Review

Roger Casement by Brian Inglis, Penguin Books, 2002, first published 1973.

It is widely believed that Brian Inglis’s biography of Roger Casement is the standard biography from which other biographies take their cue.  

Although Inglis did not receive cooperation from the Casement family, the book could also be described as an “authorised” biography.  That is to say:  it was the British State that authorised him to have access to what have come to be called the Black Diaries in the late 1960s—at a time when such access was routinely refused. 

But, while Mr. Inglis was granted privileged access, he says in a footnote at the beginning of the book that the Home Office did not allow him to reproduce a specific page from the diaries.  So, what Inglis could quote from the diaries was strictly controlled.

Inglis came from a Protestant background in Dublin, but there the similarities with his subject end.  Unlike Casement, he attended ‘Public’ Schools in England, and later Trinity College Dublin and Magdalen College Oxford.  He served with the RAF during the Second World War and worked for The Irish Times before graduating to the ‘metropole’—becoming Editor of the Spectator and achieving a successful career in British Television.

With such a background there was little risk that he would upset the British Establishment!

The Inglis book gives a competent account of Casement’s career in the British diplomatic service in the Congo and later in South America.  The fact is:  Casement’s Reports on the Congo were not antagonistic to British Imperialism.  King Leopold of Belgium was running the Congo as a private business.  

And British companies were prevented from participating in the exploitation of the rubber industry, in which British subjects from British colonies were exploited.  The Belgians operated in effect a system of slave labour in which workers were killed or brutally maimed for not achieving production quotas.  Casement’s Report in 1904 received international recognition.

Subsequently, Casement’s investigation of the rubber industry in the Putumayo region of South America in 1910 exposed even worse atrocities.   But in this case the exploitation was financed by British capital and the punishments were often inflicted by men from the British colony of Barbados.

Casement was awarded a knighthood in 1911.  But, if the British thought that this award would tame him, they were mistaken.  He continued to believe that the British relationship to Ireland was not different from that of Britain to its African colonies.

He noted that Ireland exported £63 million worth of products.  Of this total, £52 million went to Britain.  Of the remaining £11 million a mere £0.7 million was not routed through British ports.  In early 1914 he saw the strategic significance of the Cunard Line’s decision to pull out of Cork.  This made Ireland even more dependent on British ports for her exports.

In response, he attempted, through a German intermediary, to request that the German shipping company Hamburg-Amerika open in Cork.  The negotiations reached an advanced stage but the German company decided not to go ahead with the plan.

It could be said that Casement’s approach was visionary in the sense that the struggle for Independence right up until the present has been in large part about reducing Ireland’s dependence on British trade.

Casement thought in strategic terms.  If Britain had an independent Ireland on its Western flank, that would make it more difficult for the Empire to retain its world naval dominance.  He also advocated an alliance with Germany and attempted to carry out that policy.

But, instead of trying to engage with these ideas, Inglis dismisses them as a symptom of some kind of a psychological condition!

There are numerous examples of this approach.  For example he says:

“And by the time he went to South America, it was indeed a disease;  an obsession, disturbing even those who most admired him, like H. L. Mason, who worked with him, and thought he had—

“only one serious fault… a fanatical view of the Irish situation amounting to mania, so that his friends most carefully avoided ever mentioning the subject” (p397).

Elsewhere Inglis describes Casement’s support for Germany as “messianic”.  In an attempt to suggest this support was unique, Inglis misrepresents James Connolly as the following passage shows:

“If a German army landed in Ireland, the readers of his Irish Worker were told at the outbreak of the war, they should be supported, provided they gave adequate guarantees for Irish Independence.  But his headquarters at Liberty Hall were draped with a banner, ‘We serve neither King, nor Kaiser, but Ireland”;  and privately, he was to confide in Pearse and Clarke that he thought the Germans as bad as the British.”

Needless to say, there is no reference for the “private” comment Connolly allegedly made to Pearse and Clarke.  Readers of the Irish Political Review will know that Casement and Connolly were unambiguous in their support for Germany during the First World War.

Shortly after Casement arrived in Germany in 1914, he was able to obtain the following statement from the acting German Secretary of State:

“Should the fortune of the Great War, which 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 a people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom.”

John Devoy, the American-based Fenian, congratulated Casement for effectively countering British propaganda about the rights of small nations (such as ‘little’  Belgium, with its African Empire!).

