Speech at the Official Opening of the Roger Casement Exhibition
Kerry County Museum, Tralee, 21st April 2016
A Aire
A Ambassadóirí, Your Excellencies
A dhaoine uaisle,
Is mór an pléisiúir dom é an taispeántas seo a oscailt, taispeántas a thugann léargas dúinn ar shaol Ruairí Mhic Easmaill, arbh é duine de mhór-phearsana na hÉireann sa 20ú aois é. Mar Uachtarán na hÉireann, tá áthas orm an deis seo a thapú chun ómós a thabhairt don méid a bhain Ruairí Mac Easmainn amach, ní hamháin san Éirí Amach atá muid ag comóradh i mbliana, ach ar son cosmhuintir an domhain a bhí faoi chos ag Impireachtaí na hEorpa chomh maith.
[It is my great pleasure to be opening this important exhibition that gives texture and context to the life of Roger Casement, one of the most captivating figures of Ireland’s twentieth century history. As President of Ireland, I am delighted to have this occasion to pay tribute to the great achievements of Roger Casement, not just in his contribution to the seminal event we are commemorating this year – the Easter Rising of 1916 – but also in his passionate exposure of the ruthless system of human exploitation that lay at the heart of the European colonial enterprise.]
Few figures in Irish history have become internationally celebrated on three separate occasions during their lives, as Roger Casement has. Indeed today we do not only honour the memory of Casement the Irish revolutionary; we also recall the great humanitarian who campaigned for the human dignity of the indigenous peoples of the Congo and the Putumayo.
The richness of Casement's life is reflected in the eclectic nature of this exhibition, which brings together artefacts from Africa, from South America, and from Casement’s last adventure in the name of Irish Freedom – an adventure which took a fatal turn here in Kerry, with his capture at McKenna’s Fort, in Ardfert, on Good Friday 1916, leading to his eventual execution by hanging at London’s Pentonville Prison, on 3rd August 1916.
May I take this opportunity to thank all of you here who have contributed to making this important chapter in our national history available to the public in this centenary year. I extend my sincere thanks to Helen O’Carroll and everybody in the Kerry County Museum, to those historians whose scholarship has enabled us to see Roger Casement’s life and legacy in a new light, including Angus Mitchell and Jeffrey Dudgeon who are with us here today, to all those, including local families, descendants of Roger Casement and a number of Irish and British officials, who have generously allowed for the loan of the objects on display here today.
One of the focal points of this exhibition is the small wooden, flat-bottomed boat that brought Roger Casement and his two compatriots, Robert Monteith and Daniel Bailey, to shore on Banna Strand one hundred years ago today. This episode was humorously described by Monteith as:
“Three men in a boat – the smallest invading party known to history”.
The frailty of this boat symbolises for us today the extraordinary imagination and commitment of the small group of men and women who planned the Easter Rising, who decided to strike a blow against what was then one of the world’s mightiest Empires – the British Empire.
I am aware that the authenticity of this boat, on loan from the Imperial War Museum, has been subject to debate. Another boat, on display at North Kerry Museum, had previously been thought to be the original one used Roger Casement and his two companions – indeed debate and controversy seem to shroud anything that relates to the life of Roger Casement; or perhaps this is a reflection of the healthy intra-county discussions that never fail to animate the life of Kerry!
Notwithstanding these considerations, it is important to recall that this boat was presented to King George V in June 1916 as a trophy for the capture of the Great Traitor that Roger Casement was then held to be in the eyes of many British, but also Irish, people.
Indeed, up to the present day, Roger Casement’s and the other 1916 leaders’ seeking of German support for their armed rebellion, is a fact that some have found uncomfortable to acknowledge. Yet, when reflecting back on those founding events of our State, it is essential, I believe, that we endeavour to do justice to the motivations of the actors of the time, and the manner in which they seized the opportunities afforded by the context of the clash between Empires that was First World War to advance a cause they believed was just.
By Easter 1916, Roger Casement, once a conscientious member of the British Foreign Service, had become entirely disillusioned with what he saw as the moral breakdown of the British free-trading Empire.
This brutal nature of European colonial rule and global trade strategies at the turn of the last century is brought home to us in a most compelling manner by this exhibition. The rubber baskets on display were those used by the people of the so-called “Free State of Congo” who were forced to collect wild rubber for the benefit of King Leopold II of Belgium and his favourite concessionaires, and who were routinely submitted to the most brutal forms of atrocities.
Roger Casement’s report on these atrocities, published in 1904, was a ground-breaking and formidable indictment of a system based on the crudest violations of human rights. As Joseph Conrad, who met him during his time in Congo, put it:
“He could tell you things! Things I have tried to forget, things I never did know.”
The gift of fame which The Heart of Darkness would bring to Joseph Conrad from his conversations with Roger Casement would not be repaid by Conrad who refused to sign, with others, the plea for clemency as Casement awaited his hanging.
