Review:  Roger Casement In Irish History, 2005, Royal Irish Academy, edited by Mary E. Daly

This book consists of a collection of essays on various themes concerning Roger Casement.  While most of the media attention focused on a report of the handwriting expert Audrey Giles on the so called Black Diaries, there are other parts of the book that are not without interest.

One idea that is often expressed in recent times is that the authenticity or otherwise of the Black Diaries doesn’t really matter.  A subtle version of this theme is expressed in this book by Roger Sawyer.  Before going on to express his opinion that they are authentic, Sawyer denounces the British for circulating the documents because:

“Even if you are convinced, as I am, that they are genuine, the guilt remains.  Not only did these documents, containing not one treasonable word, make the petitions for a reprieve fail, they thwarted the efforts of highly placed individuals who realised that yet another execution would have a disastrous propaganda effect on Irish-American support for the British war effort.”

Later he says:
“Although establishing the authenticity of these diaries will not in any way diminish the culpability of certain individuals, it is worth doing both for obvious and less obvious reasons”.

The general tenor of the essay is that the mere distribution of the sexually incriminating material by British State Officials was so appalling that the question of the authenticity or otherwise of the Black Diaries pales into insignificance.  Since the authenticity of the Diary does not subtract from the guilt of the people involved, it follows that proof of forgery will not add to their guilt.

I disagree!  Perhaps readers of the Irish Political Review will be shocked, but I don’t find it so appalling that British officials would attempt to undermine Roger Casement’s reputation!

The reprehensible aspects of this affair are precisely those that Sawyer does not mention, or does not consider important:  

Firstly, Casement was not given the opportunity to respond to the allegations.  That was a conscious decision by the British.  

Secondly, and much more seriously, the allegations are based on lies.  

Thirdly, the British have attempted to sustain those lies for more than a hundred years!

Roger Casement has an honoured place among the pantheon of Irish heroes.  Therefore to manufacture a false narrative of who he actually was is to tamper with Ireland’s national memory.

A variation of the theme that the ‘Black Diaries’ don’t matter is that they are not that bad!

Sawyer says:

“It should not be too difficult for modern Ireland to accept that one of its national icons was a homosexual—and given that acceptance one can move on to more positive aspects of his life”.

So, by implication, denying the authenticity of the Black Diaries is to be “backward”, “reactionary”, or whatever is the opposite of “modern”!

But beware!  If we accept that Casement was a homosexual on the basis of the Black Diaries, we have to accept the other aspects of those documents—such as pederasty and a propensity for paying for sex in impoverished countries.

Another essay of note is from Christopher Andrew, who is the official historian for MI5.  He suggests that the campaign to denigrate Casement was led by Captain Reginald Hall in Naval Intelligence.  He elaborates as follows:

“For Hall and other intelligence chiefs, who were anxious not to prejudice the prospects of US intervention in the war, it was even more important to discredit Casement in the US than in Britain”.

It is interesting that Andrew doesn’t feel the need to explain his view that the Intelligence Services were running British Foreign Policy without any political control!

But, in contrast, elsewhere he says that, in October 1914, a Memo from the British Counsel to Norway—reporting some unsubstantiated tittle tattle about Casement’s sexuality—was reported to the Foreign Minister Edward Grey:  who copied it to Herbert Asquith (Prime Minister), Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty), Lord Kitchener (Secretary of State for War), and Augustine Birrell (Chief Secretary for Ireland).  It is very clear that, at the highest political level, the British were taking a keen interest in Casement’s private life!

In October 1914 Casement travelled from Norway to Germany, where he remained until his fateful return to Ireland in April 1916.  In October 1914 Casement’s personal effects were held in trunks in Ebury Street, London, lodgings.  Andrew is asking us to believe that the British Security Services waited another eighteen months (to April 25th, 1916) to open Casement’s trunks!

The most interesting essay in the book is from Angus Mitchell.  An objective reading of Casement’s authentic writings and of the Black Diaries shows two different people.  

On the one hand, there is the anti-Imperialist, the investigator of injustice;  on the other there is the exploiter, the sexual coloniser, and the crude fantasist.  It is inconceivable that they could be the same person!