Of course, the Black Diaries were another more sinister attempt to characterise Casement as being deranged.  Inglis’s approach to this subject is to assume that the diaries are authentic without any discussion.  Below is an example:

“Alone among those who knew Casement well, Hambloch also claimed to have been aware there was a suspicion that he was ‘not normal’.  This was on no very strong evidence;  simply on one occasion, he observed two English residents, father and son, exchanging smiles when the father, hearing his good-looking son was to have lunch with Casement, advised him to ‘be careful’.  It might easily have been dismissed as a misunderstanding of some private joke between the father and the son, were it not for the fact that two of the ‘black’ diaries discovered in London happened to be for 1910 and 1911” (p163).

The first question that arises is:  how can disputed documents such as the Black Diaries be considered corroboration for anecdotes that are equally suspect?  The ‘corroboration’ consists of a few sentences from the ‘diaries’, describing paid sex with Brazilian natives.  No mention of ‘English residents’!!

Secondly, how credible is this story?  Is it likely that a father would consider it amusing for his young son to have lunch with a man in his late forties who was “not normal”?

And, thirdly, how reliable is the source?  Indeed, what is the source?  Inglis provides no reference! 

But In the ‘bibliography’ section, there is a book by Ernest Hambloch published in 1938.  Hambloch was Casement’s Vice-Consul in Rio de Janeiro.  Paul Hyde in his book, Anatomy Of A Lie: Decoding Casement, says that Hambloch worked for Casement for only three weeks (p153). 

Even Jeffrey Dudgeon finds Hambloch unreliable.  In his book he says Hambloch stated that, when Casement visited Germany in 1912, the Germans provided him with a car.  Dudgeon says that in fact Casement travelled with his friend Dick Morten whose car it was (Roger Casement: The Black Diaries—with a Study Of His Background, Sexuality And Irish Political Life, 2nd edition, p414).

So we are asked to believe that “alone among those who knew Casement well”, Hambloch is the only person who had suspicions about Casement!  And he only voiced those suspicions publicly 22 years after Casement’s death!!

This is by no means the only example of using the disputed Black Diaries to establish ‘facts’ about Casement.  Inglis blithely says Casement met “his old love, Millar, and brought him to a hotel in Warrenpoint” (p164). 

Inglis then produces an extract from one of the ‘Black Diaries’, describing the sexual encounter.  But the sole source for a sexual relationship between Millar and Casement is the Black Diaries.  There is no other evidence for any such relationship.

Yet another example of using dubious sources is a quotation from a poem which could reasonably be considered to have a homosexual theme (p382).  Inglis attributes this to Casement without discussion.  But, interestingly, although he quotes the seven verses of the poem, he doesn’t give the title!  Of course, if he had done so, readers of his book in 1973 might have recalled that this poem—ironically enough called “The Nameless One”—was the subject of controversy regarding its provenance sixteen years earlier (https://www.decoding-casement.com/naming-the-nameless-one/).

Inglis has an interesting detail about Casement’s brief stay in Norway in October 1914 en route to Germany.  He says Mansfeldt Findlay (the Minister to the British legation in Oslo) pointed out that, as Casement was travelling on a false passport, his disappearance would not be noticed, and if “someone knocked Casement on the head he would get well paid”.

It seems that murder as well as kidnapping was contemplated by the British diplomatic corps!

Elsewhere, Inglis makes the ‘innovative’ claim that Casement’s assistant Adler Christensen ‘betrayed’ Casement.  However, all the evidence suggests the opposite.  Hyde in his book reproduces a letter from Arthur Nicholson (Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office) to Findlay which indicates that both Christensen and Casement had outwitted Findlay—making the latter’s position in Norway all but untenable (Hyde, p175).

For such a senior historian, Inglis makes a number of surprising errors.  For example he refers to Sir Wyndham Childs as the “Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department at the time Casement was captured in 1916” ( p109).

But anyone who has taken even a cursory interest in the accusations against Casement would know that it was Basil Thomson who was the Chief of the CID in 1916!

That is probably the most innocent mistake that Inglis makes!!

