The ‘Black Diaries’ and the Rehabilitation of Imperialism

Andrew McGrath

The resurgence of Redmondism in Irish politics in recent years, i.e. the notion that Ireland's place in the world is as a source of materials and military personnel for Britain's (and America's) wars, is by no means an accidental phenomenon. It is a product of a lengthy campaign on the part of academic, artistic, political and media interests to denigrate Irish culture, history and language. The campaign has proceeded by minimising their significance and actively distorting and misrepresenting what remains. It employs the crucial PR tactic of inversion (the mirror image), projecting the attributes characteristic of those who use it onto the target to be destroyed. One noteworthy example of this has been the so-called 'Black Diaries' controversy. Such has been the success of this propaganda tool that all discussion of the life and achievements of Roger Casement orients itself reflexively about this subject. This means, of course, both that the historical and the contemporary significance of what Casement reported concerning the nature of Belgian and English imperialism are obscured.

The responsibility for this does not lie entirely with those who manufactured the 'Black and White Diaries' scenario and those who continue to uphold it. It rests also with those who argue against it, perpetuating the notion that the sole point of historical interest where Casement is concerned is this very issue, and that Casement's achievement as a humanitarian is very much a side issue. The 'Black Diaries' propaganda construct, then, is the Consensus where Casement is concerned; it is a structure of two sides, mirroring the permissible academic, media and political polarities for discussion. Crucially, it is also structurally identical to the Consensus around which historical research and discussion has been oriented in Ireland.

The 'Giles report'

Attaching the 'Black Diary' discussion as a label to the name of Roger Casement serves a twofold propaganda purpose. Insofar as it has been successful, and it has undoubtedly enjoyed a thorough success in official circles, it has owed this success to the two inextricable aspects of the construct. First there is the success of the story itself. The eagerness with which it has been seized upon as normative and unquestionable is undeniable. Even the Irish State itself, in the person of the Taoiseach, gave the 'Giles Report', a 'forensic examination' undertaken by Scotland Yard (in reality an unsystematic comparison of handwriting samples, a method which is not admissible as evidence in legal cases), full benefit of the doubt, announcing his satisfaction that the case was proved beyond question. The story appeals to historians because it enables them to tar the Independence movement with a certain colouring, one which it would never occur to them to apply to other historical processes given similar elements. It likewise appeals to State political interests and their media backers, because it provides a legitimatisation for their true allegiances. These allegiances are ones which one might have fondly imagined that historical events had thoroughly discredited. But this is the heart of the matter.

However, is not merely the case that the 'controversy', or rather consensus, is used to distract attention from the implications of Casement's work. The propaganda version of Casement that was fabricated along with the various versions of what are now called the 'Black Diaries' serves a far more significant purpose. Of course, on the face of it, it is absurd on the face of it that anyone would maintain two parallel diaries, with 'white' and 'black' content exclusive to each, and still more absurd that the latter would be kept at all. Clearly the British State itself also thought this idea was little too much to swallow also, and denied their very existence for decades. Until, that is, the utility of such an idea in propaganda terms became obvious at the same time as it became necessary to adapt to imperial strategies to the new situation created by the rise of other independence movements across the world, such as in India and Myanmar, regions of crucial strategic importance to Britain.

The Jekyll/Hyde fallacy 

Despite the logical absurdity of the 'Black Diaries' construct, the deciding factor in compelling its acceptance is, as ever, allegiance to state power. By itself it is the stuff of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, in which two opposing personalities can somehow exist in the same person, so diametrically opposed that no one acquainted with either could possibly discern a relationship with the other. But in the realm of propaganda, fact and logic are trifles, the playthings of political objectives, to be tossed aside or turned into their opposites when inconsistent with those purposes. The grand objective of the scheme comes into focus when it is asked whom it might serve to portray Casement as a delusional psychopath, a monster in the Jekyll/Hyde mode. There is a pressing need to discredit Casement's accounts of the savagery he witnessed under what pretended to be enlightened administration, and instead to represent these accounts as the inventions of a diseased and perverted mind. Indeed, the existence of such a policy is corroborated by the fact that a prominent Irish historian has openly suggested that Casement simply invented his accounts of the atrocities inflicted on native people by Belgian and British imperial administrators. This activity contributes in no small way to the ongoing propaganda effort to cleanse the record of imperialism in general, and British imperialism in particular, in the light of a powerful resurgence of imperial politics on a global scale.

The record of imperialism must be whitewashed to ensure that politicians, media and academics will continue to package current policies in moral and humanitarian PR, and prepare in similar terms for future viciousness. Ireland, as the first country in history to have broken with the British Empire, has an important role to fulfil in this scheme. Those who disapprove of Ireland's tradition of disassociation from Britain's role in the world, and, moreover, wish to see this association renewed in more or less its original configuration, now include much of the existing political, media, and academic spectrum. For the Irish state to publicly declare that the Crown's persecution and judicial murder of Casement was justified (for this is, in effect, the meaning of the Taoiseach's involvement in the issue) is both a major victory in the ongoing rehabilitation of imperialism, and a sign that the same country which rejected it for the soundest of reasons now wishes to participate in it full willing.

 © The Tara Foundation 2008