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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
Rory Carroll
it's
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Rory Carroll
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- [01:26]
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Eleanor Evans
From a celebrated knight of the British Empire to a condemned traitor, the story of Irish diplomat and nationalist Roger Casement is a complex one that has been told from many angles in the more than a century since his death. In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Eleanor Evans is joined by Rory Carroll, a correspondent for the Guardian and the author of A Rebel and a Traitor, a a new book on Casement and the rebellion often known as the 1916 Easter Rising.
- [02:30]
Interviewer
It's wonderful to be talking to you today about your book A Rebel and a Traitor and the Rebel and Traitor Both of those in question is Sir Roger Casement. I wonder if we can start the story of today's episode by introducing this figure to us. His career as part of the British imperial machine. And in 1914, 1915, where do we find him in your story, Roger Caseman,
- [02:52]
Rory Carroll
one of the most intriguing figures in Irish history. And I grew up in Dublin and a. In our schoolbooks he would appear as this kind of almost will o' the wisp figure, a kind of very noble, yet with a hint of scandal. And he's always. He didn't quite fit the template of the other Irish rebel leaders. And so it's always this kind of vaporous smoke about him. And this happened when I was as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian. I was, you know, at different postings. I was in Africa and Casement's imperial career as a consul, as consul for the British government. I mean, he was still remembered in Congo for his work there exposing human rights abuses in the 1890s. Then later on I was posted to South America for the Guardian and in the Amazon, there again I find his trail cropping up. People in kind of oral history kind of remembered Casement because he'd gone there too and again had exposed human rights abuses in the rubber industry in the Amazon. And these reports that he'd filed to the British government had caused sensations at the time. I mean, he was like a one man Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and then in San Francisco at a spoiler alert. But I was at a gay pride event covering that also for the Guardian. There was a. This is years later where I saw Roger Casement's very handsome dark beauty as it was described back in the day there too. So, you know, he's sort of been a motif through my own journalistic career. And when I came back to Ireland to be the Guardian's Ireland correspondent, I mean, he. I don't know, I just started reading more about him and there was parts of the story which were a lot of Irish people sort of familiar, I mean, of who Casement is for British people. He's perhaps kind of largely forgotten, but I thought that, I mean, his life is extraordinary in terms of like he packed so many different things and elements into his life. But the story I told, I tell in this book a rebel and a traitor telescopes things into the last two years of his life. So the story picks up in 1914 in the buildup to World War I, which is when Casement started taking dramatic steps that eventually would transform his life. And in many ways the, you know, the resonance of that is still. We still feel it today.
- [04:59]
Interviewer
This is a great introduction to Casement. Thank you. And there are many rich threads in his life in this story, even of the last two years, that we're going to unpick a bit today. I wonder if we can sort of zoom out of his story for just a moment and you can remind listeners or perhaps introduce listeners to this cause of Irish nationalism, Republicanism, the broader story of Athenianism. What's happening in this broader story? And what is Casement supporting and interested in?
- [05:25]
Rory Carroll
Okay, so if we rewind to the Ireland of 1914, and it was just one Ireland, there was no Northern Ireland. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, but restlessly so. There had been a push for decades for a Home Rule movement whereby this degree of autonomy would be passed to a new parliament in Dublin. It would be very circumscribed, but this was very much, you know, the Irish Nationalist project that Ireland would stay within the United Kingdom, because actually, a lot of Irish people kind of liked the empire. And the idea of leaving the UK was inconceivable. So it was not about independence. It was simply about getting a degree of distance from rule from London. And that's what the Irish Nationalist projects were trying to do. But then Protestants and Unionists in the north of Ireland were up in arms. They were the rebels. At first they said, no, no way we would be ruled by or have influence from a Dublin Catholic parliament. And so they, with the support of the British Conservative opposition party at that time, imported guns, and they actually brought the gun into Irish politics to resist this Home Rule, which created endless numbers of crises in the lead up to World War I. And in fact, in 1914, initially, the major concern for the British government was not what Germany might be doing on the continent, but the possibility of civil war in Ireland between Unionists in the north who wanted to block this attempt to pass Home Rule, which would give very limited autonomy to a Dublin Parliament. So Ireland Casement was in ferment at this time. And Casement had initially been, for much of his life, been. He was kind of a moderate nationalist, although he's working for the British government as a civil servant, as a roving consul for the Foreign Office. He was with the kind of the mainstream nationalist view of let's get Home Rule, so we'll still be part of the uk, still basically be British and Irish. But there was a small kind of cohort or faction within Irish nationalism that was much more radical and felt, no, Home Rule is not enough. We've had the famine. We've had 800 years of oppression. We're done. You know, we want full independence. And When World War I broke out, this in the great Fenian motto was that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity. England is now locked in this titanic struggle to save its empire against, you know, the superpower of Germany. And now is a chance for Ireland and these small radical extremists to strike. And so Caseman threw in his lot with them.
