Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Redmond, John Edward
REDMOND, JOHN EDWARD (1856–1918), Irish political leader, the eldest son of William Archer Redmond, M.P., by his wife, Mary, daughter of Major Hoey, of Hoeyfield, co. Wicklow, was born at Ballytrent, co. Wexford, 1 September 1856. The Redmonds were Catholic gentry long established in county Wexford. One of the family became member for Wexford in 1859, and on his death in 1872, was succeeded by his nephew, Redmond's father, a supporter of the Home Rule policy advocated by Isaac Butt [q.v.].
John Redmond's childhood was largely spent on the Wexford coast at Ballytrent, the home of his father's brother. Educated at Clongowes by the Jesuits, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1874, but in 1876 went to live with his father in London during the sessions of parliament, and in 1880 was nominated to a clerkship in the House of Commons. He was indeed educated largely in the House of Commons itself for the career to which hereditary tradition directed him. William Redmond, though he supported Butt's authority, was on friendly terms with Charles Stewart Parnell [q.v.]; and evidently his son's sympathy was captured by the new leader, for at the general election of 1880 when Parnell was mobbed in Enniscorthy, John Redmond was felled at his side by a stone. When the elder Redmond died in November 1880, his son would have succeeded to him, but that Parnell specially desired to bring in T. M. Healy, thus, as he said when the split began, ‘rebuking, restraining, and setting by the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond.’ Two months later the borough of New Ross in county Wexford became vacant. Redmond was elected unopposed. Hurrying to Westminster, he arrived at 8 o'clock in the morning of 2 February 1881; the House had been forty hours in session, and an hour later Speaker Brand closured further debate. Next day when all the Irish members present were suspended for refusal to obey the rules of the House, Redmond made his maiden speech—a single sentence of protest—before he was removed by the serjeant at arms.
After this turbulent beginning, Redmond's part in parliament was quiet. But his talent as a speaker was utilized on English platforms, and his power of persuasive and moderate statement caused him to be chosen in 1882 for a mission to the Irish of Australia, where much opposition to the Irish cause had to be overcome. The Phoenix Park murders had roused indignation, and many who had promised support to the mission drew back. Sir Henry Parkes, the prime minister of New South Wales, proposed that Redmond should be expelled from the colony, but the motion was defeated. The Irish working-men in the colony stood by him and saved the situation, until a telegram arrived exculpating the Irish parliamentary party. Gradually the tide turned, and ultimately Redmond collected £15,000 before going on to America, where another £15,000 was raised. The whole tour occupied two years. He had been joined by his brother W. H. K. Redmond [q.v.], who during his absence in Australia was chosen member for Wexford, Healy having won an Ulster seat. So began a comradeship in service between the brothers, which was strengthened by the fact that in Australia they married near kinswomen. John Redmond's wife was Johanna, daughter of James Dalton, of Orange, New South Wales; their marriage took place in 1883. While Parnell's attitude to England was that of Irish Americans, Redmond's, through the affinities he formed in this early stage, was like that of the Australian Irish, a nationalism devoid of hostility to the British Empire.
The fight was hot in the years after 1886. In 1888, during Mr. Balfour's coercive rule, Redmond had experience of jail, being sentenced to five weeks' imprisonment on a charge of intimidation. But while the prestige of Parnell and his party was at its height, John Redmond did not rank in popularity, fame, or notoriety with Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, Mr. William O'Brien, Mr. Healy, or Mr. T. P. O'Connor. No man was ever less ambitious. He was contented to be a member of a strong and successful movement, useful in the team but not seeking to be foremost in anything. Nor did he ever push his chances at the bar, to which he was called in 1886. He had some private means, and was happily married. He lived in Dublin at Leeson Park, where his three children, a son and two daughters, were born within this period; and he and his wife were much in the society of other households belonging to the parliamentary group. But Redmond's social circle was always limited. In London, during the sessions, he adhered strictly to the usage which grew up during the time when Irish members were Ishmaelites in the House of Commons, and he went to no houses but those of Irish sympathizers. In Dublin, the political struggle, then virtually a class-war, estranged him from his own class and even from his kin. His childless uncle, the owner of Ballytrent, in leaving him the family estate, so arranged his will that the inheritance was financially and politically a burden.
