Monthly Archives: August 2020

Why Senator Kamala Harris is unlikely to be checking out her Irish roots, even in an election year.

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We wouldn’t really be Irish if we didn’t try and latch on to prominent US politicians and claim them as ‘Irish-American’—it’s a bit like the Brits claiming Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott as ‘British’ when they get BAFTA nominations, or some such. I don’t think we managed to snare Bush #41 or #43 but, otherwise, everyone since Reagan has been advised of their Irish ancestry – even Barack Obama Kearney from Moneygall. So far no one seems to have bothered to establish if Donald Trump has any Irish antecedents. Funny that. There seems to have been a unspoken decision taken among the nation’s genealogists that Scotland and Germany are more than welcome to him. 

Should Joe Biden pull off the impossible in November, and defeat the most unpopular U.S. President since the continent of America split off from Africa and wandered west under the influence of continental drift, then he will be inundated with advice about his solid Irish connections, and will be strong-armed by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, when he receives his statutory bowl of shamrock next March (Covid-19 permitting), to come and visit his ancestral home in Louth, from where his great-grandfather emigrated in 1850. Though there may be stiff competition for the honour of Biden ancestral home – apparently all eight of Biden’s great-great-grandparents on his mother’s side were born in Ireland. Let the genealogical bunfight begin. It could get ugly.

However, it would be a brave genealogist (or Taoiseach) who would try to entice future Vice President Kamala Harris to the birthplace of her only Irish ancestor! Her great-great-great-grandfather was one Hamilton Brown, born in County Antrim in the year of the declaration of American Independence, 1776. Other than the coincidence of the year of his birth, any connection with freedom and liberty (other than his own) is purely accidental.

So, why would the putative Veep not try and establish her Irish credentials and milk a few Irish-American votes in the process? That would be because great-great-great-grandpappy Ham was a top notch, wildly enthusiastic, slave-owner.  Not one of your milksop plantation wallahs with a couple of house slaves. No, Ham was a ‘scream it from the mountain tops’ sort of feudal type.

In an article entitled ‘Reflections of a Jamaican father’ Kamala Harris’s own father, Donald J. Harris, an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford,  wrote that, ‘My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) …’

In a previous post on Irish slave owners in the West Indies, ones who benefitted from British government compensation for the abolition of slavery in British colonies in the 1830s, I pointed out that Hamilton Brown owned twenty-five plantations in Jamaica. He received almost £20,000 in compensation for the loss of his human property (886 slaves) and unsuccessfully sought almost another £5000 for a further 233 slaves. He appears to have arrived in Jamaica to work as a humble bookkeeper in 1795 but managed to acquire a huge swathe of land (used for farming cattle and growing sugar). So, at least he was an enterprising slave driver.

Rather like his fellow Irishman, John Mitchel, born a bit further south, in Newry, Co. Down, Brown harboured some interesting ideas about the status of slaves vis a vis their soul mates, the Irish and English poor. Mitchel, an apologist for the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War, wrote of how Irish peasants were much worse off than the slaves of the American South. Brown went even further. He considered his pampered and privileged slaves to be better off than the English poor, who were, of course, so much better off than the impoverished Irish! Or, so he told a touring Methodist minister, Henry Whitely, a visitor to Jamaica in 1832—the year before the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act at Westminster. Whitely wrote an account of his six-week visit to the island in a pamphlet published by the Anti-Slavery Society. This is Whitely’s report of his meeting with Senator Harris’s beloved ancestor. 

 ‘The same day I dined in St. Ann’s Bay, on board the vessel I arrived in, in company with several colonists, among whom was Mr. Hamilton Brown, representative for the parish of St. Ann in the Colonial Assembly. Some reference having been made to the new Order in Council, I was rather startled to hear that gentleman swear by his maker that that Order should never be adopted in Jamaica; nor would the planters of Jamaica, he said, permit the interference of the Home Government with their slaves in any shape. A great deal was said by him and others present about the happiness and comfort enjoyed by the slaves, and of the many advantages possessed by them of which the poor in England were destitute.’ 

