Roger Casement, despite a protestant upbringing in Ballymena was always sympathetic to the nationalist movement particularly the cultural revivalist side of things. He was a correspondent with Hyde and several other leading figures in the Gaelic League, making intermittent attempts over the years to learn the language. This in no way impeded his career in the British Consular service as Home Rule by definition implied Ireland's continuation within the Empire - so, you could be an Irish nationalist and yet remain loyal to the Crown, there was no apparent contradiction. Supporting Irish nationalism, at least in its constitutional sense, was in fact the stance of British Liberalism (who all, bar Chamberlain's gang morphed into Home Rulers overnight) from the time of Gladstone's conversion in 1886; albeit adopted more to curtail the influence of Fenianism, whom they viewed as having 'hi-jacked' the Land League.
What pushed him over the edge to support physical force separatism or a nationalist republicanism which wished for a complete severing of ties with Westminster was perhaps more than anything else the experiences of reporting on colonial atrocities in the Congo and Amazon.
Interestingly, Casement always regarded German colonialism in a more favourable light to the imperialist ventures of other European powers. (Clearly, he must have read little of the Kaiser's butchery of Namibia's Herero c.1905, now commonly regarded as a genocide) In any case, his positive views on Germany as a 'civilizing force' apparently influenced his decision to mentally side with them as it were during the Great War; hence his enthusiasm for the Clan na Gael sponsored German mission.
Arguably his role was more pivotal than any in the Rising itself. Had the Aud not being intercepted and the arms shipment arrived intact the country would have been energised and MacNeill's countermanding orders never placed. Casement had a first class mind with proven ability and a dogged attachment to lofty principles which led him traipsing for months on end through malarial swamps in the Congo and Amazon to expose a tyranny which even today isn't fully acknowledged or appreciated.
Patrice Lumumba, at the independence inauguration ceremony on 30th June 1960 drew attention to it on his accession as the first democratically elected President of the Congo and the insult to the Belgian royal house cost him his life via collusion with the Katangan secessionists and the Eisenhower administration - and all over the monopoly of mineral rights.
"For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force"
No man done more than Casement to highlight to the world the barbarism of Leopold's colonial regime. A talent such as his, arguably second only to Connolly, would have been placed in the front rank of any Irish Republic for generations to come.
But this is to deal in the nebulous realms of speculation. Was Tom Paine a founding father? He doesn't normally draw plaudits of this nature but did any do more to define the American republic? As I say I loathe dealing in hypotheticals - needless to say, one of the many immeasurable talents lost to us. Sure, planning & execution of the military operation which may or may not lead to a re-defined polity and retrospective appraisal for who played the larger role therein is of importance for the prismatic nationalists, hagio-buffs & sundry sticklers but taking the period as a whole (i.e. the entire thrust towards independence), be it Home Rule, Gaelic or literary revivalist, and assessing the strengths of the various characters involved - Casement is, for myself, one of the outstanding personalities of the revolutionary era.
People came and went through the portals of the IRB like a porous sieve in the 1890's and 1900's (Maud Gonne and even the blabbermouth Yeats were members) and the IRB Supreme Council was jiggied over umpteen times in the years after the Parliament Bill emasculated the Lords which rendered it even more superfluous than ever. Funding from John Devoy was the crucial factor after Carson's Covenant as Clan na Gael as principle financier got to determine who was on board and who wasn't. When the Supreme Council split it was the Irish-Americans who conferred legitimacy on Thomas Clarke, Séan MacDiarmada and Bulmer Hobson via hard cash infusions.
Gerard MacAtasney, whose work I enjoy, made a similar plug for MacDiarmada as he did in his bio of Tom Clarke - "oft overlooked & without whom 1916 would never have happened". Mac Diarmada (like Bulmer Hobson) done all the donkey work, had a pragmatic mind and was an excellent conspirator with a knack for winning a stranger's confidence. Of all the men in the GPO, Collins warmed to him the most. But are these the talents that will necessarily be rewarded in a newly won democratic republic?
Pearse was born to play the role of charismatic talisman, far more than a figurehead, but again you may ask what services could he have provided thereafter? Perhaps an effective demagogue for Gaelic revivalism? Seems to me he was pre-destined to explode in glory over the landscape of future minds; like some wildly gyrating neutron star. Connolly done us all a favour by ensuring socialism became an integral part of state formation even though we wrestle with that legacy till this day - saying one is FAR more important than another in whatever chosen dimension is a little glib: like the bricoleur of Strauss they each worked with what tools they'd been given.
No more, no less. (as Connolly might say)
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