- [08:02]
Interviewer
Is it fair to say that the extent to which he sympathizes, supports, drives forward this cause? It's fairly clandestine at this point. How does he go about it, and how does he seize on this opportunity, particularly of wartime?
- [08:16]
Rory Carroll
Well, it's very peculiar. On one level, it was actually very public because the Irish Volunteers, it was a militia group that was forming, were forming openly and trying to get weapons. But this was legal because the Unionists, the Protestants, had done the same thing. First. They had formed their own militia to defend the Union. And so now we're having kind of a nationalist counter militia, and they're all these two private armies, in a sense, openly and quasi legally operating on the island of Ireland. And so Casement was very much in the business of recruiting for the Irish Volunteers and openly so and making speeches. But then once the war broke out, he went to the United States to try to get weapons and funding from Irish Americans to kind of funnel back to Ireland. But then once the war really got underway, he felt that the Irish Americans lost interest in the Irish project, because suddenly there's a world war underway. And really, the Irish tensions and whether or not there should be Home Rule and when will there be Home Rule, all seemed rather marginal to the fact that there was this kind of global conflagration underway. And so, in a sense, for many Irish people, you know, the agreement was that we're going to dispark the Irish request for Home Rule until the war is over. Of course, people thought the war might just last a few months, but that was the agreement where Casement wasn't happy about this. He thought, no, I'm going to go all the way. Very typically for Casement, he would swing in his personality from extremes, and he decided to go all in. And for him, what this meant was getting to Germany, who is now locked in war with the UK and there to lobby for guns and also to try to raise an Irish brigade among British prisoners of war that had been captured by the Germans, and to try to see if he could then lead a group of Irish soldiers who nominally were in the British army back to Ireland with German weapons to lead a revolution.
- [10:13]
Interviewer
So this is a bold mission. He's clearly seizing on the opportunity of Britain's resources, Britain's attention being elsewhere. It's obviously all in your book, but I wonder if you can take us into the story of just how successful is this? What does he come up against in terms of the various vagaries of communication and how information travels in this world?
- [10:32]
Rory Carroll
Things went terribly wrong for Roger Casement once he got to Germany. I mean this was a man who, you know, he'd been so successful in many other ways, as I mentioned earlier, this kind of one man, Amnesty International, the fact that he had been knighted for his services to the Crown, he had been feted by British aristocrats, London society, he had lots of supporters among writers, bishops. I mean he was a very revered figure in many ways in British society. And yet now he throws in his lot with the, not quite with the Germans. He's not looking for Ireland to join Germany in the war on Germany's side. What he wants is to try to recruit this Irish brigade. But things could terribly wrong. One, he goes to these prisoner of war camps and this is 1914, 1915, and he's finding Irish men who had been fighting for the British army and were then captured by the Germans. And he wants to persuade them to join this Irish brigade which would be armed by the Germans and would then be shipped to Ireland to trigger a revolution and try to gain independence. And he was just such a bad fit for this role because much as he was very handsome and people in memoirs remark on how his voice could be so magnetic and he had kind of charisma, but he didn't know how to connect with these squaddies who had been in German prison camps and had often been mistreated by the Germans in some cases. And so they are thinking what you're asking us to betray the British army that we've sworn an oath to and basically put our heads in a noose for some kind of harebrained project to go. This kind of sounded like science fiction. So it was a debacle. He failed to persuade any serious numbers of prisoners. In the end it was just basically a few dozen agreed instead of the several hundred or even several thousands that he'd hoped for, he was slightly more successful in terms of persuading the Germans to give weapons for a putative Irish rebellion that was he had to negotiate with the Kaiser's officials and these pruss heel clicking military officials in Berlin. But he became quite Isolated in Berlin because his communications went back with his paymasters, in a sense, the Irish American rebels who were based in New York, where often those letters were either intercepted by the British, they never arrived. And also meantime, he was out of touch with what was happening in Dublin. The rebels were making their own plans, thinking, well, we gotta do our own thing. We're not gonna be waiting for Roger Casement to turn up with Irish soldiers. And so he became quite an isolated fig.
