Life
1856-1918 [John Edward; J. E. Redmond]; Irish Parl. Party leader; b. Ballytrant
[err. Ballytrent], Co. Wexford; ed. Clongowes and TCD; clerkship in House
of Commons, where his father was an MP; elected MP for New Ross, 1881-85;
principal lieutenant of Charles Stewart Parnell; toured Australia with
William Redmond, MP North Wexford, 1885-91; addressed the Irish Literary
Society on ‘Wexford in ’98’, 1885; Gray’s Inn and
English bar, 1885, Irish bar 1887; MP Waterford, 1891-1918; assumed Presidency
of United Irish League, fnd. by William O’Brien, making it the party
machine of the IPP, 1900 (100,000 members by 1901); carried League organisation
to American against opposition of Devoy and Clan na Gael; remained loyal
to Parnell in split; leading the remnant; Chairman reunited Party at formation
of United Irish League, 1900; protested ‘usurpation of the government
of Ireland by the English parliament’ in nationalist meeting of Aug.
1902 held to pronounce refusal to participate in coronation of Edward
VII; lectured in America (‘What the last ten years had accomplished
for Ireland’, Detroit 1910); lacked support of Tim Healy and William
O’Brien; supported Asquith in exchange for Home Rule policy, 1911;
forced Asquith and the Liberals to present Third Home Rule Bill of 1912;
allowed only temporary exclusion of Ulster; demanded control of the Irish
Volunteers committee through majority of seats on it; assured Government
of the loyalty of the Irish Volunteers at the outbreak of war (160,000
men by July 1914); made speech at Woodenbridge, 20 Sept. 1914, urging
nationalists to enlist in British Army, causing diminished support for
United Irish League; formation of Anti-War committee by James Connolly;
120,000 Irish Volunteers join the British Forces, 10,000, remaining behind
to form the force involved in the 1916 Rising; Redmond regarded 1916 as
‘a German intrigue’; pleaded for remission of capital sentences;
lived in Ireland at Aughavanagh, a big house in Co. Wicklow; oil portrait
by Henry Hones Thaddeus in the National Gallery of Ireland and another
by Sir John Lavery in the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (Parnell Sq.);
Redmond was characterised by Sean O’Faolain as the ‘true Norman
type’ in The Irish (1947). JMC DNB DIB DIH FDA OCIL
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Works
Historical and Political Addresses 1883-1897 (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers
& Walker 1898); Richard Barry O’Brien, ed., Speeches of John
Redmond MP (London: Fisher Unwin 1910); Ireland and the War; Extracts
from Speeches made in the House of Commons and in Ireland since the Outbreak
of the War (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker 1915); What the
Irish Regiments have Done (London: T. Fisher Unwin 1916).
J. E. Remond, Ireland and the Coronation: Why Ireland is Discontented (UIL of Great Britain pamphlets No. 2, 1901); Account of a Visit to the Front of J. E. Redmond, M.P. in November 1915: with a speech Delivered by Mr Redmond on 23 Nov. 1915 (London 1915); Introduction to Michael MacDonagh, The Irish at the Front (London 1916), pp.1-14 [all cited in D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, London: Routledge 1982; 1991, p.272-73; n., p.292.]
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Criticism
L. G. Redmond-Howard, John Redmond: The Man and the Demand, a Biographical
Study in Irish Politics (London 1910), ill.; W. B Wells, John Redmond
(Longmans 1919).
Denis Gwynn, The Life of John Redmond (London: Harrap 1932; rep. 1971).
N[icholas] S. Mansergh, ‘John Redmond’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien, ed., The Shaping of Modern Ireland (1960).
Paul Bew, John Redmond [for Historical Assoc. of Ireland] (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press 1997), 67pp.
Paul Bew, Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism 1912-1916 (Oxford: Clarendon 1994).
Irish Book Lover, Vol. 1.
F. S. L. Lyons, ‘Dillon, Redmond and the Irish Home Rulers’, in F. X. Martin, ed., Leaders and men of the Easter Rising, Dublin 1916 (London 1967).
