(Redirected from John Edward Redmond)'John Edward Redmond' (
September 1 1856 –
March 6 1918) was an
Irish nationalist polititian,
barrister,
Member of Parliament (MP,) in the
Parliament of the United Kingdom and leader of the
Irish Parliamentary Party from
1900 to
1918. He was a moderate, constitutional and conciliatory politician who attained the twin dominant objectives of his political life, party unity and finally in 1914 achieving
Irish Home Rule under an Act which granted an interim form of self-government to Ireland. Unfortunately for Redmond, implementation of the act was suspended by the intervention of
World War I.
He was the elder brother of
William (Willie) Redmond and father of
William Archer Redmond both of whom were to serve as MPs in his party.
Family influences and background
John Redmond was born in Dublin City and raised in
County Wexford in
Ireland. Redmond's family had been an established and prominent Catholic gentry family in the county for over seven centuries and long been associated with Wexford town. Redmond's grand uncle, John Edward Redmond, was a prominent banker and businessman before entering Parliament as a member for Wexford in 1859. After his death in 1866, his nephew,
William Archer Redmond, John Redmond's father, won election to the seat and soon emerged as a prominent supporter of
Isaac Butt`s new movement for
Home Rule.
Redmond’s family heritage was more complex than that of most of his nationalist political colleagues. His mother came from a Protestant and unionist family, though converting to Catholocism on marriage, she never converted to nationalism. His uncle General John Patrick Redmond, who had inherited the family estate, was created
CB for his role during the Indian mutiny; he disapproved of his nephew’s involvement in agrarian agitation of the 1880s. John Redmond boasted of his family involvement in the 1798 Wexford rising, a “Miss Redmond” had ridden in support of the rebels, a Father Redmond was hanged by the
yeomanry, as was a maternal ancestor, William Kearney.
Education and early career
As a student, young John exhibited the seriousness that many would soon come to associate with him. Educated by the
Jesuits in
Clongowes Wood, he was primarily interested in poetry and literature, performed the lead in school theatricals and was regarded as the best speaker in the school's debating society. After finishing at Clongowes, Redmond attended
Trinity College, Dublin in order to study law, but his father's ill health led him to abandon his studies before taking a degree. In 1876 he left to live with his father in London, acting as his assistant in
Westminster, where he developed more fascination for politics than for law. He first came into contact with
Michael Davitt on the occasion of a reception held in London to celebrate the release of the famous
Fenian prisoner. As a clerk in the
House of Commons he increasingly identified himself with
Charles Stewart Parnells fortunes, founder of the
Irish Land League and a noted ‘obtructionist’ in the Commons.
Political profession and marriage
Redmond first attended political meetings with Parnell in 1879. Upon his father's death later in 1880 he wrote to Parnell asking for adoption as the
Nationalist Party (from 1882 the
Irish Parliamentary Party) candidate in the by-election to fill the open seat, but was disappointed to learn that Parnell had already promised the next vacancy to his secretary
Tim Healy. Nevertheless, Redmond supported Healy as the nominee, and when another vacancy arose, this time in
New Ross, Redmond won election unopposed as the Parnellite candidate for the seat. On election (31 January 1881) he rushed to the House of Commons, made his maiden speech next day amid stormy scenes following the arrest of Michael Davitt, then a Land League leader as was ejected from the Commons all on the same evening. He served as MP for New Ross 1880-1885,
North Wexford 1885-1891 and finally for
Waterford City, from 1891 until his death in 1918
The Land League conflict was by now at a turbulent stage. Early in 1882 he and his brother Willie were sent to Australia on a fund-raising mission, the trip a success both in political and personal terms where in 1883 he and his brother married into the prosperous Irish-Australian
Dalton. family. In a short-lived but happy marriage, his wife Johanna having borne him three children , she died early in 1889. He also traveled to
America in 1884, 1886 and 1904 where he was to use more extreme language but found his contacts to Irish-American extremism daunting His Australian experiences on the other hand were to have a strong influence on his political outlook, it caused him to embrace an Irish version of Liberal Imperialism and to remain anxious to retain Irish representation and Ireland’s voice at Westminster even after the implementation of home rule. In 1899 Redmond married his second wife, an English Protestant who after his death converted to catholicism.