The closest of ties, however, bound him to his brother, and the two doubly related households lived in the utmost intimacy. When, in 1889, Mrs. John Redmond died, her three children were mainly in the care of Mrs. William Redmond. But before this bereavement, the crisis had come which called John Redmond to exert for the first time all his forces. On 17 November 1890 a verdict was given against Parnell in the undefended O'Shea divorce case. Next day the standing committee of the National League held its fortnightly meeting. Redmond, who had roused his friends, attended and was moved to the chair; and on his motion a resolution was carried, promising continued support to Parnell. Two days later Redmond with his brother and other stalwarts convened a public meeting in the Leinster Hall, at which similar resolutions were passed. On 25 November parliament assembled; by custom the Irish party met to choose a chairman for the session, and Parnell was re-elected unanimously. That afternoon Mr. Gladstone's letter was published which declared that the continuance of Parnell's leadership would render his own ‘almost a nullity’. In the split in the Irish party which followed, Redmond was Parnell's chief supporter, backing a principle rather than a person. He insisted on the need for absolute independence of British parties. If, he argued, at the bidding of any English statesman the Irish party reversed their previous resolution, their independence was gone. When death ended Parnell's career on 6 October 1891, Redmond inevitably became leader of the group which had followed him after the split. In these ten months the violence of faction had been so terrible that re-union was impossible. Resigning North Wexford, which had been his seat since the Redistribution Act of 1885, Redmond stood for Cork, which Parnell had represented since 1880. He was heavily beaten. Here and everywhere the decisive influence of the Catholic clergy was thrown as strongly against this devout Catholic as against his former leader. A few weeks later, however, a vacancy occurred in Waterford, and though Michael Davitt [q.v.] was made his opponent, Redmond was returned. This was the sole seat which the Parnellites captured, and when the general election came in June 1892 their party was reduced to nine. Yet from the opening of the first session of this parliament, Redmond ranked, by common consent, among the foremost debaters in the House. His position was indeed easier than that of the main body, since his was the more acceptable rôle of laying down what a Home Rule bill should be, theirs of considering what they could get. He was essentially at this time a partisan leader. Justin McCarthy [q.v.], chairman of the anti-Parnellites, wrote later: ‘Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and was utterly unsparing of the men who maintained the other side of the controversy.’ Yet, though his group were by their position irresponsible, embittered by the campaign against them and especially by the part played in it by the clergy, Redmond himself avoided personal vilification and, moreover, never sank the statesman in the partisan. Thus in 1894 he served on the Childers commission on financial relations alongside of Mr. Sexton, one of his chief opponents. When the tories came into power (1895), and Sir Horace Plunkett put forward the proposal that Irish members should act together in the recess as a committee to advise on Irish affairs, Mr. McCarthy, for the anti-Parnellites, refused, but Redmond accepted and signed the report which led to the creation of an Irish department of agriculture in 1899. In 1897 when Mr. Gerald Balfour promised a local government measure, again the larger group refused to welcome the proposal, and again Redmond promised his support. He did not share the fear that Ireland's desire for Home Rule might be killed by minor concessions.
Meanwhile Ireland was sick of faction, and proposals for re-union were constantly under discussion. Ultimately the South African War united Irishmen in a common feeling; and at the opening of the session of 1900, Irish members assembled as one party for the first time since the split. Redmond was chosen to be chairman. It was a choice largely dictated by irreconcilable claims among the leaders of the larger group; and it was clearly laid down that he should be chairman of the party, not leader of the movement. Probably no one contemplated that he would be irremovable. He became so by sheer merit; above all, by total lack of jealousy. As chairman, he never sought to impose his will on the party; but he had an extraordinary gift for so presenting a case as to carry acceptance. He always thought very far ahead and in broad outline, giving to details their just value and no more. During the first years of his chairmanship, the star of George Wyndham [q.v.] was rising, and Redmond threw his whole weight behind the policy which resulted in land purchase; yet he did not allow himself or the party to be involved in the quarrel which arose between Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon over the new measure. He was rewarded with a steadily growing warmth of support from Mr. Dillon; while Mr. Devlin, the one important figure who appeared in the parliamentary movement after Parnell's death, though coming from the anti-Parnellite wing, became more and more affectionately bound to one who for him was certainly leader rather than chairman.
In parliament, Redmond's gifts showed themselves to the greatest advantage. He understood the House of Commons as well as Parnell, but from a different standpoint; he liked and respected it, and always held the belief that from the platform which it afforded he could persuade England into accepting Home Rule. Unlike Parnell, Redmond scarcely ever missed a division in the House of Commons; but he had inherited from Parnell the belief that a leader might to some degree hold himself aloof, and the privacy which he loved was much happier after he married in 1899 his second wife, Miss Ada Beazley. Nearly all the time when parliament was not sitting was spent at Aughavanagh, an old shooting lodge of Parnell's which he had bought, remote in the Wicklow mountains.
The Irish leader's difficulties began when the liberal party attained power (1906). Mr. Asquith's section of it had pledged themselves to go no farther than the instalment of administrative Home Rule known as ‘devolution’, which Redmond had denounced on the eve of the election as affording ‘absolutely no remedy for the state of grievances admitted’. Yet he had no choice but to give Irish support in Great Britain to liberals, except where there was a labour candidate, and the sweeping liberal victory was accepted as a triumph for Ireland.