Brown cordially loathed the great British anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, accusing him of being a ‘hypocrite’ and claiming Wilberforce was in possession of a ‘cloven foot’. This was, presumably, a diabolical reference designed to get them out of their seats in the Jamaican House of Assembly, where he proudly represented the (all white) electorate of St. Ann’s parish for twenty-two years. 

Henry Whitely was a tad sceptical of Brown’s rose-tinted view of the fringe benefits of enslavement, and his scepticism was soon justified. Travelling through the plantations of the island he witnessed a group of slaves manuring sugar canes while an overseer laid into them with a cart whip. 

‘It appeared to me disgustingly dirty work; for the moisture from the manure was dripping through the baskets, and running down the bodies of the negroes. This sight annoyed me considerably, and raised some doubts as to the preferable condition of West India slaves to factory children … the thundering crack of the cart whip, sounding in my ears as I rode along, excited feelings of a very unpleasant description.’

Whitely also witnessed the flogging of young girls – lashed forty to fifty times with a horsewhip for such capital crimes as tardiness.

Brown was obviously a sentimentalist (as long as your skin wasn’t black) because he called one of his twenty-five estates after the county of his birth (ahhh!) He gave his own first name to the town of Hamilton in Jamaica but that was obviously considered disrespectful and something of a liberty, because it was later changed to the more deferential Brown’s Town.  

 Then, showing himself to be a true Irish patriot, after the emancipation of West Indian slaves, he sought to entice Irish people to come and settle in Jamaica. In 1835 he sent his ship, the James Ray, to Ballymoney, Co. Antrim to collect 121 Irish migrants and planted them around him in St. Anns. Those were followed, in 1836, by 185 more of his fellow countrymen. The avowed intention of this assisted migration project was to ensure that freed slaves did not acquire land in Jamaica. However, the scheme came to an end after the arrival of the second batch of Irish emigrants when it was alleged back in cynical old Ireland that they were simply being brought to the West Indies to replace the freed slaves. 

This Irish charmer continued to live in the West Indies long after the emancipation of his slaves. He died there in 1845 at the age of 68. He appears to have expired after being thrown from his carriage. The Ku Klux Klan sent flowers. Actually, that’s not true, as they didn’t exist at the time. But it sounds about right. 

Of course, culture wars being what they are, the madder breed of Republican has frequently attempted to weaponise Hamilton Brown against Senator Harris. The headline in the right-wing website ‘Red State’ is fairly typical – “When Will Race-Baiting Kamala Harris Acknowledge She is a Descendant of a Slave Owner?”

Allow me to offered a considered and carefully thought out rebuttal to that particular line of argument. 

What a load of abject nutjob bollocks! 

I hope the above is a sufficiently reflective and intellectual riposte. If not, it is probably worth noting that most black people who are descended from slave owners are also descended from slaves. There were few idyllic marriages between plantation owners and their chattels. Most of the non-white children of slave owners came into being as a result of rape or extra-marital ‘relationships’. Right wing culture warriors might give some thought to the power dynamic of those ‘relationships’.

No, I don’t think they will either. 

The fact-checking website www.snopes.com has been unable to establish whether Donald Harris is correct in his assertion that he and his daughter Kamala are descended from Hamilton Brown. But, based on Brown’s ownership of over 1000 of his fellow human beings, and his recorded opinions on the issue of slavery, it is unlikely that Senator Harris, as U.S. Vice President, would be tempted over to Antrim to check out her Irish roots, not even with the prospect of a side trip to the Giant’s Causeway.

Maybe just give her some shamrock in March 2021, along with an apology.