Leader of the Parnellite party
Having belatedly become a barrister by completing his terms at the
King's Inns, Dublin, being called to the Irish bar in 1887 (and to the English bar a year later) he busied himself with agrarian cases. In 1888, following a strong and conceivably intimidatory speech, Redmond received five weeks’ imprisonment with hard labour.
A loyal supporter of Parnell, Redmond like Davitt was passionately opposed to physical force nationalism, campaigning constitutionally for
Home Rule as an interim form of All-Ireland self government within the United Kingdom.
When the Irish Parliamentary Party split over Parnell's long-term family relationship with
Katharine O'Shea, the long separated wife of a fellow MP, whom he later married, Redmond stood by his deposed leader in the dispute. After Parnell's death in 1891, Redmond took over leadership of the Parnellite rump of the split party, the
Irish National League (INL), where he soon demonstrated both his organizational ability and his considerable rhetorical skills. The larger anti-Parnellite group formed the
Irish National Federation (INF) under
John Dillon. During this period, he supported the Unionist Irish Secretary
Gerald Balfour programme of ''Constructive Unionism'', while assuring the Tory Government that its self-declared policy of "killing Home Rule with kindness" would not achieve its objective. Redmond worked constructively alongside Unionists such as
Horace Plunkett in the Recess Committee of 1895 which led to the establishment of a department of agriculture in 1899. He further argued that the land reforms and democratization of elected local government under the
Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 would in fact stimulate demands for Home Rule rather than dampen them, as was the case.
Home Rule and the Liberals
When in 1900, through the initiative of
William O'Brien and his
United Irish League (UIL) the INL and the INF re-united within the Irish Parliamentary Party, Redmond was elected its chairman (leader), a position he held until his death in 1918 -- a longer period than any other nationalist leader, except
Eamon de Valera and
Daniel O'Connell[ Our political debt to John Redmond is largely unpaid Charles Lysaught ]. However Redmond, a Parnellite, was chosen as a compromise due to the personal rivalries between the anti-Parnellite Home Rule leaders. Therefore, he never had as much control over the party as his predecessor because his authority and leadership was a balancing act having to contend with such powerful colleagues as John Dillon, William O'Brien, Tim Healy and
Joe Devlin. Following William O’Brien’s amicable Land Conference of 1902 involving leading landlords and tenant representatives which resulted in the conciliatory
Wyndham Land Act of 1903 being passed, Redmond, first sided with O’Brien then quietly endured Dillon’s dictate of distancing from any understanding with the landlord class.
Though government had been dominated by the
Conservative Party for more than a decade the new century saw much
favourable legislation enacted in Ireland’s interest. An electorate swing to the
Liberal Party in 1906 renewed Redmond’s opportunities for working with government policy. The Liberals however did not yet back his Party’s demands for full Home Rule which contributed to the renewal of agrarian radicalism in the ranch wars of 1906-1910 . The elections of 1910 changed everything to Redmond’s advantage giving his parliamentary party the balance of power at Westminster. His deal over the budget crisis of 1909 led to the curbing of the power of the
House of Lords , which had previously blocked the budget of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer,
David Lloyd George. With the Lords' veto gone under the
Parliament Act 1911, Irish home rule (which the Lords had blocked in 1894) now became a certainty. In 1912, the government of
H. H. Asquith introduced the
Third Home Rule Bill to allow for Irish national self-government which could no longer be blocked by the Lords, its enactment merely delayed for two years. By 1914 Redmond could have had every expectation of becoming head of a new Irish government in
Dublin.