Pat Walsh, The Rise and Fall of Imperial Ireland: Redmondism in the Context of Britain’s Conquestion of South Africa and its Great War on Germany 1899-1916 (Belfast: Athol Books 2003), 594pp.
See also remarks from Wooden Bridge speech, quoted by Seamus Heaney in an article on Francis Ledwidge (Irish Times, 21 Oct. 1992), Ledwidge, RX.
Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912-1985 (CUP 1989), pp. 21, 22, 29, 47.
James Stephens, Insurrection in Dublin (1916), p.146-47).
Rev. Robert O’Loughran, Redmond’s Vindication (Talbot/T. Fisher Unwin 1919.
L. G. Redmond-Howard, John Redmond, The Man and the Demand [biographical study in Irish politics] (London: Hurst & Blackett 1910).
Peter Costello, The Heart Grown Brutal: The Irish Revolution in Literature from Parnell to the Death of W. B. Yeats 1891-1939 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1977), p.86.
Paul Bew, on Parnell, Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1991, p. 20.
Paul Bew, reviewing David Dutton, Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, The Unionist Party in Opposition 1905-15 (Liverpool UP 1992), in The Irish Times, 3 Oct. 1992.
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982), ‘What Home Rule Stood For, 1891-1918’.
D. G. Boyce, ‘Separatism and the Irish National Tradition’, in Colin H. Williams, ed., National Separatism (Cardiff: Wales UP 1982), pp.96-97
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography, ‘three main points
gained, control of local govt., ownership of land, and statuary establishment
of Irish parliament with executive responsible to it; nationalist, devoid
of hostility to Britain, who aimed at free Ireland within the Empire.’
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904); ‘First Steps Toward Home Rule’, extract from speech in Chicago, Aug. 18 1886.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects Speeches of John Redmond MP (1910), ‘Ireland and the Boer War’ (Westminster 7 Feb. 1900); also ‘The Administration of Justice in Ireland’; and Ireland and the War [339-46]; his tactics of conciliation misunderstood unionism ... unlike Parnell in relying on British politicians to deliver Home Rule ... [his] policy of conciliation culminated in his Woodenbridge speech ... leading to no political gain [Seamus Deane, ed.], 211-[13]; Thomas Clarke testifies to John Redmond’s responding to his prison letter with many a visit, and ‘whose kindness I can never forget’, 282-83; Eoin MacNeill’s analysis of unionism (1913), ‘Ireland is to be held for the empire or for the empyrean, against the pope, against John Redmond, or against the man in the moon’, 287; [320n]; Redmond, ‘I assert my belief that the dethronement of Mr Parnell will be the signal for kindling the fires of dissension in every land were the Irish race has found a home’ (6th Day in Committee room No.15, reported in T. P. O’Connor 1929), 326; John Redmond, ‘He is the master of the Party. Then Mr Healy cried, ‘Who is to be mistress of the Party?’ [ibid.], 327; [331]; ‘leading the little band who still upheld the name of the Parnell’, 335; William O’Brien, ‘The Case of Mr Redmond’, The Downfall of Parliamentarianism (1918), Chap. VI, ‘..the best defence of Mr Redmond’s leadership is that he never was the leader ... managed to persuade himself that his optimism was not insincere, the true explanation of the almost uninterrupted series of blunders which characterised the course of his nominal leadership, is that he found himself compelled to pursue a programme in which he profoundly disbelieved ... ’, 350-51; Shaw’s ironic comments on British expectations of Redmond, ‘if he began to use his powers to make himself agreeable instead of making himself reckoned with by the enemy ... ’ (Pref., John Bull’s Other Island 1904), 477, and note on his loss of leadership through support of enlistment, 478n; urged Irish to enlist in British army during WWI in return for promise of Home rule, threatened resignation at 1916 executions, lost ground to Sinn Féin, humiliated [not to ibid], 506; Douglas Hyde, in Necessity &c., ‘whether Mr Redmond or