I find Wikipedia useful, although it needs to be handled with great care. I recently consulted it on Frank Aiken and on Piaras Beaslai, who were long prominent in Irish affairs, and found a number of schoolboy howlers in each entry which I may write about in detail another time.
,But I’ve just consulted Wikipedia on Rufus Isaacs, an Englishman once prominent in Parliament, Judiciary,and Diplomacy who ended his illustrious career as Viceroy of India, And this is what I gathered –
On 14 February 1913 the Paris Daily Le Matin alleged corruption in the award of a contract to the Marconi Company by Britain’s Liberal government, naming the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, the Attorney General, Rufus Isaacs, the Postmaster General, Herbert Samuel, and the Treasurer of the Liberal Party, Lord Murray.
These powerful men sued, or threatened to sue, the paper, which apologised and retracted its story on the 18th February.But a Parliamentary Select Committee in London published three reports establishing that they had bought shares in The American Marconi Company at a favourable rate. The Managing Director of the Marconi Company in Britain was Godfrey Isaacs, brother of Rufus. That fact had not been revealed during the dispute with Le Matin.
The Opposition (Tory) members of the Select Committee accused the profiteers of behaving with “grave impropriety” but the Liberal majority stood by them.
In 1916 at the Old Bailey in London, Lord Chief Justice Sir Rufus Isaacs sentenced the Irishman Roger Casement to death for High Treason.
Excellent article, Donal. I think Issacs was defence counsel when Casement raised a case against the cocoa trade years before. Perhaps he should have disbarred himself due to potential conflict, when appointed to the show trial. He doesn’t appear to have been in the same league as Casement when it came to class. Real class.
The irony! Ironic too that he who exposed the horrors of Belgian racist colonialism should be executed by a regime which urged Irishmen to fight for “gallant little Belgium”.