The repatriation of the remains of Roger Casement was so secret that the first the public knew about it was when they arrived in Dublin on February 23rd, 1965.
Casement was hanged for treason in Pentonville Prison in August 1916 and the repatriation of his remains to Ireland was a campaign that went on for decades.
It was only in 1965, with the advent of better relations between Ireland and Great Britain, and, in particular, between taoiseach Seán Lemass and British prime minister Harold Wilson, that agreement was reached to bring his body back to Ireland.
Many English and unionist commentators still regarded him as a traitor because of his involvement in the Easter Rising and his attempts to recruit Irish-born British soldiers to fight with the German army during the first World War.
Casement was given a State funeral and huge crowds lined the route. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery with an oration from 1916 veteran and then president Éamon de Valera.
There had been “long years of waiting”, de Valera said. “We are glad to have him back among us. We are glad that the British government have been wise enough that this request should be met.
“It required great courage to do what Casement did, and his name would be honoured, not merely here, but by oppressed peoples everywhere, even if he had done nothing for the freedom of our own country.”
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He anticipated that Casement’s grave would become a place of pilgrimage for those “wishing to make this land worthy of the sacrifices of the past”.
Casement’s is one of the best-known graves in Glasnevin Cemetery, but his interment in Dublin was not in accordance with his dying wishes as articulated to his cousin Elizabeth Bannister just after he lost his appeal against his death sentence.
“Don’t let my body lie here – get me back to the green hill by Murlough – by the McGarry’s [sic] house looking down on the Moyle – that’s where I’d like to be now and that’s where I’d like to lie,” he wrote from Pentonville Prison in July 1916.
A group of volunteers are now seeking for his dying wishes to be honoured. The Roger Casement Commemoration and Reinterment Association has applied for an exhumation licence to remove his body from Glasnevin Cemetery and rebury it on a spot overlooking Murlough Bay in Co Antrim.
Association chairman Alan Daly acknowledged that the final decision, if granted, would be made at Government level given Casement’s historical significance.
“If I thought this wasn’t going to happen I wouldn’t put so much time and effort into this,” he said.
“In my opinion this will happen and it will be for the right reasons. We want to honour a dead man’s wish. He knew what he wanted and it wasn’t granted.”
In 1965 Casement’s remains were not brought back to Northern Ireland because of the volatile political situation at that time. Things have changed, said Daly, and attitudes in the North are unlikely to be an obstacle for the reparation of his remains.
A site has already been chosen should his remains be reinterred. It is consecrated ground in an old churchyard overlooking Murlough Bay.
Dublin City Council, Glasnevin Trust and the Government have been contacted for comment.