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‘Queer Heroes’ – Instalment two

“I sought by love alone to go
Where God had writ an awful no.
Pride gave a guilty God to hell
I have no pride – by love I fell.”

The poetry written by Sir Roger Casement speaks of love, of a love forbidden and condemned by society, but one which existed, nonetheless.

During his trial following the 1916 rebellion, Roger Casement was subjected to character assassination by the British government, with the release of excerpts from the ‘Black Diaries’. The ‘Black Diaries’ were written accounts of Casement’s sexual encounters with other men, during the years 1903, 1910, and 1911. While the diaries have been a source of controversary in the past, it is now widely accepted by historians that Casement was indeed the author of these writings.

The British government deliberately released the diaries to blacken Casement’s name, and to portray him as a ‘sexual degenerate’, with churchmen, newspaper editors, and even the English king, being shown excerpts from the diaries. The purpose of this was to silence growing calls for clemency from Casement’s many former allies, who he had met and worked with during his years as a humanitarian activist and diplomat.

While on trial for ‘treason’ against the British Empire, Casement’s sexuality was used by those in power as further justification for his execution. Ernley Blackwell, legal advisor to the British Cabinet, and the man who authorised the circulation of the ‘Black Diaries’, stated that, “I see not the slightest objection to hanging Casement and afterwards giving as much publicity to the contents of his diary as decency permits so that at any rate the public in America and elsewhere may know what sort of man they are inclined to make a martyr of”.

Casement’s actions to secure independence for Ireland was enough to make him a ‘traitor’ in the eyes of the British, and worthy of execution, like the other 15 rebels who had been killed before him. But execution was not enough, as the British government feared the consequences of Casement’s martyrdom. Their fear of Casement’s legacy was the reason for the public demonisation of his sexuality, which destroyed Casement’s respectability and reputation, and led to the erasure of Casement’s anticolonial work in Africa, the Amazon, and Ireland. In remembering Casement’s work, and his importance in not only Irish republicanism, but international anti-imperialism, we look beyond the narrative created by the British government before and after his death. Among Casement’s many achievements were the 1904 Casement Report, which revealed the extent of King Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo, and his reports on the Anglo-Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company, which exposed the torture and slavery of the indigenous peoples of Brazil. Casement’s significance in bringing these imperialist atrocities to the attention of the world was acknowledged by Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana, the first independent African country, who spoke of the debt owed to Sir Roger Casement by all “those who have fought for African freedom”.

And of course, Roger Casement is remembered as a hero of Irish republicanism, one of many who gave their lives for the pursuit of Irish freedom during 1916. Artemus Jones, one of Casement’s defendants, later wrote of Casement’s prisoner’s speech; “It will be read by his fellow Irishmen generations after his judges, his prosecutors, his lawyers and his calumniators have been long forgotten”.

And he was right, as Casement’s words, his life and his work, continue to be remembered and celebrated by all those who strive for the same ideals as the late Sir Roger Casement.

“Ireland has outlived the failure of all her hopes – and yet still she hopes.

Ireland has seen her sons – aye, and her daughters too – suffer from generation to generation always for the same cause, meeting always the same fate, and always at the hands of the same power; and always a fresh generation has passed on to withstand the same oppression.

Ireland that has wronged no man, that has injured no land, that has sought no dominion over others – Ireland is treated today among the nations of the world as if she was a convicted criminal. If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel – and shall cling to my rebellion with the last drop of my blood.”