The first important measure of the new government was an English Education Bill which roused hostility from the Roman Catholic Church. Yet on this Bill Redmond contrived by skilful management to earn the thanks of Archbishop Bourne, and still to support the Bill, in which he had gained certain amendments, in its final stage. When at the close of a year's work the Lords threw out the measure, Redmond, knowing that the liberals had shirked Home Rule because its certain rejection by the upper House meant either its abandonment or a contest to change the English constitution for the sake of Ireland, urged an immediate appeal to the electors. There was now a chance to challenge the veto of the peers on a purely English issue. But his counsel was rejected; and, for Ireland, the proposed measure of devolution became now the main interest. By the end of 1906, Redmond was convinced that the Bill would not be acceptable. Yet liberal ministers were confident that Ireland would receive their proposals gladly, and Redmond pledged himself in advance that a full convention of his supporters should decide. In the opinion of Mr. Hayden, one of his ablest and most trusted colleagues, the character of Redmond's speech on the first reading was due to a loyal observance of his pledge that the decision should be left to Ireland; and on the morning after the debate, Redmond sent for Mr. Hayden to show him the motion of rejection which he proposed to put to the convention. None the less, the House of Commons had taken his speech for a guarded acceptance, and in Ireland his moving of the rejection was considered as an enforced concession to popular feeling.
Nothing in all Redmond's career before the European War so shook his prestige or that of his party as this episode; but he recovered his ground by a powerful campaign carried throughout Ireland, speaking in every centre of importance, and thus bringing himself into touch with many thousands to whom he had been but a name. His oratory never had the power to excite; but it could convince; and wherever he spoke he left the impression not only of high eloquence but of courage and complete sincerity.
The chance given to his policy by the conflict over Mr. Lloyd George's budget of 1909 brought with it new difficulties, for many Irish interests were hard hit by the measure; and after the general election an Irish opposition under Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Healy came back stronger than the Parnellite party had been in 1892. But the elections in England had placed the Irish leader in a position to turn the scale, and his decisive stand, when Mr. Asquith showed signs of avoiding the direct issue of the Lords' veto, greatly increased his authority both in Ireland and in parliament; while a tour in America (at the close of 1910) enabled him to refill his party chest for the election which took place in December 1910 and to assure himself of enthusiastic support throughout the Irish world. The passing of the Parliament Act in 1911 was regarded by Ireland and by himself as largely due to the power of the Irish party. In the English constituencies Redmond and the cause for which he stood were no longer unpopular. From 1908 onwards he spoke at many centres in Great Britain; and his personal dignity, the moderation of his tone, and the magnanimity which was his best characteristic, contributed more than the work of all other men to change England's policy on this question.
But the real difficulty which Redmond had to face lay in Ulster, of which, like most Irishmen of the South, he knew little. He accepted the view that Ulster's military preparations were only a bluff; and he did not realize how strong a feeling was growing among the young generation of Irishmen that Ulster had set an example to all Ireland. When the Irish volunteer movement was started in the close of 1913, he watched it with suspicion; but in the spring of 1914 the ‘Curragh mutiny’, followed by the Larne gun-running, revealed to him the full seriousness of the situation. Then, and only then, he threw his support into the volunteer movement, and Ireland came into it en masse; but the control of the volunteer organization was already very largely in the hands of men whose purpose was different from his. Yet he was still confident of his power to direct events in Ireland. In this year he visited one of his friends, a leading priest in county Tipperary, who asked him ‘Is there anything that can rob us this time?’ Redmond paused, and said ‘A European war might do it’.
In July 1914 he took part with Mr. Dillon in the abortive conference at Buckingham Palace. On 26 July came the attempt of Crown forces to take rifles from Irish volunteers on the road from Howth, and the subsequent affray when soldiers fired without orders on a Dublin crowd. A week later parliament was confronted with the announcement of war, and Redmond, rising in the debate, made his declaration that all troops could be withdrawn from Ireland. The Irish volunteers would guard the country—‘For that purpose the armed Catholics in the south will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant Ulstermen.’ He had spoken without consultation; but the reception of his words in Ireland as well as in England led the party to endorse Mr. Dillon's opinion that the speech had been a ‘great stroke of statesmanship’. It was, however, largely foiled by the War Office, which refused to accept Redmond's proposal that the volunteers should receive recognition and, so far as possible, arms and training. Lord Kitchener held that this would be to arm rebels. Even the project of forming a distinctively Irish division, to correspond to that already sanctioned for Ulster, met with constant rebuffs. But Redmond persisted in his endeavour to create in Ireland an atmosphere favourable to recruiting. When the Coalition was formed (May 1915), a post in the Cabinet, but not an Irish post, was offered him, and was refused: he held strongly that Sir Edward Carson also should decline office in view of the effect on Ireland. This view did not prevail, and Irish recruiting dropped from 6,000 in May to 3,000 in June. Later, mainly through Redmond's efforts, it recovered, and by November the National Volunteers had sent 27,054 men to the colours, the Ulster Volunteers 27,412. But conscription was now in sight, and Redmond plainly told Mr. Asquith that the enforcement of it in Ireland would be an impossibility. He had so far impressed old opponents that in May 1916 Mr. Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson supported him in opposing the inclusion of Ireland in the first National Service Bill. Ireland had then furnished at least 100,000 soldiers, of whom the majority were Catholic. He himself had visited the front in November 1915 and come back with the sense that ‘from the commander-in-chief himself right down through the army one meets Irishmen wherever one goes’. He was even prouder of this than of the welcome which met him everywhere.
