On this day in 1928, a great Irish warrior passed away. John Devoy lived a long life that was devoted to Irish freedom. For him, despite the many years he was in exile, Ireland was always home and its freedom was the only cause worth fighting for.
“They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! — They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace” – Patrick Pearse
This passionate call to arms and declaration of war was delivered by Patrick Pearse at the graveside of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. It is one of the most famous speeches in Irish history and O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral was a show of military might, a genius stroke of propaganda created by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and one of the catalysts that led to the Easter Rising in 1916. It took place on this day in 102 years ago.
Piaras Béaslaí may have been born in England, but that didn’t stop him from being profoundly Irish. His Irish Catholic parents emigrated to Liverpool before Piaras was born but he grew up with a strong love for his heritage. By the time he was a teenager he was fluent in Irish and obsessed with Ireland’s struggle for independence. He wrote fiery newspaper articles and rebellious poetry that highlighted the Irish Republican cause and eventually led him into the Gaelic League and the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood. He developed close friendships and worked side by side with many prominent revolutionaries like Ned Daly, Thomas Ashe, and Michael Collins, just to name a few.
On this day 102 years ago, a large shipment of arms landed in Howth, destined for the Irish Volunteers. Many of these guns were used two years later during the Easter Rising of 1916 and without them, the Rising may never have happened at all. When the Asgard came to shore it was met by the Fianna Éireann and other Volunteers who were quick to unload the weapons and begin carting them off. They hoped to avoid the attention of the police, but their mission did not pass unnoticed. The authorities who were watching did not engage the large crowd but they did call for backup. As the Volunteers left the area they were met by the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, a regiment of the British Army. A tussle ensued but in the end, the soldiers were only able to confiscate a mere nineteen of the nine hundred guns brought into Ireland that day.
News spread quickly of the successful smuggling operation and the military’s failure to seize most of the weapons so by the time the Borderers were marching back into Dublin, crowds had already gathered to celebrate and to mock them. They antagonized the soldiers, taunting them and throwing rubbish and fruit at the column (which magically became stones in the official reports). They shouted insults and openly laughed at the troops and their failed mission. Soldiers and police officers never tolerate this kind of behavior for long (as they continue to prove to this day) and by the time they marched onto Bachelors Walk they had had enough of the hostile crowd. The soldiers turned to face the people and seconds later shots were fired directly into the busy street, hitting those who had been following them and innocent civilians alike. They followed the volley of bullets with a bayonet charge. The collective lack of self control from the army resulted in four casualties and nearly forty others were injured.
Congo Casement. Comma Casement. Sir Casement. These names and more applied to Roger Casement, over the course of his life. He was born on this day in 1864, and by the time he was executed, he had gone from being a world-renowned humanitarian, a British Consul, and a favored knight to a social pariah, an arms dealer, and a dastardly rebel. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, there are many – and Roger Casement traveled more than a few.
Roger Casement was born outside of Dublin and had a strict, Protestant father. When he was three, his mother secretly had him baptized as a Catholic and by the age of thirteen, both of his parents were dead. He and his brother were sent to relatives in the North, County Antrim, and he considered that his home, even though he spent much of his life away from it.
Casement left Ireland at sixteen to find work. He took a job at a shipping company, and spent a great deal of time in Africa. He learned more than one language there and he began trying to improve the treatment and the communication between the native population and the foreign traders. He then went to work for the English Government, first by clerking in the Foreign Office and then as an appointed British consul. He was tasked with reporting about any human rights violations that he was witnessing first hand. He traveled all over Africa talking to residents and viewing destroyed villages before writing a blistering account of imperialism and its impact on the native population. It was controversial and rejected outright by the traders, his former boss included, but it provided other humanitarian groups with enough information to mount an international campaign against King Leopold of Belgium, the man who claimed to rule the area. The campaign was effective and eventually led to the king relinquishing his hold on the area. It was one instance where his idealism worked out.
When he returned to England, he continued his humanitarian efforts by founding the Anti-Slavery Society.After that, he was sent back to Africa to make sure that improvements had been made, and he was disheartened to discover that the horrific abuse continued. He continued to chronicle the plight of the natives and was eventually knighted for his work and his activism on their behalf.
During a break from Africa, he visited Ireland and joined the Gaelic League. He idealistically tried to learn Irish, but despite a gift for languages, he never got a grasp on it. He met with leaders to petition them for their support in Africa, but Ireland had its own problems and the meetings weren’t fruitful. However, in the process he developed an infatuation with Sinn Fein and their commitment to a Free Ireland. As his fascination with the idea grew, he retired from his position in the English government and devoted himself full time to the cause of Irish Freedom. He co-founded the Irish Volunteers and used his formidable writing skills to help pen their manifesto. He then traveled to America to raise funds among the exiled Irish. He was naive and he imagined himself a sort of ambassador for Irish Nationalism. He did not realize that the Irish Republican Brotherhood had already quietly taken over the Volunteers and were excluding him from their plans. He was also too wrapped up in his travels to notice that his activities were no longer as covert as he thought. The IRB were watching him to make sure he stayed out of the way, and the English government was keeping tabs on his travels and his contacts as well.
Despite the prying eyes, he donned a disguise and traveled to Germany in order to secure funds and arms for Irish freedom fighters. He spun it as a mutually beneficial agreement between countries, trying to convince the Germans that if they supplied arms to Ireland, the Irish would divert England’s attention away from them and their war. The request was not as well-received as he hoped, but he secured a promise from German authorities that said, “The Imperial Government formally declares that under no circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that country. Should the fortune of this Great War, that was not of Germany’s seeking, ever bring in its course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would land there not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by goodwill towards a country and people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom“.