Home rule enacted
But like most leaders in the nationalist scene, not least his successors in the republican scene, he knew little of Ulster or the intensity of Unionist sentiment against home rule. His successor, John Dillon claimed that Redmond had removed all the obstacles to Irish unity except those of the Ulster unionists. He had persuaded British public and political opinion of all hues of its merits
[. William O’Brien and his dissident AFIL Party warned in similar vein, that the unresolved and volatile Northern Ireland situation was left unresolved. ]
Home rule was vehemently opposed by many Irish Protestants, the Irish Unionist Party and Ulster's Orange Order, who feared domination in an overwhelmingly Catholic state. Unionists also feared economic problems, namely that the predominantly agricultural Ireland would impose tariffs on British goods, leading to restrictions on the importation of industrial produce; the main location of Ireland's industrial development was Ulster, the north-east of the island, the only part of Ireland dominated by unionists. Most unionist leaders, especially Sir Edward Carson – with whom Redmond always had a good personal relationship, based on shared experiences at Trinity College Dublin and the Irish bar, threatened the use of force to prevent home rule, helped by their supporters in the British Conservative Party. Redmond misjudged them as merely bluffing.
After the Curragh Mutiny, and with the spectre of looming civil war on the part of the Ulster Covenanters who formed the Ulster Volunteers to oppose home rule, Redmond had taken over control of the Irish Volunteers who had armed to enforce home rule. Asquith conceded to the Lord's demand to have the Home Rule Act 1914 which had passed all stages in the Commons, amended to temporarily exclude the six counties of Northern Ireland and to later make some special provision for it, which for a period would continue to be governed by London, not Dublin . Strongly opposed to the partition of Ireland in any form, Redmond and his party reluctantly agreed to what they understood would be a ''trial'' exclusion of six years, under Redmond's aspiration that "Ulster will have to follow" belatedly prepared to concede a large measure of autonomy to it to come in. Using the Parliament Act, the Lords was deemed to have passed the Act; it received the Royal Assent in September 1914.
European conflict intervenes
The outbreak of World War I in August 1914, occurred in time to prevent the establishment of Home Rule. The Act was suspended, to come into force after what was expected to be a short war. Redmond reacted in a calculated fashion. principally in the belief that the attained measure of self-government would be granted in full after the war. To make sure of being in a stronger position to stave off a final partition of Northern Ireland: he called on the country to support the British and Allied war effort. His added hope was that the common sacrifice by Irish nationalists and Unionists would bring them closer together, but above all that nationalists could not afford to allow Ulster Unionists reap the benefit of being the only Irish to support the war effort, by immediately enlisting in their 36th (Ulster) Division. His appeal to the Irish Volunteers to also enlist caused them to split, a large majority followed Redmond and formed the National Volunteers, who enthusiastically enlisted in Irish battalions of the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions of the New British Army.
Redmond believed that Imperial Germany's hegemony and military expansion threatened the freedom of Europe and that it was Ireland's duty, having achieved self-government ''to the best of her ability to go where ever the firing line extends, in defense of right, of freedom and of religion in this war. It would be a disgrace forever to our country otherwise''. Redmond requested the War Office to allow the formation of a separate Irish Brigade as had been done for the Ulster Volunteers, but Britain was suspicious of Redmond after he declared to his National Volunteers that they would return as an armed army to resist Ulster’s opposition to home rule. Eventually he was granted the gesture of the two Irish Divisions, commanded unlike the Ulster Division, by English officers. His own brother Major Willie Redmond MP., despite being aged over 50 years, was one of five Irish MP.s who enlisted, the others J. L. Esmonde, Stephen Gwynn, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan as well as former MP Tom Kettle.
Redmond was, and is still criticised for having encouraged so many Irish to fight in the Great War. He had no idea of the horror and losses the war would cause. Like most people of the time, he thought the war would last no longer than a few months. ''Redmond could have tactically done nothing other than support the British war campaign; . . . nobody committed to Irish unity could have behaved other than Redmond did at the time. Otherwise, there would be no chance whatever of a united Ireland, in which Redmond passionately believed''[1].
Easter Rising, aftermath, decease
During 1915 Redmond felt secure in his course and that the path was already partly cleared for independence to be achieved without bloodshed. He was supported by continued by-election successes of the IPP, and felt strong enough to turn down the offer of a cabinet seat which would have offset Carson’s appointment to the war cabinet but would have been unpopular in Ireland. Even in 1916 he felt supremely confident and optimistic despite timely warnings from Bonar Law of an impending insurrection. Redmond had not expected the 1916 Easter Rising staged by the remaining Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army which was led by a number of influential republicans, under Pádraig Pearse. Pearse, once standing on the same platform with Redmond in 1913 where the Rising now took place, at that time praising Redmond’s efforts in achieving Home Rule. Redmond later acknowledged that the Rising had shattered all his plans. It had equally helped fuel republican sentiment, particularly when Britain, in a highly misguided act, executed the leaders of the Rising, treating them as traitors in wartime. Redmond privately besought Asquith to halt them. There followed Asquith’s attempt to introduce Home Rule in July 1916 failing on the issue of partition.
