John Redmond :
Discarded Leader

Stephen Collins

Issue 390, vol.98, Summer 2009

The 1916 leaders, who had effectively rebelled against him, and not simply against the British Government, became the icons of the new state. Their cult of blood sacrifice was adopted as the national myth even though the Free State quickly developed into a functioning parliamentary democracy that owed very little to the revolutionary values of 1916.

Redmond, as his modern biographer, Dermot Meleady, points out in the first volume of his fine, ambitious work, has managed “the difficult feat of becoming at once a neglected and controversial figure.” From time to time his reputation has been dusted down and his contribution to the creation of our democracy acknowledged, but the rehabilitation phase has never lasted very long. This mainly because Fianna Fail, the dominant party of Irish politics since 1932, cannot bring itself to acknowledge his political legacy without casting doubt on the myths of 1916. Political opponents of Fianna Fail who adopted a more inclusive form of nationalism than the traditional variety were regularly dismissed as “Redmondites”, even when Fianna Fáil itself finally came around to Redmond’s basic approach.

Fine Gael is more inclined to give some recognition to Redmond, because his political heirs in the Centre Party were involved in the formation of the new party in 1933. The former Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, had a picture of Redmond on the wall of the Taoiseach’s office during his spell in power, but it was quickly relegated to the basement by Bertie Ahern, who restored Padraig Pearse to pride of place, when he took over in 1997. Paradoxically, in his approach to the North, Ahern actually adopted a policy that owed far more to Redmond’s belief in a democratic accommodation between Ireland and Britain and between the two traditions on the island, than it did to traditional republican ideology.

There was a rare acknowledgement of Redmond at the 90^th anniversary commemoration of the first Dáil in the Mansion House on January 20^th, 2009. All of the party leaders paid tribute to the Irish democratic tradition at a special sitting of the 30^th Dáil, to mark the occasion, but the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, went a step farther and acknowledged the debt Irish democracy owed to the party of Parnell, Redmond and Dillon:

It is easy to forget the enormous part they played in the shaping of Irish parliamentary democracy. For 40 years it was the voice of nationalist Ireland and for 40 years its goal was an independent Irish Parliament. For all of this it got little thanks. The great Seán MacEoin, the Blacksmith of Ballinalee, expressed it well in 1938 when he said, ‘The old Sinn Féin members should apologise to the members of the old Irish Party... We blackguarded them up and down the country because we were not aware of the facts.’

It is ironic that MacEoin, one of the most successful IRA leaders in War of Independence, should have come around to almost precisely the same view as that of Augustine Birrell, one of the last British politicians who had the task of governing Ireland. Birrell wrote of the Government of the Free State in the late 1920s. “They have entered into their inheritance by the efforts of and great personal sacrifice and risks of the Irish Parliamentary Party they have since flung upon the scrap heap. Politicians seldom deserve gratitude and never get it.”

Early Career
John Redmond was born in South Wexford, at Ballytrent House near Carne, on September 1^st, 1856, the eldest son of William Archer Redmond, nationalist MP from a well-established Catholic gentry family in the county. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College Dublin and became a clerk in the House of Commons.

Determined on a political career, Redmond applied to Parnell, was selected as a candidate for New Ross and elected to the Commons in 1881. An able speaker, he quickly established a reputation for himself as a solid Irish Party MP, but was not immediately admitted to the front rank of a very talented party. He made his reputation during a successful trip to Australia, a trip designed to collect funds and build a political organisation among the Irish community there. At a succession of meetings across Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, Redmond spelled out a compelling argument for constitutional nationalism and raised a considerable sum for the Irish Party to boot. It was also a success on a personal level as it was in Australia that he met his first wife, Johanna Dalton.

While he took part in the Land War and Plan of Campaign and was briefly imprisoned in 1888 for incitement, Redmond always opposed the use of violence to achieve political ends. He was never very comfortable with Parnell’s alliance with the Fenian “hillside men” and remained committed to political change by constitutional means. He had a deep respect for the House of Commons and its traditions and was naturally an enthusiastic supporter of Gladstone’s First Home Rule Bill.

“He did not easily adopt the role of the rebel or fanatic; his natural pose was that of the 18^th century patriot, a Grattan or a Flood,” according to his obituary in the London Times. His ambition, at all stages of his political career, was Irish self-government as part of the British Empire, with acceptance of the Crown as head of state. The heady sensations generated by Gladstone’s First Home Rule Bill in 1886 gave Redmond the conviction that his goal was achievable and it sustained him through the barren years that followed.

Party Leader
After the bitter Parnell split and the death of “the Chief”, Redmond emerged as the leader of the minority Parnellite wing of the Irish Party. While he was widely regarded as a fine speaker, his reserved personality meant that he remained aloof from the squabbles that divided the Irish MPs in the 1890s, following the failure of Gladstone’s Second Home Rule Bill in 1893. When the Irish Party was reunited in 1900, Redmond, with the support of John Dillon, the leading figure in the anti-Parnellite wing, became the leader ahead of more notable figures like William O’Brien and Tim Healy. The very qualities that made Redmond remote from many of his colleagues were the ones that also made him into a leader all of them could accept. Determined to avoid another serious split in the party which might get in the way of the ultimate goal of Home Rule, he responded cautiously to political developments.