He spent the rest of his time there trying to raise an Irish Brigade out of the prisoners of war that Germany held. He had been sure that many Irish soldiers would jump at the chance to fight for Ireland, but he was sadly mistaken. After months of pitching the idea, he finally admitted defeat and accepted the much smaller arms deal that the Germans offered. It didn’t include any support beyond the weapons and was nowhere close to the agreement he had been hoping for. Meanwhile, he learned of the planned uprising and he hoped to get them to cancel it, because of the inadequate aid from Germany. Because he had been kept in the dark the entire time, he had no way of knowing that it would go ahead with or without the weapons…and with or without him.
Casement made it to Ireland in a submarine, but the arms that came by boat did not. They were intercepted by the English, who immediately arrested Roger for treason, sabotage, and espionage. He missed the Rising altogether and heard of it while languishing in the Tower of London. If he thought that his life of service would keep him from prison, he was wrong. He was stripped of his knighthood and left to his own devices – neither the English or the Irish would help him and no rescue attempts were made. His important friends were vocal but only until the English shared his “Black diaries” publicly. They allegedly chronicled his homosexual adventures throughout the world. They made him look more like a predatory sex tourist than an idealistic humanitarian and they destroyed any hopes for support or leniency. Homosexuality was nearly enough to get someone killed already in that day and age, and when they added a charge of treason to it, well – it was only a matter of time before death came calling. He was hanged on August 3rd, 1916 – making him the only man connected to the Rising who was executed in that fashion, and the only one who was killed on foreign soil. His remains were repatriated to Ireland fifty years after he was killed, but they were not allowed to be brought North, so he lies in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin….not too far from where his life began.
There are a lot of what ifs to his tale. What if the arms had landed? What if he had been involved in the planning of the Rising? What if he had been able to bring reinforcements that were culled from the P.O.W.s in Germany? What if the diaries were fiction? There are many who still believe that they were fabricated, or at least exaggerated by the English in order to allow his execution. What if homosexuality had not been such a grave charge at that time? If his powerful friends and activists had been supportive throughout the trial and imprisonment, maybe he would have lived.
Roger Casement would have been one of the most important men in Irish history, regardless of his sexual orientation, if any one of his idealistic plans had come to fruition. He still has a large place in it, despite the fact that they didn’t. His goals were always intertwined with helping people achieve a better life and teaching them to fight the over-reaching powers that be. He was an idealist and was always rooting for the underdog – even when he was one. His short life was full of naivete and the best intentions – and if anyone had truly trusted and followed him, Irish history may be very different today. Even with the stain of the diaries hanging over him, his story has persevered and as we all move toward a more open society, maybe some day he will be remembered on equal footing with the rest of the leaders of that time.
Today in 1872, Arthur Griffith was born in Dublin. He was passionate about Irish history, which drove him to become a member of the Gaelic League where he rubbed shoulders with other Irish activists and cultural leaders. He was a bit of an anomaly. His devotion to the Gaelic League led to Griffith joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood where he was surrounded by many ideological opposites. He was inspired by Charles Parnell and wrote for many radical papers while he was growing up, but he was also ultra-conservative and widely reported to be an anti-Semite. While his IRB friends were planning a complete revolution, he was more in favor of a dual monarchy system, a sort of co-partnership with England. He was against any form of communism or socialism and was largely anti-union, but was in a room talking policies with James Connolly—the driving force behind Irish socialism at the time—on many occasions.
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On this day in 1857 Thomas James Clarke was born to Irish parents at Hurst Castle in Hampshire, England. It’s more than a little ironic that one of the biggest strategists behind Ireland’s future revolution was born on English soil. In fact, his father was in the British Army and the family did not return to Ireland until Tom was seven years old. They settled in Dungannon, a Fenian stronghold that had suffered terribly during An Gorta Mor – Ireland’s Great Famine. The scars of that disaster were still all around him and from his earliest years, Tom hated the English establishment. He was determined to fight against it however he could.
Edward “Ned” Daly was born into a large and proud Fenian family on this day in 1891. Although he was named after his father, he never met the man. His dad passed away just before Ned was born, leaving his uncle, John Daly, and the rest of his family to raise the young boy. They instilled in him the same rebel nature and Irish Republicanism that his father had once fought for. When he was a small child, all he wanted to do was to be a soldier, like his father before him. Since his family would never allow him to take a post in the English Army, Ned thought his dream would never be achieved. However, when the march toward yet one more rebellion began, suddenly there was another option. Under the influence of his sister (who happened to be Kathleen Clarke), and her husband Tom, Ned’s interest in fighting and soldiering was brought to fruition. It was his destiny to be a rebel but unfortunately, that destiny would also lead to an early grave.
now here’s a proper ad for the 2016 centenary. At least this one has the actual thing that is supposed to be celebrated in it.
On this day in Irish history a mighty warrior poet was born. Joseph Mary Plunkett was born in one of the wealthiest parts of Dublin with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He should have had a wonderful childhood, surrounded by wealth and adventure—and in some ways he did—but a terrible case of Tuberculosis threw a wrench into many roads he may have otherwise wandered. The disease was something that affected him for his whole life, leaving him weak and infirm in many ways but it also gave him focus and determination. Joseph became a journalist and a prolific poet. Later in life his study of languages, the written word, and a love for theater brought him into a close friendship with Thomas MacDonagh, another poet and politically charged man. Thomas was married to a woman named Muriel, who had a charming sister named Grace. She would become the love of Plunkett’s life. Aside from their mutual infatuation with the Gifford girls, the men were also active in the Gaelic League, the Irish Volunteers, and the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood. In addition, they co-founded the Irish Theatre, bringing their love of drama to the stage.
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Choosing the Green 
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