Redmond, stressed and now in a visible state of physical decline, made a desperate effort in June 1917 to broker a new compromise with Irish unionists and to entangle Home Rule when he called the Irish Convention which sat from July and ended in March 1918 with unresolved recommendations. But June 1917 had also brought a severe personal blow when his brother Willie died gallantly on the front in action at the onset of the Battle of Messines offensive in Flanders, his vacant seat in East Clare then won in July by Eamon de Valera, the most senior surviving commandant of the Easter insurgents. It was one of a series of by-election gains by Sinn Féin, the small separatist party that had played no part in the Rising, but was wrongly 'blamed' by Britain and the Irish media. It was then taken over by surviving Rising leaders, under Eamon de Valera and the IRB.
His health permanently affected by an accident in 1912, Redmond had also suffered assault on the street in Dublin by a crowd of young Sinn Féin supporters, including C.S.`'Tod' Andrews. In March 1918 an operation to remove an intestinal obstruction appeared to progress well at first, but then he suffered heart failure. He died a few hours later at a London nursing home on 6 March 1918. After a funeral service in Westminster Cathedral his remains were interred in a family vault in Wexford city. The small high-walled cemetery near the city centre is kept locked to the public, his vault in an extremely deteriorated and desolate state. Redmond was succeeded in the party leadership by John Dillon.
He was spared the experience of further political setbacks when after the German Spring Offensive of April 1918, Britain, locked in a life or death struggle with Imperial Germany, foolishly attempted to introduce conscription in Ireland jointly linked with implementing Home Rule. The Irish Nationalists walked out of the House of Commons and returned to Ireland to join in the widespread resistance and protests during the resulting conscription crisis. This boosted Sinn Féin so that in December it won the vast majority of seats in the general election, 25 unopposed, leaving the Nationalist Party with only six. In a January 1919 Declaration Sinn Féin proclaimed an Irish Republic, later abolished in 1921 after the Anglo-Irish War under the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It was replaced by the partitioned Irish Free State, its parliament called in the Irish language ''Dáil Éireann'', that is the ''Assembly of Ireland''. The Irish Civil War followed. Home Rule was however finally implemented in 1921 as the Fourth Home Rule Act under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, which only Northern Ireland adopted. For the next forty years Ireland existed in a state of stagnant political paralysis.
Legacy and personal vision
John Redmond’s home town of Wexford remained a strongly Redmondite area for decades afterwards. The seat of Waterford city was one of the few outside of Ulster not to be won by Sinn Féin in the 1918 General Election. Redmond's son Captain William Redmond, represented the City until his death in 1932. A later Irish Taoiseach (Irish prime minister), John Bruton, hung a painting of Redmond, whom he highly regarded because of his commitment to non-violence as his hero, in his office in Ireland's Leinster House Government Buildings. His successor, Bertie Ahern TD however, replaced the painting with one of Padraig Pearse.
Redmond's personal vision did not encompass a wholly independent Ireland [2] he stated that
He had above all a conciliatory agenda – in his final words in parliament he expressed – “a plea for concord between the two races that providence has designed should work as neighbours together”. For him, Home Rule was an interim step for All-Ireland autonomy.
References
1. Prof. Joe Lee ''Nationalist or Imperialist?'' The Sunday Tribune, 4 June 2000
2. The Open Secret of Ireland, , Thomas M., Kettle, IndyPublish.com, , ISBN 1-4219-4834-6
Sources
★ Stephen Gwynn ''John Redmond's last years'' (1919)
★ Denis Gwynn ''The Life of John Redmond'' (1932)
★ Paul Bew ''John Redmond'' (1996)
★ Paul Bew ''Redmond, John Edward (1856-1918)'', Oxford Dictionary (2004-5)
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
