Redmond, John Edward (1856-1918)

Irish nationalist politician, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) 1900-18. He rallied his party after Charles Stewart Parnell's imprisonment in 1881, and came close to achieving home rule for all Ireland in 1914. However, the pressure of World War I, Unionist intransigence, and the fallout of the 1916 Easter Rising destroyed both his career and his party.

In Parliament Redmond was born in Ballytrent, County Wexford, the son of a member of Parliament. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College, Dublin, and was elected MP for New Ross in 1881. He quickly established himself as an able speaker and loyal supporter of Parnell, then party leader. He became MP for North Wexford in 1885, and then for Waterford in 1891 until his death. After Parnell's death in 1891, Redmond led the Parnellite minority which had split from the party, until the party reunified under Redmond's leadership in 1900.

Failure of home rule In 1910, with the Conservative and Liberals evenly split in terms of seats, Redmond's party held the balance of power. In return for his support for the Liberal government, Redmond secured the passage of the Third Home Rule Bill in May 1914. With the Lords' veto abolished in 1911, it appeared that home rule had at long last been achieved. However, two factors counted against it: one was the threat of a civil war between the Irish nationalists and the Ulster Unionists, who were enjoying much sympathy from within the Conservative Party and from the British military; the other was World War I, which crucially delayed the implementation of home rule and ultimately fatally split the Liberal Party, upon whom Redmond depended for support. Redmond professed Ireland's loyalty to Britain as a means of keeping home rule on track with his Woodenbridge Speech on September 1914, when he called upon Irish volunteers to enlist in the British Army and fight for the empire. This angered radical Irish nationalists and helped to bring together those elements that staged the Easter Rising in 1916. This event caught Redmond completely by surprise, and his condemnation of it as a ‘German intrigue’ displayed the extent to which he was out of touch with a new generation of Irish nationalists. He later condemned the execution of the rebel leaders, but was ignored by the Lloyd George coalition and the British military, who no longer needed him. By 1917, Redmond was being squeezed between a reorganized Sinn Fein, which was gaining mass support for its more extreme republican ethos, and Unionist demands for the partition of Ireland.