As was the custom at the time, Casement's body was buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of Pentonville Prison, where he was hanged. In 1965, Casement's body was repatriated and, after a state funeral, was buried with full military honours in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin after lying in state at Arbour Hill for five days, during which time over half a million people are estimated to have filed past his coffin. The President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who in his mid-eighties was the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, defied the advice of his doctors and attended the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 Irish citizens. Casement's last wish, to be buried at Murlough Bay on the North Antrim coast has yet to be fulfilled as Harold Wilson's government only released the remains on condition that they were not brought into Northern Ireland.

Legacy

Landmarks, buildings and organisations

Many landmarks, buildings and organisations in Ireland are named after Casement including:

• Casement Park, the Gaelic Athletic Association ground on Andersonstown Road in west Belfast.
• Several Gaelic Athletic Association clubs, for instance the Roger Casements GAA Club in Coventry and the Roger Casements GAC in Portglenone.
• In Dundalk there is an estate named after him called Árd Easmuinn "Casement Heights."
• Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, the Irish Air Corps base in Dublin.
• Casement Rail & Bus Station in Tralee, near the site of Casement's landing on Banna Strand. Operated by Iarnród Éireann and Córas Iompair Éireann
• Monument in County Kerry at Banna Strand. Open to the public at all times.
• Many streets, particularly in the north-west Dublin suburb of Finglas, and in the Loyalist heartland of Harryville, Ballymena, County Antrim, although the street is actually named for his great-grandfather who was a solicitor in Henryville as it was then called.

Song, story and verse

Casement was also the subject of ballads and poetry in Ireland in the wake of his death, including:

• The ballad "Lonely Banna Strand" tells the story of Casement's role in the prelude to the Easter Rising, his arrest, and subsequent execution.
• Arthur Conan Doyle used Casement as an inspiration for the character of Lord John Roxton in the 1912 novel The Lost World.
• W. B. Yeats wrote a poem demanding the return of Casement's remains, which begins, "The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door". Brendan Behan refers to the poem in his autobiographical novel Borstal Boy, and speaks of the respect his family had for Casement, noting that his older brother Rory Behan had been named after Casement.
• Casement is the subject of the play Prisoner of the Crown, which was written by Richard Herd and Richard Stockton and which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 15 February 1972.
• Roger Casement appears in the "Giant's Causeway" of French Academician Pierre Benoit in 1922, telling of his capture and execution and presenting him as a noble martyr and scapegoat.

Bibliography

By Roger Casement:

• 1914. The Crime against Ireland, and how the War may right it. Berlin: no publisher.
• 1914. Ireland, Germany and freedom of the seas: a possible outcome of the War of 1914. New York & Philadelphia: The Irish Press Bureau. Reprinted 2005: ISBN 1-421-94433-2
• 1915. The Crime against Europe. The causes of the War and the foundations of Peace. Berlin: The Continental Times.
• 1916. Gesammelte Schriften. Irland, Deutschland und die Freiheit der Meere und andere Aufsätze. Diessen vor München: Joseph Huber Verlag. Second expanded edition, 1917.
• 1918. Some Poems. London: The Talbot Press/T. Fisher Unwin.
• 1997. Roger Casement's diaries: 1910. The Black and the White. Sawyer, Roger, ed. London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-7375-X
• 1997. The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. Mitchell, Angus, ed. Anaconda Editions.

Secondary Literature, and other materials cited in this entry:

• Dudgeon, Jeffrey, 2002. Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a Study of his Background, Sexuality and Irish Political Life. Belfast. ISBN 0-9539287-2-1. (Includes first publication of 1911 diary).
• Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost.
• Hyde, H. Montgomery, 1960. Trial of Roger Casement. London: William Hodge. Penguin edition 1964.
• Hyde, H. Montgomery, 1970. The Love That Dared not Speak its Name. Boston: Little, Brown (in UK The Other Love).
• Inglis, Brian, 1973. Roger Casement, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Republished 1993 by Blackstaff Belfast and by Penguin 2002. ISBN 0-14-139127-8.
• Lacey, Brian, 2008. Terrible Queer Creatures: Homosexuality in Irish History. Dublin: Wordwell Books.
• Mc Cormack, W.J., 2002. Roger Casement in Death or Haunting the Free State. Dublin: UCD Press.
• Minta, Stephen, 1993. Aguirre: The Re-creation of a Sixteenth-Century Journey Across South America. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 0-8050-3103-0.
• Mitchell, Angus, 2003. Casement (Life & Times Series). Haus Publishing Limited. ISBN 1-904-34141-1.
• Ó Síocháin, Séamas and Michael O’Sullivan, eds., 2004.The Eyes of Another Race: Roger Casement's Congo Report and 1903 Diary. University College Dublin Press. ISBN 1-900-62199-1.
• Ó Síocháin, Séamas, 2008. Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary. Dublin: Lilliput Press.
• Reid, B.L., 1987. The Lives of Roger Casement. London: The Yale Press. ISBN 0-300-01801-0.
• Sawyer, Roger, 1984. Casement: The Flawed Hero. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Singleton-Gates, Peter, & Maurice Girodias, 1959. The Black Diaries. An account of Roger Casement's life and times with a collection of his diaries and public writings. Paris: The Olympia Press. First edition of the Black Diaries.
• Clayton, Xander: Aud, Plymouth 2007.
• Wolf, Karin, 1972. Sir Roger Casement und die deutsch-irischen Beziehungen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. ISBN 3-428-02709-4.
• Eberspächer, Cord/Wiechmann, Gerhard. "Erfolg Revolution kann Krieg entscheiden". Der Einsatz von S.M.H. Libau im irischen Osteraufstand 1916 ("Success revolution may decide war". The use of S.M.H. Libau in the Easter Rising 1916), in: Schiff & Zeit, Nr. 67, Frühjahr 2008, S. 2-16.

External links

• Photographs of and about Casement in the National Library of Ireland (no charge for reproduction)
• Brief biography of Roger Casement
• A BBC investigation into the "Black Diaries"
• "Casement: Traitor or patriot?". BBC News. 2006-08-02. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
• 1916 Rising timeline.
• Roger Casement's speech from the Dock at the end of his trial for treason.
• Report of the British Consul, Roger Casement, on the Administration of the Congo Free State.
• Times report on his execution
• Works by Roger Casement at Project Gutenberg
• BBC Radio 4 Documentary, September 1993, plus article in Ireland's Hot Press magazine
• Roger Casement's Gravesite
• White King, Red Rubber, Black Death (2003) (TV) at IMDb
• Short version of James J. Horan's review of the Giles report
• Kevin Mannerings and Marcel B. Matley, The “Black Diaries” Attributed to Sir Roger Casement. 2003-2004
• Sean Murphy, Irish Historical Mysteries: The Diaries of Roger Casement. A critical article