Josephine Brown – British-born spy in the British Army, 1919-21

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JOSEPHINE O’DONOGHUE – CORK,  IRA INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

Military Service Pensions Collection – MSP34REF55794

John Borgonovo’s definitive account of the collaboration of Josephine and Florence O’Donoghue

Josephine O’Donoghue, as Josephine Brown, went to work i n early 1917 as a clerk and typist at Cork Military Barracks and in late 1919 managed to contact  officers of the Cork Brigade of the IRA and offer her services. From then, until the Truce, she collected and transmitted original documents, copies of documents, and information relating to British personnel, equipment and troop movements. She had access to extremely valuable information, which included the correspondence of Major General Sir Peter Strickland, OC of the 6thDivision, and military governor of the Munster martial law district.

‘Under the direction of the Brigade officers I paid special attention to scouring information with regard to the personnel and movements of the British Intelligence staff attached to the 6th Division, and transmitted a list of the officers of this staff. As a result of information given by me concerning the movements of members of this staff three British Intelligence officers were captured by the IRA at Waterfall near Cork. These officers were wearing civilian clothes, and were subsequently executed.

            Information as to the movement of troops which resulted in the Upton ambush was given by me also. 

            In the winter of 1920 a letter was sent to Capt. Kelly who was in charge of the British intelligence  operation in the 6th division area, informing him that IRA men passed along a certain road on the outskirts of the city each night a short time before curfew. I saw the letter and as it was not possible to make a copy of it, and realising that the matter may be very urgent, I brought out the original letter, showed it to the Brigade IO and returned it to the file the next morning. I learned afterwards that the information was accurate, that it referred to the Brigade O/C and other members of the Brigade staff who were sleeping outside the city at the time, and that the road referred to was watched on the following nights. The writer of the letter was subsequently executed by the IRA.

            I brought out and passed on to the Brigade IO much other original matter in cases where several copies of a document were made in the offices, including on one occasion a general order issued by General Strickland (which was afterwards quoted in an tÓglach) relating to general policy and tactics to be pursued by his forces in seeking out and attacking IRA columns.’ 

In order to enhance her intelligence gathering Josephine Brown actually contrived to have three other women working in the barracks, sacked for unreliability. This gave her access to a far greater amount of confidential information. This she shared with the Cork Brigade IO,  Intelligence Officer, Florence O’Donoghue – whom she secretly married in 1921. Florence O’Donoghue went so far as to organise the kidnapping, from the UK, or her child, who was in the custody of his grandparents.  So valuable an asset was Josephine O’Donoghue that her pension application was endorsed by Sean O’Hegarty, the Cork Brigade OC, national Deputy Director of Intelligence, Liam Tobin and East Cork Flying Column OC, Tom Barry. 

‘On another occasion, early in 1921, I think, I secured a copy of a letter from General Strickland to his GHQ outlining his proposals for a large scale round up in the mountainous districts of west Cork and East Kerry, intimating his requirements of troops, transport and aeroplanes and giving details of the proposed operation. This round up took place on the 5th and 6th of June 1921. Between two and three thousand men in fourteen columns took part, and were assisted by several aeroplanes. Due, however, to the advance information which the IRA had, not a single officer or man was captured in the round up.

            Where it was not possible to get copies I made shorthand notes of important documents, or on such points as appeared to be of special value. In other cases I took the actual letters after they had been made up for post, and passed them over to the Brigade IO. These were opened and copied, then re-sealed and put back into the next day’s post by me. 

            On one occasion there was a  letter from Captain Kelly to the effect that he had got a man in as a ‘stool pigeon’ among the internees in the barracks. After this letter had been transmitted to Michael Collins by the Brigade IO a general instruction was issued by the IRA for the appointment of Intelligence Officers in all jails and internment camps, for the purpose of counteracting activities of this type, preventing undesirable talk amongst prisoners and keeping the IRA informed of any suspicious characters amongst the prisoners.

             I secured information in several cases where civilians had sent in information relating to the IRA. Six civilians were executed by the IRA as a result. 

            Over the whole period I was recording and passing on to the Brigade IO lists of names and home addresses of enemy officers; some of these were subsequently used in cases of reprisals in England. I secured also particulars of Stokes mortars with which the enemy were supplied towards the end of 1920. These particulars were used in training notes by the IRA.