This exhibition also displays drum beaters from the Putumayo, that remind us of that other great investigation Roger Casement led on behalf of the Foreign Office, initially because of the exploitation of Barbadian workers, who were British citizens, and who were victims of the activities of an Anglo-Peruvian rubber company operating in the frontier region of the north-west Amazon. Incorporating first-hand accounts of both the victims and the perpetrators of atrocities, Casement’s report, published in 1911, reflects his profound humanitarian concerns for the unspeakable suffering of the Putumayo Indians.
Reading the Journal Robert Casement wrote during this journey, one cannot but be moved by the profound compassion Casement felt for the Indians. Such empathy, which was indeed exceptional in a diplomat of his epoch and upbringing, comes across very powerfully in an excerpt, such as the following, as does his sense of outrage at the atrocities committed by the local taskmasters and, by association, their commercial accomplices back in London:
“All that was once [the Indian’s] has been taken away from him – his forest, his home, his domestic affections even – nothing that God and Nature gave him is indeed left to him, save his fine, healthy body capable of supporting terrible fatigue, his shapely limbs and fair, clear skin – marred by the lash and scarred by execrable blows.
His manhood has been lashed and branded out of him. I look at the big, soft-eyed faces, averted and downcast and I wonder where that Heavenly Power can be that for so long allowed these beautiful images of Himself to be thus defaced and shamed. One looks then at the oppressors – vile cut-throat faces; grim, cruel lips and sensual mouths, bulging eyes and lustful – men incapable of good … and it is this handful of murderers who, in the name of civilisation and of a great association of English gentlemen, are the possessors of so much gentler and better flesh and blood.”
Such commemorations, then, as this today, are an important opportunity to go back to the writings of Roger Casement. They are an invitation to appreciate more fully the motivation which led this Irishman to evolve from a mere witness into a staunch critic of global trade strategies that were predicated upon the seizure of land, the appropriation of natural resources and the violent exploitation of the indigenous people without any regard for their most fundamental rights.
Roger Casement ceased to regard commerce as a means of “civilising” primitive peoples, understanding how, instead, the appetite for wild rubber during that first era of globalisation was underpinned by widespread violations of the human dignity of labourers. He asked unsettling questions, about power, about the rules guiding foreign policy and international trade. If I may, once again, let us hear the voice of Roger Casement, on his way back to London after his journey through the Putumayo:
“Has our modern commercialism, our latter-day company promoting – whose motto would seem to be that a Director may pocket the proceeds without perceiving the process – no part in this enterprise of horror and shame?
The Aranas “brought their wares (50,000 Indian Slaves) to market” in London. Not, be it observed, to Madrid or to Lima, but to London. And they found English men and English finance prepared without question to accept their Putumayo “estates” and their numerous native “labourers” at a glance, a glance at the annually increasing output of rubber. Nothing beyond that was needed. The rubber was there. How it was produced, out of what hell of human suffering no one knew, no one asked, no one suspected. Can it be no one cared?”
These are questions which, I believe, continue to challenge us today, as we recall with great pride Roger Casement’s idealism, his passionate defence of the human dignity of those who were the victims of history, and his commitment to the cause of Freedom, in Ireland and abroad. We are invited to make our own response, for example, to those multi-nationals who seek again today immunity for their actions of pouring millions of gallons of poison into the river systems of the countries where Roger Casement was led.
Dear Friends,
May I conclude with Roger Casement’s last mission in the name of Irish Freedom, here in Kerry. It was, as you know, a mission that was beset by misfortune and, ultimately, tragedy, and it was also one that had ramifications throughout the local community.
Today, then, we also honour the memory of all those quiet lives who were touched by that tragedy. We recall, for example, how John A. Kearney, Head Constable in Tralee, showed compassion and kindness to Roger Casement during the night he spent at the Tralee police barracks. We remember the tragic car accident at Ballykissane, near Killorglin, in which three Volunteers lost their lives. We remember, too, the local people from Ardfert who were forced to testify against Casement during his trial in London and who returned home and, in a radically altered political climate, suffered from their association. We remember the German servicemen who were imprisoned as a result of their efforts to land the cargo of The Aud.
May I, once again, say how delighted I am to be here today, and congratulate all those of you who have contributed, through the loan of objects, through your scholarship and your insights, to creating this important exhibition. It is a very timely and fitting tribute to a great man of compassion and integrity, who showed the courage of his convictions and gave his life for Irish freedom.
Arís, is mian liom a rá cé chomh sásta is atá mé a bheith anseo inniu, agus chun comhghairdeas a dhéanamh libh ar fad atá tar éis cur leis an taispeántas seo trí bhur léann, bhur léargais agus trí ábhar a thabhairt ar iasacht. Is tráthúil agus is oiriúnach go bhfuilimid ag tabhairt ómóis don fear mór seo a raibh trua agus sláine go smior ann, fear a rinne beart de réir a bhriathar agus a thug a shaol ar son saoirse na hÉireann.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.