- [13:05]
Interviewer
So we have Casement's side of the story here. He's clearly a very charismatic, influential figure who's been able to rally support across the Atlantic in America. He's been able to go to Germany, rally support there. Not quite, as you say, influenced the troops to rise in the nature that he'd hoped. But there's clearly influence and charisma, another aspect of his character or his personality. Yet we haven't brought in. You mentioned it at the top of the interview when you came across his story in San Francisco as part of your career is his sexuality. What can you tell us about what's going on with Roger Casement at this? And how. How is that perceived by the people he's around?
- [13:40]
Rory Carroll
Well, he had very successfully compartmentalized his life because he was gay. And so he was single, bachelor, unmarried. He had lots of admirers. I mean, again, as I mentioned earlier, but his. His. His beauty is referred even by men and women in their. In their memoirs who are to say that he was. They were so struck by his looks and. And his. His. His manner. He was this kind of very chivalrous demeanor. And they had no idea that he was gay because he was very successful at just sealing off that part of his life. So it was not visible even to his closest friends. Had no idea. Now, in the story, it becomes extremely crucial fact is the fact that the reason we know he was gay is he kept a diary, basically a sex diary of his encounters. And this is all before the war. I mean, these were going back to 10, 15 years before the war. So once he's in Berlin, I think his position there politically is so delicate. There's no real evidence that he was actually having an active sex life there. But the story is that he had written these diaries and fatefully he had left them scattered because he never had a home. He was quite a nomad and he would leave. And he. For a man who was addicted to writing and he left his kind of journals and memoirs kind of scattered in different places. And when you see what was in those journals that was in hindsight not smart. So he was busy in Germany trying to persuade the Germans, were a bit skeptical of the possibility of revolution in Ireland, to give weapons and send a German expeditionary force to Ireland. But on the side, he concealed this dark secret. I say dark because homosexuality was illegal. It was considered a sin, a perversion, a mental illness. And so, you know, for very understandable reasons, he just completely cloaked that part of his life.
- [15:24]
Interviewer
Yes, very understandable indeed, given the threat and everything that entailed at that time. And we're bringing it in because it does become important in this story elsewhere. I ask listeners to remember the detail of the diary because we will come back to it and discuss it in more detail, I hope. But if we can pause Casement's story just there, remembering that we've got an army, a struggle rising in Ireland. At the same time, we've obviously got the support in America. Casement's done Germany. Let's turn to Reginald Hall. Can we bring him in here? Who is he in your account?
- [15:57]
Rory Carroll
He is a fantastic character. I say character. I mean, he was a real man. So Captain Reginald Blinker hall was a naval captain who had cut his teeth on dreadnoughts and had commanded a battleship, the Queen Mary, and was kind of in some sense, an old school imperialist. You know, he was English and he believed very much in the power and the goodness of the British Empire and the Royal Navy. And he was very successful as a captain. But what was unusual about him, he was also a maverick. He was very an innovator. He was kind of eccentric. He put a cinema on his battleship. No one else had done that. He brought a bookshop onto his battleship. He brought a chapel. And so his men actually, they. I mean, he's a very stern taskmaster, but they revered him. And he was kind of slightly eccentric, but there was a brilliance to him and also a ruthlessness. And this became very relevant when soon after the outset of the war, he had a chronic kind of chest problems and weaknesses. And he basically had to, to save his life, the Navy had to pull him off a battleship and give him a land job because he, you know, he was otherwise possibly going to die from these kind of North Sea cold winds. And so he was then put in charge of the Admiralty Intelligence unit. And he completely transformed it. And Winston Churchill was initially. Was his boss. Winston Churchill was the First Sea Lord and Blinker was his nickname because he had some sort of condition which made him blink continuously all the time. He transformed a somewhat kind of sleepy naval intelligence department into this kind of vast intelligence gathering apparatus. I mean he just threw everything at it. He pioneered mass surveillance, for example, by intercepting the mail not just off a few suspects in the UK but pretty much almost everybody. I mean the whole population having their mail intercepted and read, you know, letters being steamed open by hundreds of people in sorting offices. And Reginald hall did that. He also had these code breakers that were intercepting German messages. First they'd cut the cables so the Germans could no longer speak from Berlin to their embassy in Washington to undersea cables. So they had to use the either air messages. And he and his code breakers started intercepting on, scrambling, decoding these messages. And so he had basically a finger in every pie. And he early on learns that Casement is in his own view, up to no good. And so he becomes the pursuer. And he sees, okay, Casement is in Germany. And whilst blinker hall is in the admiralty in London tracking Casement through multiple different sources. And he wants them because as far as he can see, Casement is a traitor who is attempting to export a revolution to Ireland and thereby stab England in the back just at its moment of need of maximum vulnerability. So he is determined to try to catch and punish Casement.