            Many details were given by me of the views, characters and peculiarities of the officers directing the enemy activities in Cork. Descriptions of almost all of them were passed on to the IRA, notes of transfers and new arrivals were notified  and the minutes of the 6th Division weekly conferences frequently secured and transmitted. Everything I could do was done to give the IRA as complete a picture as possible of the personnel, methods and resources of the British forces opposed to them.

            From about the end of 1920 there was very considerable concern in the 6th division offices because of the continued leakage of information, most of which could not have come from any other source. All the staff were subjected to very rigid supervision, and it became more and more difficult to bring out actual documents. I continued to make shorthand notes and bring these, but concealed. On days when even this was not possible I memorised important points as well as I could and passed on the information to the Brigade IO. But even in this period opportunities of securing actual documents occurred, and the Strickland order referred to above was brought out by me in this period. 

            I was the only member of the 6th Division working for the IRA and was entirely without assistance in the office where I worked. A man in the 17th Brigade offices was also working for the IRA but as the offices were entirely separate I had no contact with him and we were unable to give each other any assistance. Several members of my staff were dismissed and one male member  interned but suspicions of me, which I think existed, were never confirmed before I left the employment. 

            After the Truce I went to Cobh with two members of the Brigade Intelligence Staff for the purpose of getting my sister, who was travelling to the USA, to identify and ascertain the destination of a family named Connors or O’Connor. This family were [sic] going to the USA to join a member of it who had been in the IRA but had given information to the enemy, and had been got out of the country secretly by the British authorities. As a result of this action of my sister and myself this man was traced by the IRA and subsequently shot in New York.’ 

The trial and execution of Roger Casement

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Sir John Lavery’s painting of the treason trial of Sir Roger Casement

After the execution of the two surviving signatories of the 1916 Proclamation (James Connolly and Sean McDermott) on 12 May the Crown had one final score to settle with the leadership of the rising. Sir Roger Casement, career diplomat, humanitarian and British civil servant, had been the first of the leaders of the rising to be arrested. He was the last to be tried and executed. 

The Asquith government had initially decided that he would be quickly court-martialled and shot. But, informed by the strong negative reaction to the executions in Dublin the Government began to be attracted to the idea of civil trial for treason. A form of ‘show trial’ in which ‘justice would be seen to be done’. The attraction was one of rehabilitation. Some of the international criticism drawn down on the heads of the Asquith government for the methods used to deal with the leaders of the rising (a system amounting to virtual drumhead courts martial) could be deflected by a robust and open prosecution of Casement. 

There was, however, an unfortunate corollary embedded in the governmental logic. Their forum for the ex post facto validation of General Sir John Maxwell and the Dublin executions, would also become Casement’s platform for the justification of the rising and the lionization of its leaders. If they had looked back to the trial of Robert Emmet in Dublin in 1803 they could have been forewarned. Just because the result of both was a foregone conclusion did not mean they would not have to share the propaganda value of a public trial process.    

GEORGE GAVAN DUFFY

Casement’s defence was organized by George Gavan Duffy. Duffy was a successful London solicitor, the son of the Young Ireland leader, Charles Gavan Duffy. The Casement trial would prompt him to abandon his London legal practice and become a Sinn Fein MP in 1918. Gavan Duffy, with some difficulty, managed to engage the services of Serjeant A.M.Sullivan (the son of the former owner of the Nation newspaper, A.M.Sullivan) to defend Casement. No senior British-based barrister would take the brief.

Sullivan was a Crown law officer in Ireland but had been called to the English Bar and was, therefore, entitled to plead at the Old Bailey. Casement’s desire was to conduct a defence based on an acceptance of the facts of the case. However, he would emphatically deny that he was guilty of treason on foot of those facts. His contention would be that his loyalty was to an Irish republic not to the English Crown.  

Sullivan, however, persuaded, or browbeat, his client into a more reductive line of defence. Casement was to be tried under the same treason statute—of the medieval King Edward III—as Robert Emmet had been. 

