The Repatriation of the Remains of Roger Casement Author(S): Kevin Grant Source: the Journal of British Studies, Vol
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Bones of Contention: The Repatriation of the Remains of Roger Casement Author(s): Kevin Grant Source: The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3, New Directions in Political History (Jul., 2002), pp. 329-353 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3070721 Accessed: 02/06/2010 04:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of British Studies. http://www.jstor.org Bones of Contention:The Repatriation of the Remains of Roger Casement Kevin Grant This is a history of life after death-not the life of a disembodied soul, but of the body left behind in a prison yard, buriedin quicklime. It is a historycomposed of family members,friends, politicians, and bu- reaucratsdrawn into cooperationand conflictby the politics of rebellion, partition,and sexuality in Irelandand Great Britain. The deceased in dispute,Roger Casement, had been a controversialfigure during the later years of his life, knightedby the BritishCrown in 1911 for his advocacy of humanitariancauses in Africa and SouthAmerica and then hangedby the Britishgovernment on 3 August 1916 for conspiringwith Germanyto mobilize and armIrish separatists. Casement had requestedthat his body be buried at MurloughBay, near his family's home in County Antrim in the provinceof Ulster.Instead, Casement's body was buriedat Penton- ville Prisonin London,and for almost fifty years the Britishgovernment rejectedthe appealsof Casement'sfamily and supportersfor the repatria- tion of his body to Ireland.In 1965, the body was finally exhumedand reinterredat GlasnevinCemetery in Dublin, following a state funeral. Why did the British governmenttake over fifty years to disinter Casement'sbody from Pentonville,and why was his requestto be buried at MurloughBay not honored?In exploringthe answersto these ques- tions, I focus on negotiationsbetween the Britishand Irishgovernments, and the terms of their final agreementover the presentlocation of Case- ment'sremains. Above all, the locationof Casement'sremains was deter- minedby the politics of the partitionof Irelandand relateddevelopments in the sovereign and economic relations of Irelandand Great Britain. KEVIN GRANTis assistantprofessor of history at HamiltonCollege. The present essay appearedas a conferencepaper under the same title at the NorthAmerican Confer- ence on British Studies in 1998. The authoris pleased to thankCaroline Cox, Philippa Levine, Lisa Trivedi,and the refereesof the Journalof BritishStudies for theirgenerous and incisive commentson earlier drafts.He also wishes to thankRichard Webster, to whom this essay is dedicatedin memoriam. Journal of British Studies41 (July 2002): 329-353 ? 2002 by The North AmericanConference on British Studies. All rights reserved.0021-9371/2002/4103-0003$10.00 329 330 GRANT Both the political significance and the location of Casement's remains were, moreover, consistently influenced by controversy over his alleged homosexuality. In articulating the relationship between the politics of partition and Casement's sexual orientation, I emphasize the ambiva- lence with which Irish officials, and especially Eamon de Valera, viewed and represented Casement as a national symbol. The Irish government was troubled not only by the problematic issue of Casement's sexuality but also by Casement's personal allegiances across Ireland's politico- sectarian divide. Ultimately, the burial of Casement's remains in the Re- public of Ireland in 1965 marked the Irish government's symbolic sub- mission to the partition. It is, in other words, an ironic grave site, standing as an Irish nationalist monument to national disunification.1 Casement continues to be a subject of fascination and heated debate among academics and in the Irish media.2 Most attention focuses on his sexuality and the disputed authenticity of the infamous "Black Diaries."3 These diaries, apparently written in Casement's hand, were obtained by police investigators in London in April 1916, after the Royal Irish Con- stabulary arrested Casement on his return to Ireland from Germany in anticipation of the Easter Rising. The diaries chronicle Casement's sexual relations with numerous men and include descriptions of the physiques and penis sizes of some of Casement's sexual partners and various other men whom he admired. British officials surreptitiously displayed the dia- ries to influential journalists and public figures in order to defame Case- ment during and after his treason trial. From 1916 until the present, suspi- For related studies of the repatriationof Casement'sremains, see Deirdre Mc- Mahon, "Roger Casement:An Account from the Archives of His Reintermentin Ire- land," Irish Archives 3 (Spring 1996): 3-12. McMahondepends mainly on files from the Taoiseach'sDepartment in the NationalArchives of Irelandand on oral interviews to reconstructa basic accountof official exchangesbetween the Irishand Britishgovern- ments. By contrast,I draw primarilyon files of the CommonwealthRelations Office, located at the Public Record Office, Kew, England,as well as the CasementPapers at the NationalLibrary of Ireland.Moving beyond McMahon'suseful study, my objective is to situatethe controversiesover Casement'sbody in the broadercontexts of Anglo- Irishpolicy making.My work can furthermorebe read as a critiqueof Lucy McDiarmid, "The PosthumousLife of RogerCasement," in Genderand Sexualityin ModemIreland, ed. AnthonyBradley and MaryannGialanella Valiulis (Amherst,Mass., 1997), pp. 127- 58. McDiarmiddwells on issues of popularmemory and sexuality,making use primar- ily, though not exclusively, of published literary sources and newspapers.Although McDiarmidrefers to "state" and "official" ideologies, she does not directly examine these subjects,which is noteworthygiven that the controversiesover Casement'sbody focused on promptingthe British state to take action. 2Regarding debates over Casementafter 1965, see McDiarmid,"The Posthumous Life." 3For recent contributions to the debateover the authenticityof the diaries,see Angus Mitchell, ed., The AmazonJournal of Roger Casement(Dublin, 1997); Roger Sawyer, ed., Roger Casement'sDiaries-1910: The Black and the White(London, 1998). BONESOF CONTENTION 331 cions of forgery and a British governmentconspiracy have surrounded the diaries,prompting the Taoiseach,Bertie Ahern, to call for a renewed investigationby scholarsand ministersof the Britishgovernment in April 1999.4 This essay examinesthe role of the disputeover the Black Diaries in the repatriationof Casement'sbody, but it does not engagein the exten- sive debate over the diaries' authenticity.What mattershere is that the controversyover the diariescontinued for most of the twentiethcentury, as it displayedthe powerof sexual orientationin definingpolitical legiti- macy in Irelandand Britain.While the Irish and British governments disputedthe locationof Casement'sremains, they sharedin the condem- nation of his alleged homosexualityas immoraldeviance. As I demon- stratebelow, Irish officials were so wary of authenticatingCasement's homosexualitythat they chose to repatriatehis remainswhile leaving the Black Diaries in Englandin the control of the British government. While sexual politics influenceddisputes over Casement'sremains, the course and pace of official negotiationswere primarilydetermined by changesin the sovereignand economicrelations between Ireland and Britainbetween 1916 and 1965. Like a touchstone,the issue of Case- ment's remainswas revisitedat the highest levels of governmentduring periods of importanttransition in Anglo-Irishrelations. Officials dis- cussed the repatriationof Casement'sremains as de Valerabegan to in- crease the Irish Free State's autonomyfrom Britainthrough legislation in the 1930s. Casementagain resurfacedin the 1950s in the context of disputesover the terms of the independenceof the Republicof Ireland, establishedin 1949. Subsequently,the Irish and British governments used Casement'sremains to marka new era of economic cooperationin oppositionto the EuropeanEconomic Community (E.E.C.) in the 1960s. Throughoutthese decades, Casementwas an uncertainsymbol of the Irish nation, and his reburialin Dublin, ratherthan at MurloughBay, effectively misrepresentedhis vision of an independentand united Ire- land. * * * The enduringmystique of Casementlies in his dual existence as a politico-sectarian"everyman" and an outsider.5He