- [19:05]
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- [20:06]
Interviewer
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- [20:18]
Rory Carroll
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- [20:36]
Interviewer
So Blinker hall has got Casement in his sights. I am jumping us around a bit here. I hope I'm doing justice to the fact that your narrative is very propulsive and brings in so many different elements. We're looking towards the same moment with Casement in Berlin looking towards Ireland. Let's look at that picture for a second. How can we see the different elements of this rising coming together? I know we can look at it more than a century on with the knowledge that the Easter Rising was what it was, but at the time it was rising. What are the various elements that are coming into this? How feasible is it? What are the hopes of those involved?
- [21:12]
Rory Carroll
The Irish Rising was a conspiracy by a minority within a minority within a minority. It was a tiny group of people who drove this idea that Ireland could and should rise up against British rule during the First World War. Because for most people, this was just, you know, it's like an absurd fantasy. And not only that, but they were hostile to it. I'm talking about even Irish. Most Irish nationalists were like, no, we're in this war with England. You know, our boys are over fighting in France and we got to defeat the Hun. We may not love the English, but we're waiting for Home Rule and we're confident we'll get it. We just need to sit tight, do our duty. And that was kind of a mainstream view in the south of Ireland. But then you have this small group of rebels who say, no, this is it. This is our chance. We don't care that we have no popular support. We don't care that we've no mandate. I mean, the mandate will be history. History will be our mandate. And so they surreptitiously start plotting. There's different elements. One is they're getting money from Irish Americans in the United States. They're hoping maybe they're going to get guns from Germany via Casement's services. And meantime, they're going to get. The men will be this militia force I mentioned earlier that actually had been kind of legally marching around to demand Home Rule, which was actually British government policy. So they were ostensibly legal force saying, okay, we're here to support British government policy because you've promised us Home rule, so we're therefore entitled to march around often with no weapons. Really, that has had Kind of hurley sticks to make sure that you actually do give it to us. And so what these kind of rebels did was they infiltrated this basically legal militia and to start trying to kind of radicalize it and to use this is going to be as their. It's going to be their manpower. These are going to be the rebels you bring onto the streets. And so they came up with a military strategy whereby, unlike previous Irish rebellions, which often would happen in rural areas where you take to the hills, maybe guerrilla warfare or hedge warfare in the Irish term, this time, no different, we're going to catch them by surprise. We're going to seize the citadel of British rule in Ireland, which is Dublin. We'll make the capital. The cockpit of the rebellion that hadn't really been tried many times before in Irish rebellions, and there had not been one for almost a century. So their idea is that they're going to seize landmarks, positions around Dublin, occupy them, and try to then spread revolt. You know, the spirit of revolt will go around the country. And this required a very delicate sequence of events. One was that keeping it completely secret from the. From the British, which is very difficult given that the whole history of British ability to infiltrate and spy on Irish rebels, this time they. They thought, okay, we're going to keep it genuinely a secret this time, you know, but also the weapons from Germany will need to come. They were able to scrabble together, you know, some weapons at home by either stealing or buying them from British soldiers and other means. But it was really quite a ramshackle armory, so they said. But then Casement was going to bring these German weapons on a ship from Germany. So they would arrive ideally just before the Rising, because if it arrived any earlier, the British would get wind of it. So it required this very delicate combination of secrecy. The weapons that have to arrive, make it through a British naval blockade, arrive in the remote part of the coast of Kerry, and then be distributed just in time. And then the Rising would unfold, occupy Dublin, trigger, you know, nationwide nationalist sentiment, and oust the British. That was the plan. And so it was a very delicate dance they had to do to try to get all of these elements together, all the while at risk of exposure or of the British getting wind of it.
