Architect of the Easter Rising, hanged as a traitor: for Roger Casement, a pardon still seems far away | Rory Carroll

Relations with Britain have improved again since Brexit, but battles over Irish history remain visible in Stormont’s endless feuding

Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent and author of A Rebel and a Traitor: A Fugitive, the Manhunt and Birth of the IRA

More than a century after he was marched to the gallows, there is still something radioactive about Roger Casement, a name that continues to emit a faint crackle in British-Irish relations.

He was knighted in 1911 by King George V for distinguished imperial service, but then embraced radical Irish nationalism and sought German help for the 1916 Easter Rising.

The British government made sure that when the noose went around his neck and the lever was pulled, he would drop not into martyrdom, but disgrace. He was not only a traitor but, as a cabinet memo put it, a pervert addicted to sexual degeneracy. “I see not the slightest objection to hanging Casement and afterwards giving as much publicity to the contents of his diary as decency permits,” wrote Sir Ernley Blackwell, chief legal adviser to the Home Office.