Mr MacCarthy lead the largest wing of the Irish party [of no importance], 532; Irish council Bill rejected by, 740; Aodh de Blacam (in Towards the Republic, 1918) asserts that in Western Ireland ‘you may meet strong farmers who have never heard of John Redmond’, 985; Gaelic League applauded by Redmond (Frederick Ryan reports), 998; [370: Works & Criticism, as supra.] Vol. 3 [Joyce’s “Home Rule Comet”: ‘the Irish leader Redmond proclaimed the happy news to a crowd of fishermen’, 11; Joyce, “Ivy Day”, no direct ref.], 25n; Seán Ó Faolain, ‘once the Land Acts had been won, John Redmond was the weaker for it’ (The Bell, 1943), 103; [compared to Birmingham, 411; Sean O’Casey, ‘H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister, stood side by side with John Redmond at a recruiting meeting in the house of Dublin’s Lord Mayor, but the forest of British guns and bayonets round the building kept his voice from travelling; and Dublin roared out her contempt for the pair of political brokers, but still the swinging columns of Kellys, Burkes, and Sheas tramped to the quays, and, singing, went forth to battle for England, little nations, and homes unfit for humans to live in ... ’ (Drums Under the Window, 1945), 456; Bulmer Hobson at odds with McDermott over admission of Redmond’s nominees to the Irish Volunteers (Ireland Yesterday and Tomorrow, 1968), 504; Patrick Shea, ‘.. a body blow had been dealt the Irish Parliamentary Party. John Redmond, its leader, had urged his followers to join in the fight for the freedom of small nations; he had lost his brother at the battle of the Somme ... the Sinn Fein party had benefited enormously’ (Voices and the Sound of Drums, 1981), 537; [‘Faolain, no word Gael in Redmond, et al., 570; [nul 622]; Redmond’s Westminster speech of 3 Aug. 1914 [see supra], 624; [Deane, ed., Redmond at Woodenbridge in 1914, ?err], 683; [not wanted, in Larkin’s ‘Scathing Indictment, 1913 [printed ?1920], 711; imprisoned in 1888 [cited in the dock by Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, 716; Connolly on IPP recruitment policy, ‘reveal in a most striking and unmistakable manner the depths of betrayal to which so-called Nationalist politicians are willing to sink’, 725; ‘the betrayal of the national democracy’ [ibid.], 726; [more, ibid.], 727.
Belfast Public Library holds Great Irishmen (1920); Historical and Political Addresses (1898); Home Rule Speeches, ed. R. Barry O’Brien (1910). Also (biog.), Stephen Gwynn, John Redmond’s Last Years (1919).
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; 1991), cites J. E. Remond, Ireland and the Coronation: Why Ireland is Discontented (UIL of Great Britain pamphlets No. 2, 1901); Account of a Visit to the Front of J. E. Redmond, M.P. in November 1915: with a speech Delivered by Mr Redmond on 23 Nov. 1915 (London 1915); Introduction to Michael MacDonagh, The Irish at the Front (London 1916), pp.1-14 (Boyce, op. cit., pp.272-73; n., p.292.)
Who Fears to Speak? John Redmond addressed the Society on ‘Wexford
in ’98’ in 1885 (see W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival,
1894, p.24).
James Joyce held a copy of What the Irish Regiments have Done (London: T. Fisher Unwin 1916), stamped "J.J.", in his Trieste Library. (See Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, Faber, p.125 [Appendix].
Portraits of John Redmond: 1] oil by Sir John Lavery, Municipal (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Mus. 1965); a bust of 1910 by Francis W. Doyle-Jones in the House of Commons, rep. as frontispiece port. in Denis Gwynn’s Life of Redmond; also as photograph in Rosslare Strand Hotel, Co. Wexford; a photo-card of same in copy placed beside funerary plaque with last words of ‘love’ from J. E. Redmond, his grand-uncle, of Wexford town (d.1865).
United in death: There is a photograph of the men of the 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions standing at the grave of Major Willie Redmond, Sept. 1917, in the Imperial War Museum collection. (See Fortnight [Belfast], June 2003, p.8.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)