If anyone is interested there will be a commemoration for Roger Casement next month.

The 90th anniversary of his death will be commemorated on Saturday, 5th August in Dun Laoghaire.
Assemble in car park opposite Glasthule Church at 3pm (Georges street/ Summerhill road)
March to Casement birthplace in Sandycove for wreath-laying ceremony.
There will be a prominent speaker.

Everyone is very welcome. Hope to see you there.

Any info on who is organising this event or who the speaker will be?

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As far as Im aware the commemoration is organised by members of Republican Sinn Fein. However everyone with an interest in Roger Casement is more than welcome to attend. The speaker has to be decided but will probably be Sean O'Bradaigh, giving a historical outline of Casement's life.
Few enough people in the Dunlaoghaire area know of Casement's birthplace. Should be interesting.

Is this not being organised by the gay and lesbian movement?

No, it isn't.

While I think that unfortunate that the commemoration of his death has been left to RSF, I agree that his memory disserves to be honoured.

His speech from the dock remains one of the finest expressions of patriotic feeling I’ve ever read. See below.

'In Ireland alone, in this twentieth century, is loyalty held to be a crime.'

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Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum

Thanks, I always wondered why that gay sauna in Dublin is called The Dock.

I am reluctant to draw away from Casement’s virtues by a descent into a debate on the black diaries. His heroic achievements stand regardless of whether these diaries were forged or not.


Nevertheless, I think that it is far from accepted that diaries were anything else than British forgeries designed to blacken a man who so exposed their exploitive system for what it was, both within Britain and without.


The McCormac tests in 2002 alleged that they had proven that the writing in the black diaries were done by the same hand as the writing in the white diaries. Many international forgery theorists disagreed with the results. It should also be noted that the McCormac committee set out to prove that the diaries were genuine, rather than start from a neutral point of view; also the author of the report, Dr. Audrey Giles, is a former employee of the British police.


That the British would blacken the name of a man through forgeries should suprise no one, as had happened to Parnell, or as the French had done with Dreyfus. Casement’s very existence called into question the existence of their empire, and their bloody war to hold it. Unlike the other 1916 leaders, Casement was a internationally recognised humanitarian figure, knighted by the British monarch and beloved of the liberal classes. The outrage and protests during his trial frightened the British rulers. After the publishing of the diaries (copies of which were sent to foreign states and the Church) opposition to his execution almost disappeared.

Also the British never conclusively explained how they had come into possession of these papers.



What convinces me, however, is the moral character of Casement. How could so honourable a man, who devoted his life to exposing lies, live a lie himself. The obsessive, extremely explicate and degrading descriptions of sexual acts would be regarded as unhealthy by most people, regardless of how they view homosexuality. Further, the diaries tell of how Casement paid young men to make love with him. If Casement had paid young girls to do the same, we would describe it as immoral, but because homosexuality is such a contentious issue people are less willing to do so.

Even if Casement was a homosexual (and there is no proof outside of the black diaries) his sexual descriptions and his payment for sex completely contradicts the image we have of him from very other source.

The Black Diaries if genuine just show the writer as a fantastist.

Any man in his position would have been taking huge risks in engaging in so much illict sexual activity.

He would also have had to have known all the regular haunts of Vice in numerous different cities, visited those areas, sought out contacts and paid for those services on a very regular basis. Quite an achievment!

That he could do this on so many occasions without compromising himself seems to me a bit far fetched.

If he was guilty it was guilt by imagination not commission IMCO.

It's only fair to point out that Casement denied all this right up to the end.

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COUNTRY FIRST

He was a big bender and should be forgotten.