Patriot Traitors: Roger Casement John Amery And The Real Meaning Of Treason

In the 20th century only four British citizens were convicted of the ancient crime of High Treason and only two of these - Roger Casement and John Amery - suffered what was, until 1998, the only penalty allowed by the law: execution. During the First World War, Casement, a retired British consular official knighted by King Edward VII for his humanitarian work in Africa and South America, attempted to recruit a brigade of Irish prisoners of war to liberate Ireland after German victory on the Western front. In the Second World War, Amery, the son of Churchill's Secretary of State for India, tried to recruit a legion of British soldiers into the Waffen-SS to fight against Bolshevism on the Eastern front. But even a cursory examination of their crimes reveals both men to have been inept and ineffectual traitors, more of a burden to their German sponsors than an asset. By coincidence, both renegade units attracted the same miserable number of recruits -57 - and neither was used in the role for which it was intended. Instead, both men fell into British hands, were tried and executed. In fact, the full weight of state power, legitimate and illegitimate, was brought to bear to ensure that they were hanged. This even though the government knew that Casement was a confused, naive idealist and a barely controlled, compulsive pederast, and that Amery was a psychopathic, sexually bizarre "moral imbecile", incapable of understanding the concepts of right and wrong. Neither man was capable of mounting any kind of threat to the state. Why was this so? The answer lies not in what Casement and Amery did but in who they were: they both came from the heart of the establishment but had rejected the ideas and the forms of the British state; neither could be tolerated. "Patriot Traitors" is the first serious historical study to use the newly released MI5 personal files on Casement, Amery and other renegades. Drawing on these, and a wide range of different sources, Weale has been able to illuminate one of the darkest corners of recent British history. In comparing the career of the last two British citizens to be executed by the state for their political beliefs, he is able to shed new light on the real meaning of treason.