This held that the crime of treason had been committed ‘if a man be adherent to the King’s enemies in his realm’. Sullivan would contend that Casement, in his dealings with the Germans, had not threatened the King in his own realm. There was a hopeful precedent in the case of Colonel Arthur Lynch. Lynch had been a leader of the Irish Brigade during the Boer War. A similar defence had been entered in his case but he had been convicted and sentenced to death. Lynch, however, had been reprieved. Sullivan was hoping for similar treatment for Casement.  

But there was another reason for acceding to Sullivan’s insistence that his line of defence be adopted. Casement, famously, had recorded many of his homosexual exploits in a series of notebooks. These were in the possession of the prosecution. Adopting Sullivan’s defence strategy, a plea based on a technicality and on legal argument, would not allow the prosecution to introduce the diaries in evidence. Prodigious use was made of the ‘Black Diaries’ covertly, both before and after the trial, but they were not produced in the Old Bailey. However, much like Robert Emmet’s letters to Sarah Curran in 1803 they were allowed to hang in the air above the proceedings. In the case of Emmet the threat was that Sarah Curran would be prosecuted if he challenged the Crown’s evidence against him.   

Casement’s trial opened on 26 June. Leading for the Prosecution was Sir Frederick Smith (formerly F.E. Smith) successor to Sir Edward Carson as Attorney General. 

Witnesses were called who had been prisoners of war in the German camps from which Casement had hoped to recruit his Irish Brigade. All identified him but also acknowledged that they had been told that they would not be fighting for Germany but for Ireland. A number of witnesses identified Casement as having landed on Banna Strand. 

After the prosecution case concluded Sullivan rose to enter a motion to have the indictment quashed. He argued that the allegation of treason was bad in law and that in order to secure a conviction it was essential that Casement should have been in the King’s realm when he attempted to persuade the Irish POWs to change allegiance.

The judges ruled otherwise. They held that a treasonable offence committed by one of His Majesty’s subjects was liable to trial under Common Law wherever that offence was committed. Sullivan’s strategy, unpromising from the outset, was now in tatters. 

Sullivan’s address to the jury, in the light of the failure of his own defence strategy, now pivoted towards the defence originally advocated by his client, i.e. that he owed his loyalty to an Irish Republic and not the British Crown, so that he could not be guilty of treason. 

In his own concluding remarks F.E.Smith reiterated the Crown’s allegation that ‘German gold’ was behind the rebellion [already denied by both Pearse and Casement] and concluded: 

If those facts taken together, his journey to Germany, his speeches when in Germany, the inducements he held out to these soldiers, the freedom which he there enjoyed, the cause which he pursued in Ireland . . . satisfy you of his guilt, you must give expression to that view in your verdict.

The direction by the Lord Chief Justice [Rufus Isaacs, Lord Reading] to the jury left them with little alternative but to convict Casement. The jury took less than an hour to find Casement guilty of treason.

Casement now took advantage of the opportunity that had been denied Pearse, MacDonagh and Connolly and the other leaders of the rebellion, to offer an explanation of the objectives of the leadership of the Easter rising. His peroration was, arguably, the finest republican valedictory since that of Emmet more than a century before. He concluded …

Ireland is treated today among the nations of the world as if she were a convicted criminal. If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel, and shall cling to my “rebellion” with the last drop of my blood. 

A failed appeal delayed Casement’s execution and allowed a head of steam to build up behind a campaign to have him reprieved. It was during this period that tactical use was made of the Black Diaries in order to influence newspaper coverage against Casement and dampen the enthusiasm of actual and potential supporters (such as John Redmond and George Bernard Shaw)

Casement was hanged in Pentonville Prison on 3 August, 1916. As with the other leaders of the Easter rising, his body was buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery. In 1965, a year before the country commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the rising, Casment’s body was repatriated and interred in Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin. He was afforded a state funeral that was attended by President Eamon de Valera, the last surviving commandant of Easter Week.