Is it time to unshackle Casement?

WITH HISTORIC STATUES IN SOCIETY UP FOR DEBATE, STEPHEN FERNANE ASKS IF IT’S RIGHT THAT CASEMENT’S STATUE IN BALLYHEIGUE SHOULD DEPICT THE GREAT HUMANITARIAN IN HANDCUFFS.

THE STATUE IN BALLYHEIGUE ONLY SERVES AS A CONSTANT REMINDER OF CASEMENT’S ‘GUILT’

STATUE after statue, issue after issue, is how historians will decipher the wave of social turmoil that is erupting over the bronze and concrete symbols of our past. Statues with racist and colonial connotations have at long last been called out. We now live in an age when eagle-eyed focus looks to retrospectively realign history at a glance; a time for evaluating statues and their place in a modern context is the new norm. A new way of undoing old things.

Statues across the globe from King Leopold II in Belgium, Confederate generals in the US and slave traders in the UK have been removed, with many more awaiting future judgement. But what about altering a statue’s meaning? Can a statue that is largely considered inoffensive and favourable to a majority be re-modified?

Seaside visits to Ballyheigue in the 1980s were seldom without reference to the bronze statue of Roger Casement that faces the famous village. The statue didn’t feel right back then and it still doesn’t. It felt cut off from public interest for reasons that would later become known.

Even now the fading memory of childhood occasionally tosses a snippet of conversation between the adults of that time, their criticisms ranging somewhere between Casement’s statue facing the village and not Tralee Bay (from where Casement came ashore in April 1916) to its uncomfortable place in the narrative of modern-day Kerry Republicanism.

This is an unloved statue. It may take precedence in Ballyheigue as an icon of a patriot and humanitarian, but it lacks the same sentimentalism, devotion and admiration of the Casement monument just a few miles away in Banna – even allowing for the fact Casement’s Kerry legacy begins in Banna Strand and Ardfert, where a ghost-like presence of the man still lingers.

In comparison, the Ballyheigue statue has represented division and controversy since it was first sculpted by the late Oisín Kelly in 1971.

Originally commissioned by the Irish State in 1967 following the re-interment of Casement’s remains to Ireland in 1965, the statue was initially intended to embellish Casement’s grave in Glasnevin Cemetery but was stalled when trouble erupted in the north of Ireland.

Kelly’s statue of Casement is supposedly taken from an image that appeared in the Daily Mail in London during Casement’s trial for treason in 1916. The statue shows Casement as proud, resolute and unwaveringly defiant in the face of his captors. Kelly also chose to put Casement in handcuffs. Perhaps the abstract side of Kelly anticipated that one day this would provoke a response.

For me the question is simple: should a pioneer of 20th Century humanitarianism be depicted in handcuffs? Should the man who devoted much of his life to exposing the bondage of native peoples in West Africa and South America find himself portrayed in bondage?

In June 2020 statues across Belgium of King Leopold II were removed because of abhorrent crimes against humanity in the Belgian Congo in the 1900s. Leopold exploited the natural resources of West Africa in the emerging capitalism of the time, killing thousands of men, women and children in the process. Yet Roger Casement – the man who exposed the evils of Leopold’s regime – is himself cast in handcuffs in a quiet seaside village in Kerry.

One might even argue that Leopold’s shame has finally vanished from public view while Casement’s statue in Ballyheigue continues to serve as a portrayal of his ‘guilt’. Is this fair? Historic realism was no doubt Kelly’s motivation when sculpting the piece, yet it doesn’t erase the veneer of ‘criminality’ that Casement’s statue undoubtedly represents.

It’s fair to assert that this statue was an unwanted piece from the outset, or else its timing was unlucky. It was stored in the Office of Public Works in Dublin (on its side) for 13 years after Kelly completed it in ‘71. Murlough Bay in County Antrim (where Casement wanted to be buried) and Dún Laoghaire in Dublin (close to where Casement was born) were among the possible locations for the statue.

The Troubles meant erecting a statue of an Irish separatist was always going to evoke hostility in Antrim, while Dún Laoghaire came closest to securing it, but its county council failed to agree on a suitable location within the town. Personally, I can’t help but feel that ‘Casement in handcuffs’ is an underlying reason why the statue never fully appealed.

Ballyheigue Development Committee

stepped in and made their pitch for the previously unwanted statue in 1983 before Tánaiste Dick Spring finally secured it in September 1984. But the statue’s move to Kerry was not without controversy.

The unveiling took place under protest on Sunday, September 30, 1984, the day after the Marita Ann vessel was intercepted off the Kerry coast by the Navy Service, attempting to land arms for the Provisional IRA. Local man and former Sinn Féin deputy Martin Ferris was a key figure in the operation.

Ferris’ arrest infuriated Kerry Republicans who felt the actions of Casement in 1916 and Ferris in 1984 were part of the same political ambition.

Even with the passage of time and the move towards Constitutional Republicanism, it hasn’t lessened hostility towards the statue’s unveiling among many Kerry Republicans.

It’s therefore Casement’s humanitarianism that is the common thread linking us to his memory, in spite of opposing political views.

Commemorations to Casement since 1965 have always highlighted the alternating positions within Irish nationalism between those who favour the Constitutional route as opposed to those favouring a military solution. This has lessened somewhat in recent years, even if old enmity lingers.

But as a humanitarian we can all agree that Casement’s journeys through West Africa (1885 to 1904) and South America (1906 to 1913) represent his crowning achievements.

Knighted by the very country he would later turn against, Casement’s exposure of cruel capitalism and colonialism should be memorialised collectively, if not separately. And it is from this position that we need to question whether it is right to continue with a statue of Casement in handcuffs in Balllyheigue.

It goes without saying this is no slight against the people of Ballyheigue. They rightly took the statue in and presented it proudly to the public, showing all the admiration that a man like Casement deserves. And it is they who must ultimately decide if the statue should be altered.

It’s possible that a more favourable characterisation of Casement can be erected in Ballyheigue. Perhaps a sculpture of Casement sitting on the banks of the Putumayo River writing his diaries. Through his diaries, with nothing more than the power of his observation and pen, Casement destabilised the lurid mind-set of Edwardian capitalism.

This aspect of Casement’s life (to my knowledge) is under-represented in statue form in Ireland, which are usually devoted to Casement’s nationalism and seeking German military support for the 1916 Rising. But even here one might be critical of Casement’s judgement in courting Imperial Germany when the latter was guilty of the genocide of the Herero and Nama tribes in Namibia in the early 1900s. No-one is without flaws.

Lastly, in 2014, when the Mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, set about removing four Confederate statues from the city, it created division. Landrieu was unable to find a local crane-hire company to take the job of removing the statues, such was the bitter hostility.

This is not the case in Kerry. People here have never considered Casement guilty of anything, least of all through his work as one of the greatest humanitarians of his time. Our hands are not tied on this issue, but Casement’s are. Is it time he was finally unshackled?

The Casement statue in Ballyheigue.