On page 332 he says:

“He [Casement, JM] had left some of his possessions in his old Ebury Street lodgings;  and among them the diaries for 1903, 1910, and 1911, and the account book for 1911—which Basil Thomson described, after they had been brought to him at Scotland Yard, as containing material which could not be printed ‘in any age, in any language’. “

But Inglis doesn’t give the full quotation, which is from Basil Thomson’s book Queer People, published in 1922:

“But something besides clothing was found in one of the trunks. —a diary and a cashbook from the year 1903 with considerable gaps…  It is enough to say of the diaries that they found could not be printed in any age or in any language.”

So, Thomson was unaware of diaries relating to 1910 or 1911.

Under the heading “The Black Diaries”, there is a very strange passage in the book concerning what was distributed by the authorities in the attempt to discredit Casement.  Inglis says “copies were made“.  But he doesn’t say what form those “copies” took!  He then says that one of the principal officers at the Ministry of Information, G. H. Mair, boasted that “he had the responsibility for getting the diaries copied”.  Inglis then adds:

“What has remained obscure is who actually gave the authorisation to show the copies around.  Inevitably, suspicion fell on F.E. Smith.  He showed them to friends;  Sir James O’Connor, the Irish Attorney-General, told Bulmer Hobson how shocked and disgusted he had been “at the impropriety of the Attorney-General of England peddling dirty stories in this way about a man he was prosecuting on a charge of treason”.  But Smith’s interest, apparently, was only scatological;  when he heard that the Foreign Office was proposing to photograph portions of the diary, with a view to influencing opinion, he told Grey he thought it was “rather a ghoulish proposal”.  Grey agreed:  it would not be proceeded with, unless the Cabinet gave its authority.”

So, Smith thought photographing “portions of the diary” (singular) “ghoulish”, which begs the question, what exactly Smith was showing to his friends!  Paul Hyde in his book says what was shown were “typescripts” that were claimed to be copies of the diary or diaries of Casement.  (It seems that people were initially under the impression that there was only one diary!)

But it is a little bizarre—not to mention insulting—to suggest that Smith’s interest was “only scatological”.  Whatever that might be said of Smith, he was a serious person.  He threatened to resign if the Government granted Casement a reprieve.

Inglis then speculates on who authorised the showing of “copies” of the ‘Diaries’.  He notes that the Government did not authorise this, but made no attempt to prevent it from happening.  Such an approach, of course, would allow future deniability!

Inglis thinks that Ernley Blackwell, the legal adviser to the Home Office was a key figure.  He says:

“Blackwell did not need authorisation to show the diaries.  All that he required was the Cabinet’s tacit consent.”

But, while Blackwell was a key figure, he certainly was not the orchestrator.  His role was as a conduit between the Intelligence Services and the Cabinet, making sure that the latter would not weaken in its resolve to destroy Casement for the present and in posterity.

But, for all Inglis’s deceptions, every so often he gives the game away.  On page 279 he says:

““At last in Berlin”, Casement wrote on October 31st in his diary—preserved by a friend he made in Germany, so that it did not fall into the hands of the Home Office (it contained no references to homosexual activities—presumably because Casement realised it would be risky, in the situation in which he now found himself, to include them)”.

Yes. This does require an explanation!  No sexual activities in 1914—unlike in 1903, 1910 and 1911!  Inglis suggests that Casement was still “at it” in 1914 but that he decided that it would be prudent not to document it! 

But there is an obvious alternative explanation which Inglis has unwittingly suggested.  The reason for the absence of sexual activities in the 1914 Diary is that it was “preserved by a friend he made in Germany, so that it did not fall into the hands of the Home Office”—or those of the forgers!

Apart from that faux pas, it must be admitted that Inglis’s book, which Penguin Books designates as a “Classic Biography”, is a brilliant piece of character assassination  of a great Irish patriot by a faithful servant of the British State!  

The Inglis book has indeed been the template for subsequent biographies.

John Martin

Postscript:

Addendum

The 2002 edition of Brian Inglis’s biography of Roger Casement says that Inglis was “knighted in 1977”.

But Inglis himself never claimed to be a knight nor did anyone accuse him of being so during his life.

Is it possible that there are some knighthoods that are awarded secretly and can only be revealed posthumously?  (Inglis died in 1993).

It turns out that there is a far simpler explanation.  Penguin publishers got it wrong!  There was indeed an Australian “Brian Inglis” who received a knighthood in 1997 for services to industry—not the same person who wrote the biography!

It is possible that this was the most innocent error in the whole book!

JM