Irish politician, son of W. A. Redmond, M.P.; born at Waterford. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn in 1886, and subsequently to the Irish bar, though he never practised. He was a clerk in the vote office of the House of Commons before he entered parliament in 1881 as member for New Ross. From 1885 to 1891 he represented North Wexford. As party whip he rendered great service to the Irish members by his thorough grasp of the procedure of the House. At the time of the rupture of the Irish party consequent on the Parnell scandals, Redmond was the most eloquent member of the minority who continued to recognize his leadership, and in 1891 he became the accredited leader of the Parnellites. In 1900 the two Nationalist parties were amalgamated under his leadership. He contested Cork unsuccessfully in 1891, but was elected for Waterford, where he was re-elected in 1906.
Redmond obtained for the first time a position of real power in Parliament after the first general election of 1910. After he had amalgamated the two Irish Nationalist parties under his own lead in 1900, he had never hitherto been able, owing to the large Unionist majority of 1900, and the independent Liberal majority of 1906, to hold that balance of power in the House of Commons which had proved such a formidable weapon in the hands first of O’Connell and afterwards of Parnell. But the great reduction of the Liberal forces in January 1910 made it impossible that Mr. Asquith’s Government should long continue unless it found favour in Mr. Redmond’s eyes. The first use which he made of this new authority was to insist that Mr. Lloyd George’s famous budget of 1909, on which the dissolution had turned, but which was in itself not very congenial to the Irish party, should be postponed till after the constitutional resolutions directed against the House of Lords—his one object being to remove the veto of the Upper House, which was the main barrier against Home Rule. This order of procedure was also demanded by the Labour party and by the Radicals; and the Government complied. But Redmond did not trust them completely, and pressed for an assurance that the Royal prerogative would be at the Prime Minister’s disposal to overbear any rejection by the Lords of the veto resolutions. He regretted King Edward’s death as being a momentary “check to the onward march of the constitutional struggle,” and he was impatient at the constitutional conference which was called early in the new reign in order to endeavour—vainly, as the result proved—to discover a solution by consent. He himself occupied the months of its session by a successful expedition to America to secure sympathy and funds. In spite of a harassing movement on his flank by a small party of Independent Nationalists who had Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Healy as their spokesmen, and who accused him of having sold the Irish vote to the Government, he subsequently conducted a strenuous campaign on behalf of the ministerial programme for the second general election of the year. He denounced the House of Lords as the special enemy of Ireland, and said that this was not only a Home Rule election, but the great Home Rule election. When the result of the polling had confirmed him in his tenure of the balance of Parliamentary power, he forwarded the progress of the Parliament bill in 1911 by the steady vote of his party rather than by speech. In the autumn he was regularly consulted on the details of the forthcoming Home Rule bill, and delivered speeches assuring the English that the Home Rule Parliament would be duly subordinate to the Imperial Parliament, and that the Protestants had nothing to fear from Roman Catholic domination, and assuring the Irish that they would find the provisions of the bill satisfactory. When the bill was introduced in April 1912, he welcomed it in the House on behalf of the Nationalists as a great and adequate measure. He disclaimed Separatism, and said that Irish Separatists, once numerous, were now very few, and would disappear when Home Rule was granted. He went over to Ireland and succeeded in almost silencing adverse Nationalist criticism of details, and procured an enthusiastic acceptance of the bill from a Nationalist convention. His speeches during the passage of the bill through Parliament were of a moderate character and accepted the measure as a final settlement; but, while professing goodwill towards Ulster, he resisted any attempt to take her out of the bill as a mutilation of Ireland. In token of the union of feeling between Nationalists and Liberals, he attended the autumn meeting of the National Liberal Federation at Nottingham in November 1912, and spoke for the first time on the same platform as Mr. Asquith, saying that, on every great item of the Liberal programme, the Nationalists were sincerely with them. When, in the next year, these began to talk, in view of the determined attitude of Ulster, of a settlement by consent between parties, he was very slow to agree and was criticised by the Independent Nationalists for his unconciliatory attitude. He professed himself ready to discuss further safeguards; but he would not go into a conference at which Home Rule would be “put into the melting pot”; Ireland, he said, was a unit, and the two-nations theory an abomination. In a speech at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on November 14th, he denounced the passionate opposition of the Unionists and Ulster as “a gigantic game of bluff and blackmail.” He would pay a large price for settlement by consent; but it must be consistent with national self-government for Ireland. He constantly insisted that the bill would, under the Parliament Act, automatically become law in 1914. But, in deference to the general feeling, he said in the debate on the Address in that year that he would consider in the broadest and friendliest spirit any proposals for an agreed settlement that the Government might make, though he protested against the idea of an Amending bill. When Mr. Asquith proposed the scheme of provisional exclusion, by county option, for six years, he treated this as the extreme limit of concession, and consequently this was the proposal which the Government embodied in their Amending bill. He absolutely refused to consider the total exclusion of Ulster. He had difficulties with the extremists in Ireland that spring and summer. The enrolment of the Ulster Volunteers had suggested the idea of similar formations in the other three provinces to defend the Nationalist idea; and under the fostering of leaders like Casement and of the rising Sinn Fein organization, these forces had reached large numbers—over 100,000 by the spring of 1914. Their growth had been discouraged by Mr. Redmond and his colleagues; but he felt it necessary now to obtain control, and, after a somewhat sharp struggle with the extremists, succeeded in doing so in June. At the end of July he took part, in spite of Nationalist criticism, in the abortive Buckingham Palace Conference.