But in Ireland disaffection was spreading. Redmond underrated the danger, but gave certain advice to the government. ‘What I did suggest, they never did; what I said they ought not to do, they always did,’ was his own account of these communications. The Rebellion (April 1916) however, took him absolutely by surprise, and in parliament he expressed ‘detestation and horror’ of the events in Dublin. He denounced it in a public manifesto as a German intrigue, ‘not half so much treason to the cause of the Allies as treason to the cause of Home Rule.’ He accepted as just the executions of three leaders in the rising; but for the rest he begged that the leniency shown by Botha in South Africa should be imitated. As before, his advice was rejected. ‘I have had no power in the government of Ireland,’ he said in parliament, ‘all my suggestions have been overborne … and my conviction is that if we had had the power and responsibility for the government of our country during the past two years, recent occurrences in Ireland would never have taken place.’ Many shared this opinion, and negotiations were begun to bring Home Rule into operation. On the faith of a written document, Redmond, with Mr. Devlin's aid, persuaded the nationalists of Ulster to agree to the temporary exclusion of six counties. The Cabinet then repudiated the agreement, which had been made by Mr. Lloyd George with Mr. Asquith's concurrence; and Irishmen who already considered that Redmond had missed his chance of driving a bargain at the opening of the War, now held that he had been ignominiously duped. Redmond knew that he had not the confidence of the country, but he remained at his post. The death of his brother in action at the Wytschaete Ridge in June 1917, followed in a few weeks by that of Patrick O'Brien, chief whip to the party, and his most devoted follower, were deadly blows to the Irish leader's spirit.
This was his state when the last phase of his work began. In May 1917 the Irish question had been re-opened, and on a suggestion from Redmond himself it was decided to try the expedient of a convention of Irishmen for the drafting of a constitution for Ireland within the Empire. Before it met on 25 July, William Redmond's seat had been captured by Mr. de Valera, and at the opening meeting Redmond was insulted in the streets of Dublin. In the Convention he refused throughout to act as leader of a party, but his personal ascendancy was admitted on all sides; and the group of southern unionists showed a disposition to make common cause with him. But their proposals did not give to Ireland the complete fiscal control on which a section of nationalists insisted; and Redmond, on a motion designed to effect agreement with them, found the Catholic prelates and Mr. Devlin against him. He withdrew his motion, and consented to act as one of a delegation to the ministers from the nationalist members of the Convention. This took him to London in February 1918; he fell ill there, and when the Convention reassembled to discuss the government's reply, he was absent. On 6 March he died suddenly and unexpectedly. A few weeks later the government passed a measure applying conscription to Ireland, and the train of events was finally set in motion which largely undid the work of his life.
In the period of Redmond's leadership three main points were carried by the Irish people in their long struggle to regain mastery of their country: control of local government, ownership of the land, and statutory establishment of an Irish parliament with an executive responsible to it. These were essential to the complete reconquest of self-government, which came within five years from his death, achieved by means which he deliberately rejected. His aim was to establish in Ireland parliamentary institutions, capable of growth to the limit of such powers as Ireland should find necessary for her free development. Separation was no object of his. He aimed at a free Ireland within the Empire, liberated by friendly means. He aimed also at a willing union of all Irishmen, and avoided all that could increase race-bitterness. The only concession to which he could not bring himself was that of excluding any part of Ulster, except for a limited period. He was not willing that in this matter the decision should rest with Protestant Ulster. But the essential generosity of his nature is revealed in the project that Irishmen on the brink of civil war should find reconciliation by rivalry in self-sacrifice against a common enemy in a good cause. This project, after many thousand Irish lives had been sacrificed, he lived to see discomfited, and he died in the full sense of disastrous defeat.
[Stephen Gwynn, John Redmond's Last Years, 1919; L. G. Redmond Howard, John Redmond, 1910; Home Rule: Speeches of John Redmond, M.P., edited by R. Barry O'Brien, 1910; political literature of the time; personal knowledge.]