John Redmond

John Redmond (born Sept. 1, 1856, Dublin, Ire.—died March 6, 1918, London, Eng.) was the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (commonly called the Irish Nationalist Party, or the Nationalists) who devoted his life to achieving Home Rule for Ireland.

After he was elected to the House of Commons for New Ross, Wexford (1881), Redmond set a record by taking his seat, making his maiden speech, and being suspended all within 24 hours. On missions in 1883–84 to Australia and the United States, he collected money to further the Irish cause.

As a fervent admirer of Charles Stewart Parnell, Redmond became Parnell’s party whip. When the Irish Parliamentary Party split after the Parnell divorce scandal (November 1890), Redmond became the leader of the minority Parnellite faction. He was elected to Parliament for Waterford (1891), which he represented until his death. His eloquence and arguments converted many in England to Home Rule.

When a Liberal ministry became dependent on Irish Nationalist support after the 1910 elections, Redmond enjoyed a balance of power favourable to the Irish. In 1912 he saw the introduction of a third Home Rule Bill, and its passage seemed assured by 1914. In the northeastern Irish counties, however, pro-English sentiment was high among the Ulster Unionists, and an armed opposition to the bill began to form. When a counteropposition began to take up arms in Dublin (November 1913), Redmond feared civil war. By March 1914 he reluctantly agreed that those northeastern counties voting against Home Rule could be excluded from it briefly, but the Unionists demanded exclusion for all nine Ulster counties.

Redmond promised full Irish support to the Allies in World War I, but his proposal that the home defense of Ireland be entrusted to the southern Irish, as well as to the Ulster Volunteers, was ignored, and his efforts to recruit southern brigades for service overseas were hampered in London. The Easter Rising, the republican insurrection in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, took Redmond by surprise and shattered his policy. He served in the Irish constitutional convention (July 1917), but it became virtually deadlocked by early 1918. Shortly afterward, disillusioned by the collapse of his life’s work, he died after an operation for gallstones.