Everything about John Redmond totally explained
John Edward Redmond (
September 1 1856 –
March 6 1918) was an
Irish nationalist politician,
barrister,
MP. in the
House of Commons of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 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 . }}
In 1899 Redmond married his second wife, Ada Beesley, 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 during the
Plan of Campaign. 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-standing family relationship with
Katharine O'Shea, the earlier 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" wouldn't achieve its objective. Redmond dropped all interest in agrarian radicalism and, unlike the mainstream nationalists worked constructively alongside
Unionists, such as
Horace Plunkett, in the Recess Committee of 1895 . 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, his authority and leadership a balancing act having to contend with such powerful colleagues as John Dillon, William O'Brien, Timothy Healy and
Joseph Devlin. He nevertheless led the Party successfully through the September
1900 general election.
Following William O’Brien’s amicable Land Conference of 1902 involving leading landlords under
Lord Dunraven and tenant representatives which resulted in the enactment of the conciliatory
Wyndham Land Act of 1903, Redmond first sided with O’Brien's new strategy of conciliation, but refused O’Brien’s demand to purge Dillon for his criticism of the act, leading to O’Brien’s resignation . Then fearing another split .
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 the
1906 general election renewed Redmond’s opportunities for working with government policy. The Liberals however didn't yet back his Party’s demands for full Home Rule which contributed to a renewal of agrarian radicalism in the ranch wars of 1906-1910. Redmond’s low-key and conciliatory style of leadership gave the impression of weakness but reflected the problem of keeping together a factionalised party. He grew in stature after 1906 and especially after 1910 .
The second
election of December 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 abolished under the
Parliament Act 1911, Irish home rule (which the Lords blocked in 1894) became a reality. In April 1912, the government of
H. H. Asquith introduced the
Third Home Rule Bill to grant Ireland national self-government. This could no longer be blocked by the Lords, its enactment merely delayed for two years. Home Rule had reached the pinnacle of its success and Redmond had gone much further than any of his predecessors in shaping British politics to the needs of the Irish .
Yet for all its reservations, the Bill was for Redmond the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. "If I may say so reverently", he told the House of Commons, "I personnally thank God that I've lived to see this day" . But Asquith missed a magnificent opportunity, by failing to incorporate into the Bill any significant concessions to
Ulster Unionists, who then campaigned relentlessly against it. None the less by 1914 Redmond had become a nationalist hero of Parnellite stature .
During negotiations early in 1914, two lines of concessions for the Carsonites were formulated: Autonomy for Ulster in the form of "Home Rule within Home Rule" which Redmond was inclined to, or alternatively the Lloyd George scheme of three years as the time limit for temporary exclusion. Redmond grudgingly acquiesced to this as "the price of peace". From the moment Carson spurned 'temporary' exclusion, the country began a plunge into anarchy . The situation took an entirely new aspect in late March with the
Curragh Mutiny together with the spectre of civil war on the part of the
Ulster Covenanters who formed the
Ulster Volunteers to oppose Home Rule, which forced Redmond in July to then take over control of their counterpart, the
Irish Volunteers, established in November 1913 to enforce Home Rule. Asquith conceded to the Lords' 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 now six years, under Redmond's aspiration that "Ulster will have to follow", he was 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 caused the enforcement of Home Rule to be postponed for the duration of the conflict. Judged from the perspective of that time, Redmond had won a form of triumph, he'd secured the enactment of Home Rule with the provision that the implementation of the measure would be delayed ‘not later than the end of the present war’ which ‘would be bloody but short lived’. His Unionist opponents were in confusion and dismayed by the enactment of Home Rule and by the absence of any definite provisions for the exclusion of Ulster. In two speeches delivered by Redmond in August and September 1914, deemed as critical turning-points in the Home Rule process, he stated:
Under these circumstances any political bargaining might well have been disastrous to Home Rule. Redmond desperately wanted and needed a rapid enactment of the Home Rule Act, and undoubtedly his words were a means to that end . He reacted in a calculated fashion principally in the belief that the attained measure of self-government would be granted in full after the war and to be in a stronger position to stave off a final partition of Northern Ireland.when he called on the country to support the
Allied and Britain's war effort and her commitment under the
Triple Entente. His added hope was that the common sacrifice by Irish nationalists and Unionists would bring them closer together, but above all that nationalists couldn't afford to allow Ulster Unionists reap the benefit of being the only Irish to support the war effort, when they spontaneously enlisted 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 regiments of the
10th and
16th (Irish) Divisions of the
New British Army, while a minority of around 3,000 to 10,000 men formed the Irish Volunteers.
Redmond believed that
Imperial Germany's hegemony and military expansion threatened the freedom of Europe and that it was Ireland's duty, having achieved future self-government
"to the best of her ability to go where ever the firing line extends, in defence 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'd return as an armed army to resist Ulster’s opposition to home rule. Eventually he was granted the gesture of the 16th (Irish) Division which, with the exception of its Irish General
Bernhard Hickie was officered at first, unlike the Ulster Division which had its own reserve militia officers, largely by
English officers - since most Irish recruits enlisting in the new army lacked military training to act as 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.
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 .
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.
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 . Unionists on the other hand won 26 seats for 287,618 (28,3%) of votes.
Whereas Sinn Féin votes were 476,087 (or 46,9%) for 48 seats, plus 25 uncontested totalling an impressive 73 seats. In January 1919 a
Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the provisional Sinn Féin
First Dáil proclaimed an
Irish Republic, later abolished in 1921 after the
Anglo-Irish War under the terms of the
Anglo-Irish Treaty which agreed the
Partition of Ireland and established the
Irish Free State with its parliament
Dáil Éireann (in the
Irish Language 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.
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 didn't encompass a wholly independent Ireland 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:
His reward was to be repudiated and denounced by a generation which had yet to learn, as they learned three years later when they were forced to accept Partition, that true freedom is rarely served by bloodshed and violence, and that in politics compromise is inevitable. Yet it can be said of John Redmond that none of Ireland's sons had ever served her with greater sincerity or nobler purpose .
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