One of the points that Mitchell makes is that Casement was acutely aware of the danger of his Diaries falling into the wrong hands.  The idea of him writing the incriminating material in the Black Diaries is nonsensical.  In 1910 he was more worried about the Rubber Barons he was investigating than the British State!  Mitchell quotes from a letter he sent to the Foreign Office outlining his concerns:

  “I am keeping a diary, and part of the statement of Bishop is really a leaf of my diary the last part.  It is only sent to you in case I might get lost or disappear or something up there or die of fever, and my papers might be overhauled before they reached Iquitos, or they would be at the mercy of the people who are in real dread of our visit.  I am viewed with grave suspicion already.”

It is very obvious that the Black Diaries were manufactured from authentic Casement material.  Paul Hyde, the author of Anatomy Of A Lie: Decoding Casement, describes the relationship as “parasitic”. The Black Diaries fed off the authentic writing of Casement.  

There is also very strong evidence that the forgers disposed of the authentic writings, so that no one would know how the information was obtained to perpetrate the forgery.

Angus Mitchell demonstrates this by quoting as follows a letter Casement wrote to Alice Stopford Green:

“I knew well that if I told the truth about the devilish Congo conspiracy of robbers I should pay for it in my own future, but when I made up my mind to tell, at all costs, it was the image of my poor old country stood before my eyes.  The whole thing had been done once to her—down to every detail—she too, had been “flung reward to human hands” and I felt that, as an Irishman, come what might to myself, I should tell the truth.  I burned my boats deliberately—and forced the Foreign Office either to repudiate me, or back my report.  And yet I knew well that, in the end, I should have to go overboard, and I wrote that in my diary on Sept 4 1903, the day I wrote to the Governor-General at Boma denouncing the whole infamous system, and  committing myself to no compromise” (Letter to Alice Stopford Green 24.2.05).

But now let us see what is in the diary of 4th September 1903.  It says:

“September 4th.  Very tired.  Awake battling with mosquitoes all night.  Left camp 6.15.  At Boryela, 7.10.  Only 55 minutes to do what took us nearly two hours to do going up stream.  Drafted long letter. 1.45, arr. at Ikau.  Steaming splendidly, found a letter from La Lulonga, relative to my visit to Ifonni on 27th and 28th August.  Hoisted my consular flag on ‘Reed’.  First time up since trip to Ituta on lake.  Patrol jacket first time since Irebu”.

     The above is an incredibly banal passage that bears no relationship with what he says is in the diary for that date.  One can only conclude that, in his letter to Stopford Green, Casement is talking about a different diary—one that has disappeared!

     It is obvious that, once the forgers had used the information in the genuine diaries to manufacture the forged diaries, they disposed of the authentic diaries.

     They had one difficulty however.  Casement’s genuine diary for 23rd September 1910 to 6th December 1910 was in the public domain.  It had already been submitted to a Parliamentary Committee investigating the rubber industry in the Putumayo region of South America.  So there were two parallel diaries covering the same period:  the Putumayo Journal and the forged Black Diary!  But, as Mitchell points out, it is scarcely believable that there were no other authentic Diaries for the remainder of 1910!

Towards the end of his essay, Mitchell raises other questions—such as the disputed provenance of the Black Diaries;  the inconsistencies and inaccuracies; and the lack of corroborating evidence.  

He notes that the Diaries have undergone a physical evolution over the years.  For example, fourteen years after the death of Casement, Basil Thomson (the Head of CID in 1916), described the Black Diaries as consisting of “two twin volumes of foolscap paper”.  Of course, that was wildly different from what eventually emerged in 1959!

The forging of the Black Diaries was totalitarian in conception. It involved erasing as much as possible of the real Casement from the public record and replacing it with a distorted and false Casement:  a figure that is not a threat to the interests of the Empire.  Even the non-sexual parts of the Black Diaries are not ‘innocuous’:  because they are lies!

All this is very far from being a trivial matter.  In Dante’s Inferno, the eighth circle of hell was reserved for forgers!  Only the ninth circle, where Satan resided, has greater evil!

Dante considered falsifiers as a “plague” on a stable society because they shake the foundations of knowledge and truth.  Unlike sins of “incontinence” (like lust or gluttony), or of violence, fraud is calculated and planned to destroy the very foundations of society.

Like an archaeologist, Angus Mitchell has been trying to restore and preserve the genuine artefacts, while discarding what is false.

Nobody is entitled to erase the authentic Roger Casement from public consciousness and replace him with a false persona to serve an Imperial or other interest.  We have to reclaim him!

John Martin