Roger Casement: Martyr

Guardian Books.

Think this was settled some time ago, dear.

Roger Casement: 1916

Roger Casement, anti-imperialist, Irish republican socialist, was hanged by the British state 100 years ago today, after a disgustingly homophobic show trial, just months after the Easter Rising.

Roger Casement: Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

A celebrated humanitarian, anti-slavery campaigner, poet and Irish nationalist, Casement had come to Germany when the First World War was at its height, to recruit German support and weapons for an uprising against British rule in Ireland. For this crime he would be hanged, a year later, in Pentonville Prison.

A British citizen and former consular official, Roger Casement was found guilty of treason. But he was executed because he was homosexual, the victim of a conspiracy to prevent his reprieve that involved Scotland Yard, MI5 and the cabinet. Alan Turing, whose prosecution for homosexuality undoubtedly contributed to his death in 1954, has received an apology from the British government and a pardon from the Queen. But the case of Casement is even more egregious, since it involved government officials actively using prejudice against homosexuality to ensure he went to the gallows, discredited and reviled.

With next year’s centenary of the Casement trial, the government has an opportunity to right that wrong: a formal apology would remove a long-running source of friction in Anglo-Irish relations and demonstrate how far we have moved on from the homophobia of a century ago...

Ben Macintyre, The Times.

I'm sure a Royal Pardon would have meant so much to the revolutionary Irish Republican.

Oh, and the heroic Mr Casement's conviction for 'treason' is a bit different from Turing's one for 'gross indecency', the latter's no longer a crime for one.

PS You may enjoy yesterday's Radio 4 documentary on the strange case of Victor Grayson, the gay socialist MP who disappeared in 1920...

Michael Collins: Big Quare Fella?

HISTORY boffins have dismissed a claim by failed presidential candidate David Norris that Michael Collins was gay.
The senator says in a new book the Big Fella’s homosexuality was “well-known” in republican circles.
But top historian Diarmaid Ferriter insisted yesterday: “I think this is all wishful thinking on David’s part.
“I’ve never seen any kind of proof that Collins was ever sexually active. I believe he died a virgin.”
He said Norris — who came fifth in last year’s race for the Aras — was possibly misinterpreting Collins’ fondness for wrestling colleagues and biting their ears in horseplay...

The Irish Sun.
I like David Norris and he knows his stuff, so he may well be right.
It's not like the Irish Nationalist movement ever had any problems accepting Roger Casement was gay.
Oh, hang on...

PS Norris's autobiography, A Kick Against The Pricks, is in your shops now!

Mario Vargas Llosa: Roger Will Do

No, I hadn't heard of him until a few hours ago either, but Fagburn extends his warmest congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa, the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.
I guess his UK publishers, Faber & Faber, will now be trying to get an English translation of the Peruvian author's next book out as soon as.
El Sueno del Celta - or The Dream of the Celt - is a novelisation about the gay Irish revolutionary martyr Roger Casement, and his time in Africa, spent exposing atrocities in the Belgian Congo, and having sex with many, many young black men.
Fagburn better hurry up and finish the new Jilly Cooper.