- [25:01]
Interviewer
I think what's really coming across now and what came across for me in your narrative is there are so many missed links, so many what could have been, but for a number of reasons. The German weapons that have set sail. What's Casement's knowledge of this? What happens to him in this story, if we can return to him as an individual.
- [25:20]
Rory Carroll
Well, Casement leaves Germany in a submarine, and the idea is that. So there's an arms ship which is loaded up and disguised as a Norwegian freighter. And the Germans went to extraordinary lengths to disguise the ship because the Royal Navy controlled the seas. And so the Germans, only way they couldn't power their way through, they had to bluff their way through. And they're very. Actually quite clever at it. The sailors are dressed as Norwegians. They would go around, like, smoking a pipe on deck, which German sailors would never do. They would spit overboard, you know, doing all these things to kind of. Because the Royal Navy were looking at them through binoculars. And actually the ship was disguised to look like a real. An actual Norwegian ship that was listed in the Royal Navy books. So huge effort by the Germans to conceal the ship. And amazingly, it makes it. It makes it all the way around, up through the North Sea, round almost up into the Arctic Circle, and then swooping down to the west coast of Ireland, makes it to the coast of Kerry. Meanwhile, Casement traveling separately in a submarine, also from Germany, and they rendezvous, and amazingly, they make it too. And they're there. Irish point of view is like, my God, it actually worked. You know, the ship got through with the weapons. Caseman is there with a submarine. What can possibly go wrong? Everything goes wrong. They don't go into the details. The weapons don't make it into Irish hands. Casement is captured. He is manacled and brought to London as a prisoner. And while he is in London being interrogated, it's actually. But then the. The rebels, his comrades back in Dublin, they have this awful dilemma. Well, do we cancel? Is the revolution over? I mean, the weapons, the German weapons are at the bottom of the sea. Casement is captured. The British appear to now know our plans. It's all over. But they, amazingly, they decide, the hell with it. We're going ahead. We're still marching. And they delayed the revolution by one day. But then they march, far fewer of them than I'd anticipated. But they seize buildings around Dublin. And the Easter Rising does happen. Meanwhile, Roger Casement is now in the hands of Blinker hall in London being interrogated.
- [27:22]
Interviewer
So it's fair to say then, that Blinker, having Casement in his hands, has fair warning that this rebellion, this rising, is coming. What's your take on his reaction to that?
- [27:32]
Rory Carroll
There's so many twists to this story. One is that Roger Casement came in that submarine back to Ireland with the intention of calling off the Rising because he had become convinced that it was going to be a fiasco, that militarily it was doomed, that the German weapons would not be sufficient, that there were not enough manpower and it would just be a blood fest without any reason. And he felt a moral compunction therefore, to call it off. So he was coming back to tell the rebel leaders, guys, let's quit, let's not do this now. The timing is not right. And he told this in interrogation. He told this to Blinker Hall. He said, look, I, you know, I wanted to call it off. If you give me a chance, let me send a message, you know, before it's too late, to the Rebbe leaders in Dublin to call this off. Because the Rising had yet to happen initially. And Reginald hall says, no, I'm not giving you access, I'm not letting you send a message to your rebel comrades to call off the Rising, which had yet to happen. Why? Well, because of those code breaking wireless intercepts from the Admiralty Intelligence. Reginald hall, known in advance of the Rising, he knew about it weeks before he'd been tracking the arms shipment. They still didn't manage to intercept it on time, but they knew about it. And there is evidence, not 100%, but very strong evidence, that Reginald hall wanted the Rising to go ahead because he anticipated that it would be a military debacle, that the British administration in Dublin would squash it easily enough. And once they did so, they would then have a mandate to really root out and extirpate all this kind of troublesome, vexatious Irish extremists that had been kind of rattling around the country for so long. And now they'd have a political climate in which the British could really arrest all these ne' er do wells, as he saw it. And so the bizarre thing then is we have in London a British intelligence chief allowing the Irish Rising to go ahead, whilst Casement, who had, you know, the supposed putative, you know, leader of the Irish Rising, was wanting to call it off. But then the Rising does go ahead because Caseman's comrades in Dublin decide to go ahead and do it. And so it's one of these amazing what ifs of history and kind of parables of be careful what you wish for.
