Today, August 3rd is the 98th anniversary of the execution of Roger Casement in Pentonville Prison. Society member Kevin Keane spoke at our commemoration in Glasnevin at the start of the year. His talk covers Casements not widely know impact on exposing the brutality and horror of European colonialism in the early 20th century. Along with James Connolly, Casement is more widely known outside Ireland than on these shores..... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Casement’s legacy and sacrifice for the cause of Irish liberty is well known but what is not really spoken about is his journey from being a member of the ruling elite to a revolutionary who turned his back on the trappings and privilege that comes with the class he was born into. The revolutionary movement of the early 20th Century was made up of people from many different classes, socio-economic backgrounds and political ideologies. Nationalists, Republicans, Socialists, Anarchists, Trade Unionists, Feminists, humanaterianists, ex-colonial servicemen, rural farmers, urban small business owners, Catholic, Protestant and Jew. One area often over looked was the contribution of people who came from aristocratic backgrounds. People like Casement, Childers, Markievicz and other less celebrated individuals all hailed from privileged backgrounds. They stood shoulder to shoulder with Irish men and women from all persuasions in an attempt to create an Ireland that guaranteed the civil and religious liberties to all its citizens and create a Republic based on equality and justice that we still to this day seek. Casement, like most people with passion, had a fierce temper when baited but he was generally known by his peers as a gentle soul and humaniterianist. It’s assumed that he developed these humanitarian traits from his mother who secretly baptized all her children as Catholics, although neither she nor her husband were of that faith. Casement learned at a young age from his father, Roger Snr, the ideals of international republicanism. Casement’s sister Nina, recalled her father wanting to join the Fenian Rebellion of 1867 but after a fierce family row, was persuaded otherwise by his wife. During the Franco-Prussian war, Roger Snr drafted plans for the provisioning of the Paris which was under siege and wrote in a letter to the French republican leader, Leon Gambetta; ‘The enemies of freedom may multiply in Europe, shall so horrify the world, that the masses of people will be joined by the majority among the middle classes, and a few aristocrats, in hailing universal republicanism as a harbour of refuge.’ When Casement’s parents died during his teens he went to live between relations in Antrim and Liverpool. It was during this period that he developed his sense of romanticism in the context of Irish liberation, penning poems related to England’s conquest of Ireland during the 16th and 17th centuries and in particular, events in Ulster. Casement also had the walls of his study papered with cut out pictures from the Weekly Freeman of imprisoned Fenians of the late 1800s. Nearly three decades before Roger Casement immersed himself in the Irish revolutionary struggle for which he ultimately gave his life, he was first to visit Congo. This was around the same time as the Berlin Conference that ushered in the ‘Scramble For Africa’ and the carving up of the continent by the European colonial powers. When imperial powers create new boundaries or partition already existing territories, only grief and oppression can come to the indigenous people of these regions. This was as true to the people of Africa as it was to the people of Ireland, the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. It might take decades to realise but ultimately these borders will burn given the circumstances in which they were artificially manufactured. One of the outcomes of the Berlin Conference was the creation of the Congo Free State, which was handed over to the private ownership of King Leopold ii of Belgium, first cousin to the British famine queen, Victoria. It wasn’t until 1903, two years after the death of Victoria that the House of Commons passed a critical resolution against the Congo Free State. Considering their own colonial policies, Britain needed not point an accusing finger at anything other than a mirror on a wall. As a result of this resolution, Casement, who for the past two decades was working his way up through the British diplomatic corp, was instructed to investigate. Casement’s report was published a year later in 1904 and its shocking and graphic content had a considerable impact on public opinion. Casement wasn’t the first to or last to highlight the plight and suffering of the Congolese people. Journalists and writers like E.D Morel, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain were also vocal and articulate critics but what set Casement’s report apart with the Congo and other plantations he visited in Africa and South America was his innovative use of photography in the gathering of evidence. The rubber plantation workers who suffered slave like conditions and appalling treatment had unrealistic quotas imposed on them and not meeting your quota could be punishable by death. Another punishment was for a wife or child of a worker to be mutilated by having a hand or foot severed. It is estimated that the indigenous population declined by 50% during the years the Congo Free State existed. What is certain is that millions died while the land’s resources and peoples were plundered and exploited by European imperialists. Casement wrote that the four main causes for the depopulation were “indiscriminate warfare, disease, reduction in births and starvation.” Little has changed for the people of Africa to this day. Casement’s reports were groundbreaking as they were first time in which human rights violations were documented by photography and the explicit nature of the abuses and imagery brought home to Europe the realities of colonialism that outraged public opinion off the day. This first hand eye witnessing of such atrocities by colonial powers in Africa and South America was most likely the turning point of Casement’s path to becoming a revolutionary. He wrote, “Chivalry dies when imperialism begins, so it has ever been…. Rome the Republic had her knights and the ideals of knighthood are the laws of chivalry. But Rome the empire lost her ideals as she extended her frontiers. Rome was the first great illustration but not the last in history, that where wealth accumulates, men must decay.” Colonialism has never abated throughout the 20th or 21st Centuries but has merely changed management. Instead of colonial armies occupying far off lands, this management by force is now usually controlled by proxies in local militias who are supported, funded, armed and trained by western governments and industrialists intent on keeping control of the minerals and resources in far off lands. Instead of monarchs and dictators we have hedge fund operators and equity firms who keep a tight reign on power through their lobbyists stalking and corrupting the corridors of national parliaments throughout the world. Politicians who are elected on the back of socially progressive programs for government are in constant danger of coups and civil wars organized by profiteers. Within the last decade Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret, was caught red handed with an army of private mercenaries trying to overthrow the Government of Equatorial Guinea. In Basra, Iraq, two SAS operatives were caught with a car laden with explosives on their way to bomb a Shir political protest. At the start of the recent Libya civil War, SAS and M16 operatives were caught operating on the ground by government forces. The recent civil war in Ukraine and the Israel’s bombardment of the people of Gaza are also a direct result of colonial recourse theft. Imperialism is alive and well in the 21st century and the world system of unchecked and unaccountable capitalism rewards high level criminality with little or no recourse for justice to be served to the guilty. On this island we have illusion of a ‘Republic’ but the will of an unaccountable and an unelected cabal of financiers always trumps the will of the people. Its pointless calling ourselves a democracy when our national parliament is subverted by corrupt and external banking shylocks. We, as a people, are now suffering under the weight of financial colonialism and corporate fascism, where our public assets are being sold off to private capital, where our natural resources are given away to multi-national drilling and mining companies and where our grandchildren are saddled with debts run up by a political and financial criminal class. Roger Casement’s work in exposing the evils of colonialism was unrivaled and his death for the cause of Irish freedom will never be forgotten. His struggle against colonialism and imperialism was a just and righteous struggle then and it’s an equally just and righteous struggle today, but one that is far from complete. In a fitting tribute he was described as “the bravest, most selfless, practical humanitarian of his day, one whose acts of emancipation have seldom been surpassed.”
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 19:34:10 +0000
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