Speech by President Connolly at Roger Casement Summer School
Dún Laoghaire, 15 May 2026
A Chairde Uaisle, is mór an onóir dom a bheith anseo i nDún Laoghaire chun aitheasc oscailte Scoil Samhraidh Roger Casement na bliana seo a thabhairt.
Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Cathaoirleach na Scoile, Dave Alvery, as ucht cuireadh a thabhairt dom chuig an suíomh stairiúil seo i ngairdín Chlub Eblana.
Since 2017, this annual Summer School has provided a forum to explore the man that was Roger Casement, his legacy and his relevance today. The topics under discussion today and tomorrow – ranging from colonialism, the rights of indigenous people, neutrality, and the power and influence of the military industrial complex – are unfortunately as relevant today as they were in Casement’s time.
Born in 1864 not far from this very spot at 29 Sandycove Road, he would step aboard a boat for the last time not far from here in handcuffs. He died in Pentonville Prison, hung as a traitor, when he was just 51 years of age.
In that short lifetime, he was knighted by King George on 6th July 1911 and unknighted by the same King before his execution in 1916. His executioner, the Chief Executioner John Ellis, a hairdresser and newsagent from Rochdale, descried Casement as “the bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute”.
Who was this extraordinary man who still holds such a place in our hearts and our imagination, and who continues to inspire us to call out human rights abuses and speak truth to power? A man who is commemorated by stamps, statues and murals, has a stadium named in his honour, and his fate recounted in ballads, poems and indeed summer schools.
Not to mention a library of books. The first one I read was ‘The Dream of the Celt’ by Maria Vargas Llosa. Then I bought simultaneously ‘Casement’ by Angus Mitchell, ‘Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement’ by Roland Philpps and ‘A Rebel and a Traitor’ by Rory Carroll.
So I’ve done my best to build on what I knew of Casement growing up as a child, where he was a household name and from Connemara, where he was utterly revered and came back and called Connemara the Putumayo of Ireland and was horrified of the poverty at that stage in 1912 and 1913 in Connemara, which is something when you’ve come from Putumayo and the Congo.
Casement left school at 15 years of age, and made the journey from shipping clerk to a loyal member of the British foreign service, until his resignation in 1913. He learned from the university of life and was a voracious reader. From 1913 onwards until his death, he devoted himself to the Irish cause, something that had always been near to him.
But when you read about him, some of what’s written is reductionist in reducing Casement to his contradictions. He was both a Protestant and a Catholic. He was baptised, he wasn’t. He loved the Irish language, but he never mastered it. And of course, his homosexuality. In a time of utter hypocrisy in that era, it was used against him subsequently when it suited the Establishment.
At all times, regardless of the role he played, he displayed great physical and moral courage - a man who exposed barbaric abuses where he saw them and who called out what was happening without fear or favour at great personal cost.
In “The Congo Report” in 1904, he documented widespread forced labour, mutilation, and torture among rubber plantation workers in the Congo Free State under King Leopold II (who reigned there from 1885-1908). That work directly inspired the foundation of the Congo Reform Association. Partnering with E.D. Morel, Casement’s work turned the ‘Congo Question’ into a global human rights movement.
As I read that, I realised the most appalling irony in that all of that mutilation and abuse took place under the guise of humanitarian assistance. How that resonates with us today in seeing some of the exact same language being used about bringing human rights and the misuse and degradation of language. How relevant it is and how it resonates with us.
And of course we had the subsequent irony where his friend and colleague E.D. Morel, who became a journalist and was able to bring his story onto an international level, was unable to visit his friend and colleague because at that stage he was a pacifist and against the war and Morel couldn’t visit Casement for fear of being associated with a traitor, the ultimate irony of course was that he ended up in Pentonville Prison himself shortly after that.
In “The Putumayo Report” (1912), Casement reported on the abuse, torture, and killing of the indigenous peoples. His methodical investigation of the Peruvian Amazon Company (a British-registered firm) highlighted the appalling human rights abuses. On a personal and professional level, Casement suffered for his courage.
It certainly helped that he had a circle of loyal friends including E.D. Morel, a committed pacifist, as well as several women who stood by him. These included supporters, friends, and allies, both in his humanitarian work and his Irish nationalist activities, and even during the ‘scandal’, and I use that word cautiously, surrounding his final days - that was the narrative used by the Establishment, not by me and not by people who have read about Casement. Key figures included historian and nationalist Alice Stopford, a close confidante who aided the Irish Volunteers. Molly Childers, also known for her role in the Howth gun-running, supported him, as did Gertrude Bannister, Casement’s cousin, who worked tirelessly for his reprieve during his trial and imprisonment in London.
He also had the support of various Protestant missionaries who were a reliable source of information about the abuses. Their role does not get the recognition it deserves.
Regrettably, the abuses he exposed are not consigned to the past. According to figures from the International Labour Organisation and the International Organisation for Migration, an estimated 50 million people today live in modern slavery. This is an increase of 10 million since 2016 owing to conflicts, pandemics, and climate change. The figure includes 28 million in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriage, affecting nearly 1-in-150 people globally, with women, children, and migrant workers at highest risk.
In addition, the environmental destruction he highlighted in his reports also remains a reality today. The Amazon rainforest is experiencing critical environmental destruction, with as much as 20 percent already lost to deforestation. Something that Casement highlighted over 120 years ago. It is being pushed towards a tipping point where it could become a dry savannah. Scientists predict that, if current rates continue, the vast wilderness of the Amazon could vanish within 50 years.
As I prepared for this, what jumped out for me is the relevance of Casement’s work to today, and how little progress has really been made, and how the use of propaganda which was to the fore in the case against Casement is very much there again today.
We had the King at the time describing his activities in Congo under the humanitarian grounds, and then when that couldn’t be denied anymore the whole propaganda machine went in to discredit and to debase Casement or anybody associated with him, and we see exactly that happening today when someone has the courage to speak out. The force of the Establishment, whatever we like to call them, are ungarnered to debase and to discredit.
In the guise of bringing commerce, Christianity and civilisation all of this appalling barbarity was carried out and today we’re still seeing it in the guise of civilisation, in the guise of profit at any cost and in the guise of unsustainable growth which we simply can’t stand over if we’re serious about tackling the existential threat posed by climate change.
Níor shéan Roger Casement an méid drochíde, an mhí-úsáid nó na huafáis a bhí ar bun ag cumhachtaí na hEorpa. Nocht sé an díobháil agus an dochar. Sheas sé go daingean ar son cearta daonna.
Is ócáid fíor-oiriúnach í an Scoil Samhraidh seo chun scagadh agus cíoradh a dhéanamh ar shaol an Éireannaigh seo agus foghlaim as.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.