- [29:52]
Interviewer
Right. I think those what ifs are so wonderfully boiled down in your book to these tiny moments on which these decisions are hinged and these sort of misconnections or small moments of misunderstanding. There are so many, but all do add up to this big question of what if the rising in age April 1916 hadn't gone ahead. I don't believe it'll be a spoiler for our listeners to say that ultimately it fails and the leaders are gathered and suffer punishment. I guess without going into too much detail about the Rising itself, as we might not be able to in the time that we have, what does it immediately come to symbolize or perhaps begin to create in Ireland? And what do the leaders come to
- [30:32]
Rory Carroll
represent initially after the Rising is crushed? The British and Blinker hall especially have completely wonderful, because militarily, it's squashed. The center of Dublin is a ruin. It looked like kind of Verdun at that point, you know, been pounded by artillery, smoking ruins, hundreds dead. And Irish people are appalled by this. They say that we didn't want this. No one asked for this. A rebellion. This is nuts. And look, you destroyed our city. So the anger was directed at the rebels. So, you know, not only have the rebels lost militarily, it seems politically as well, they're now completely marginal and they're out casts, but the worm turns. And these Rebbe leaders, many of them very young, they were kind of romantics. And there's a scene where one of them is fiance just before execution in the candlelit cell. And so they become martyrs. And the Irish, you know, are rather good at martyrology. And it's not just about the execution of these leaders, but there is a shift in sentiment. It's not overnight. It's kind of a drip, drip, drip effect that happens over days and weeks and months whereby Irish sentiment, nationalist sentiment, is radicalized. And this gradually changes the climate in Ireland about Ireland's relationship with Britain and the United Kingdom. Now this is unfolding whilst Roger Casement is, you know, on trial for his life for high treason in London. And so it's the personal and the political are joining there. And what's fascinating is who are the winners and losers here? And for Reginald Blenker hall, for him, it was not sufficient that he wanted Casement to die because he felt this guy was a traitor. And there was no question in his own mind about that. But also he had to not just destroy Caseman's life, but destroy his name, his reputation, because he could see the risk now that Casement would become yet another martyr to the Irish cause and start fueling now a fresh, even stronger rebellion. And so for hall, you know, the Rising did not end once the last rebels surrendered. And even when the first group of leaders were executed, there's still unfinished business, which was Roger Casement.
- [32:48]
Interviewer
So Casement becomes indelibly linked and is indelibly linked with this idea of rebellion of the Rising. And as you say, that idea of martyrdom and support for the cause, that's his legacy in Ireland. But as you say, he has been forgotten a bit in British terms, one would imagine, as you say, Blinkerhall labelling him as a traitor. He's collaborated with Germany to bring arms to Ireland. What's sentiment like towards him in Britain? And how does Blinker hall begin to shape this?
- [33:15]
Rory Carroll
When Casemond was first captured, this is just prior to the Rising, it was a sensation in Britain. And it's difficult to realize now just how big this news was, because you know Britain, it's 1916. You're two years into global war, horrendous casualties. The British army's preparing for the Somme campaign. And yet the arrest and capture of Casement almost eclipses war news for a time, because he had been this revered figure, and now suddenly, he's a traitor. And so it was just an extraordinary thing. And so a lot of his former British friends understandably turned against him. They said, well, hang on, we can't understand, grasp or defend his actions in allying with the enemy. But some did stand by him. They thought, well, maybe he'd gone mad. They thought, well, he'd had all these tropical illnesses, malaria maybe, and there was including some Anglican archbishops and Arthur Conan Doyle. The authors remained loyal to Casement in the sense that they felt, no, you know what? His record, his service as a humanitarian and to the British Crown before he went off the rails means that, you know, we should give him some mercy. You know, there's no need to kill him, there's no need to execute him. If you have to lock him up, let's do so, but let's show the man some mercy. Because of his life and the circumstances in which he ended up in being captured. But Blinker hall was not having any of this. He thought, no, this guy deserves to die. And not only that, but his name, this kind of nobility that hung around the Casement name, that too, must be destroyed.
- [34:48]
Interviewer
And on that note, we return to the secret that Casement had about his sexuality. Is it right to say or fair to say that this label of traitor was almost the best case scenario for him?