Then came the World War, and in the debate succeeding Sir E. Grey’s famous declaration on bank holiday, August 3rd, Redmond created a profound sensation by a speech in which he declared that the events of recent years had completely altered the Nationalist feeling towards Great Britain. The Government, he said, might withdraw its troops from Ireland, whose coasts would be defended by her own sons, Nationalist Volunteers joining with Ulster Volunteers in the task. This generous attitude was met by the decision of the Government to pass the Home Rule bill into law, suspending its operation till after the war. Redmond took an active part in promoting recruiting in Ireland. He stood on the platform in Dublin Mansion House on September 25th by the side of the Prime Minister and the Lord Lieutenant, and said that Ireland would feel bound in honour to take her place beside the other autonomous portions of the King’s dominions. “You have kept faith with Ireland,” he said; “Ireland will keep faith with you.” Unfortunately, owing partly to the anti-recruiting agitation promoted by Sinn Fein and other extremists, and partly to red tape at the War Office, his efforts were only moderately successful. But he constantly opposed the application of conscription in any shape to Ireland, and in consequence neither of the military service bills of the spring of 1916 applied to that country. He had refused Mr. Asquith’s request for his help in office in the Coalition Government of June 1915; and the fact that he stood out, while Sir E. Carson was included, no doubt intensified the smouldering dissatisfaction in southern Ireland, which broke into a blaze in the Dublin Rebellion of Easter 1916. This was a stunning blow to Redmond, who had not realized the growing strength and virulence of the Sinn Fein movement. He expressed in the House of Commons his detestation of the crime, and lent his assistance to the attempt that was made by the Government in the summer through Mr. Lloyd George to arrange an agreed settlement of the whole Irish question. At first it looked as if the negotiations would be successful, on the basis of bringing the Home Rule Act into immediate operation, while excluding the six Ulster counties by an Amending bill which should cover all the period of the war, and a short interval after it. The consent was obtained of all Irish parties, except the southern Unionists; but certain modifications which the Unionists in the Cabinet demanded were treated by the Nationalists as amounting to a breach of faith; and Redmond announced his intention of criticising ministers for their procrastination not only with regard to Ireland but also with regard to the whole conduct of the war. The negotiations having failed, and the Government having restored the ordinary civil administration of Ireland, with Mr. Duke, K.C., a Unionist, as Chief Secretary, Redmond treated this as a fresh outrage on Ireland; and on October 18th he moved a resolution charging ministers with maintaining a system of government in Ireland inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies were fighting in Europe. The result, he said, was that Irish regiments could not be kept up to their full strength, and that his efforts to aid recruiting had been nullified. The motion was, of course, rejected by a large majority. He criticised Mr. Lloyd George’s administration in March 1917 on similar lines, and threatened a return by his party to the old obstructionist opposition. In May, however, the Prime Minister suggested among other alternatives that an Irish convention should be assembled for the purpose of producing a scheme of Irish self-government. To this Redmond agreed; and in the convention he played a prominent and conciliatory part, making in particular a favourable impression on the southern Unionists. During its sittings, however, his health failed. He died of heart failure in London on the 6th of March 1918.
In private life, John Redmond was much liked among his friends, but he never went much into society. He was happily married to an Australian lady, Miss Dalton, by whom he had a son and two daughters. See also “Ireland and the Coronation.”
