Glasnevin speech Roger Casement

Roger Casement was a British civil servant and diplomat. He was born in
Sandycove in Dublin in 1984 and he joined the British colonial service in
Africa. Casement received a lot of attention when he published a report
about the terrible treatment of African workers in the Congo, which was then
controlled by Belgium.
After this, he was promoted to consul-general in Rio de Janeiro. He exposed
abuses on the Peruvian rubber plantations, where the European owners were
treating local workers very badly. This report about the Putomayo atrocities
was published in 1912, a year after he received a knighthood.
Casement's Irish nationalist opinions were getting stronger and he joined the
Gaelic League and in 1913 became a member of the Irish Volunteers. He
raised money for weapons from friends in London.
During the First World War, Casement went to Berlin to seek support for an
Irish uprising. He wrote a pamphlet about the need to free Ireland, which was
circulated by the German government.
He had an idea to enlist Irish soldiers from German prisoner of war camps to
form an Irish brigade which would fight in Ireland's attempt to break with the
British empire. According to an article from The Times in 1915, Irish prisoners
were almost starved to try and force them to join this Irish Brigade. Despite
these tactics, Casement was unable to recruit many of the men.
His second idea was to get guns from Germany and he was given 20,000,
which were sent to Ireland on the Aud. However, Casement realised that
these weapons would be insufficient and he sailed to Ireland in a German
submarine to try and stop the Easter Rising. He landed in Tralee Bay in Kerry
but was arrested shortly after and taken first to Dublin and then to London
for questioning. While this was going on, the 1916 Rising broke out, raged for
a few days and was quelled.
Casement was brought to trial in England on a charge of high treason. At his
trial, he said, 'So antiquated is the law that must be sought today to slay an
Irishman, whose offence is that he puts Ireland first!' He based his defence
on the idea that a British court had no right to try him and that he should be
brought before an Irish court.
However, he was convicted and despite strong public opposition, even from
the US, he was sentenced to death. He lost much public support when his
private diaries were circulated, which revealed him to be gay, which was
illegal and taboo at the time. Casement converted to Catholicism before his
death and he was hanged in Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916,
after having been stripped of his knighthood.
In 1965, the Irish government was granted permission to exhume his body
and he was buried after a state funeral here, in Glasnevin.