- [35:00]
Rory Carroll
Yes. I mean, Casement himself, I mean, he just couldn't stop writing. I mean, he'd written himself that he was a traitor. He could see from the British point of view that, of course, yes, I am allying. I'm in league with the enemy in a time of war. So he could see that he was a traitor. But for him, he was an Irishman, although he was actually originally Protestant and from County Antrim, from the North. But his identity is very much rooted in this kind of Irish sense of Irish nationalism. But his concern was that. That he. And in the book, I don't want to give too much away, but, you know, he sensed that his writings, the gay sex writings, that were they to fall in the hands of his enemies, that that would then be used against him. He had seen what had happened to Oscar Wilde in a very different trial years earlier, and that sense of disgrace hung over him. And he was almost relieved. Casement was. When he was charged merely with high treason, which meant that he would, you know, face execution. Cause he thought, okay, if that's it, fine. But he was worried about what he called the other thing, you know, the other thing meaning his secret that he had so successfully concealed from his closest friends through his whole life. And now if that fell, if those diaries fell into the hands of Blinker hall, well, all bets were off.
- [36:18]
Interviewer
Well, it sounds like we should leave how Casement is tried and that element to readers of your book. I would like to bring just a note about the diaries, particularly because you do consider. Consider or bring in the theory, mooted by some sense, that Casement diaries were fabricated. I wonder if you just want to give a note on that.
- [36:37]
Rory Carroll
Yes. For many years afterwards, there was a theory which persists in Ireland today that these diaries were confected by MI5, Scotland Yard, British intelligence, dirty tricks to blacken Casement's name and to blacken his cause. And this was like a mainstream accepted view in Ireland for decades, for almost a century. But over the last few decades, you know, the evidence for authenticity is overwhelming. You can view the diaries. They're there. They're in the National Archives in Kew. I've been there. I've read them. But mainstream scholarship that has looked into this finds that the evidence of authenticity is overwhelming. You know, especially the Irish nationalists who kind of like have to deal with that. And if my view is that, yes, these diaries are true.
- [37:25]
Interviewer
Okay, thank you for that. So this man, this man who we followed, he's charismatic, he is influential, he's passionate. He's clearly got so many allies and friends. He's also made his enemies and he's ended up where he has. What do you want to say about the final stages of his life?
- [37:44]
Rory Carroll
There was a nobility to Casement which had kind of deserted him for a while because he was so highly strung that he made lots of questionable decisions during the war. But in the manner of facing his plight, he was in the Tower of London, and then he's moved to Pentonville Prison. And he knew what was coming. And I think in his way of dealing with that, he showed courage and ability of purpose. And there's so much in his life to admire. I mean, he's an extremely complex individual, which was what makes him so fascinating. And there is a lot to disentangle and have always been gravitated towards him because of his complexity and so much nuance and contradiction, paradoxes in what made up his personality. So without wanting to give him a free pass on the mistakes he made, I think, you know, you can look at Casement and feel there's something. There's a goodness there to him, and I think that's something to remember and to admire.
- [38:44]
Interviewer
Rory, any final thoughts that you'd like to leave our listeners with in terms of any of this history that we've spoken about in today's episode?
- [38:51]
Rory Carroll
One of the things I love about this story is the cameos. We see Winston Churchill come onto these pages, Herbert Asquith, the Prime minister, Michael Collins, future Irish rebel leader. But he's young, nobody knows him. He's not a commander yet. We see these people in a different stage of their life than we're normally familiar with. And I just love the interplay of all of these characters. And they just seem very human to me. You know, it's not like a story of villains and heroes, really, because people were actually were patriots on all sides. The people who hunted Casement and wanted to kill him were just as patriotic as he was, just from a different side. And I think Irish and British history could benefit from people being able to see the fact that the complexity in people who have been held up as villains, and in this case, I'm meaning equally from the Irish to look at why the British went after Casement, and for the Irish to understand that, and likewise for the British, maybe to think, yeah, what was done to Casement was in a way, legitimate up to a point, but then becomes shameful. And I think there's value in revisiting that.
- [40:01]
Eleanor Evans
That was Rory Carroll speaking to Eleanor Evans. Rory is a staff correspondent at the Guardian and the author of A Rebel and a Traitor, A Fugitive. The manhunt and the birth of the Iraq.
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