For instance, in 1903 Redmond was personally inclined to accept the Wyndham Land Act, having signed the report of the land conference on which it was based. However, he sided with Dillon and other critics of the legislation against O’Brien, who stood by a commitment to back the legislation, and as a result, was forced out of the party and marginalised. Redmond repeated the performance on the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which was designed to implement administrative home rule. He privately backed the measure, but did a rapid u-turn when it was denounced by rank and file party members at a national convention.

In the House of Commons,  Redmond, by this stage, had not only established himself as one of the leading figures, he led a disciplined party that actively participated in every aspect of parliamentary life. The political atmosphere of the period and the day-to-day work of the Irish Party is brilliantly captured in John Pius Boland’s Irishman’s Day, a chronicle of the everyday activity of the Irish Party, written by a man who served as MP for Kerry South from 1900 until 1918.

The victory of the Liberals in the general election of 1906 ended more than a decade of Conservative domination of British politics. The new Government was well disposed to Ireland and this was reflected in the policies of the new Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell, who introduced a range of reforms, including a new land act and the establishment of the National University of Ireland, which were manna from heaven to the Irish Party. For the following decade, Ireland was effective ruled by an alliance of Birrell, Redmond and Dillon.

Home Rule
The holy grail of Home Rule, however, remained on the long finger, until the two general elections of 1910 resulted in a political stalemate that put Redmond and his party in a pivotal position in British politics. Not only did the Irish Party have the balance of power for the first time in two decades, but Liberal Prime Minister, Asquith, was committed to abolishing the House of Lords’ veto and to following that up with Home Rule for Ireland.

Redmond, however, like Parnell before him, totally underestimated the strength of opposition among Irish Protestants, who were overwhelmingly opposed to Home Rule. In north-east Ulster, where they were in a majority, they were determined to resist it at all costs. That aspiration was fully supported by the Conservative Party, which embarked on a potentially treasonous course to stop Home Rule becoming a reality.

The culmination of Redmond’s career came in 1912 with the passage of the third Home Rule Bill through the Commons. The Bill was a relatively modest proposal, providing for an Irish Parliament to run local affairs while leaving taxation and foreign policy as the preserve of the Government in London. Still, in the right circumstances it could, like the Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921, have been the stepping stone to the establishment of a genuine Irish democracy, albeit one within the Empire.

While the Bill was, as expected, defeated in the Lords after its passage through the Commons in 1912, the ending of the veto meant that it only had to pass twice more through the Commons in order to become law. That made 1914 the deadline for the introduction of the measure. However, the strength of opposition in the North, backed by Conservative agitation, brought the Liberal government around to the view that it would be impossible to impose Home Rule on the whole island. Despite Redmond’s furious opposition, Asquith and his ministers came to the conclusion that they had no option but to consider partition. This view hardened after the Curragh mutiny in the spring of 1914, when it became clear that elements of the Army would refuse to impose Home Rule in Ulster when the Bill became law later in that year.

By that stage nationalist Ireland had responded to the militancy of Ulster, with the formation of the National Volunteers. Founded by Eoin MacNeill, the Volunteers sought to emulate the UVF who had imported guns from Germany. The Volunteers were infiltrated by the IRB, who regarded them as the vehicle for their long desired armed revolt. Alarmed by the development, Redmond and the Party took control of the Volunteers, but the IRB militants bided their time until they could seize control.

In May 1914 the Home Rule Bill passed through the Commons for the third time, but there was one important exemption: Redmond reluctantly accepted that six counties in Ulster could be allowed to opt out of Home Rule for six years, on an individual basis. Full-scale civil war in Ireland and a constitutional crisis for the whole United Kingdom loomed and in July, King George V called a constitutional conference at Buckingham Palace. The leaders of the Liberals and Conservatives, Unionists and Nationalists met for weeks, but failed to reach agreement. However, an event that had already taken place in Sarajevo, in Bosnia, was to sweep the Irish issue and the prospect of partition away from the centre of British politics. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Serb militant, set off a chain of events that culminated in the German invasion of Belgium and France and the beginning of the First World War in August 1914.

The Great War
When the war started, Redmond came to a momentous decision aimed at delivering 32-county Home Rule at the War’s end. After the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, made his famous speech in the Commons about “the lamps going out all over Europe” Redmond intervened in the debate: “To-day there are in Ireland two large bodies of Volunteers. One of them sprang into existence in the North. Another has sprung into existence in the South. I say to the Government that they may tomorrow withdraw every one of their troops from Ireland. I say that the coast of Ireland will be defence from foreign invasion by her armed sons and for this purpose armed Nationalist Catholics in the South will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant Ulstermen in the North. Is it too much to hope that out of this situation there will spring as result which will be good, not merely for the Empire, but good for the future welfare and integrity of the Irish nation.” The speech electrified the Commons and Redmond was applauded on all sides.

If Redmond had left it at that, all might have been well, but a month later he went a step further. In September, 1914, when the Home Rule Act was formally placed on the statute book he made a speech at Woodenbridge in Co Wicklow pledging the Volunteers to the war effort. “The war is undertaken in the defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and right and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country, and a reproach to her manhood, and a denial of the lessons of her history, if young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at home to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion.”

The belief that involvement in the war would lead to Irish unity was clearly a strong motivating factor in Redmond’s call to arms, but it was not the only one. Like many middle class Irish nationalists, he was deeply upset at the atrocities perpetrated by Germany on the Catholic people of Belgian in the early days of the war. His niece, who was a nun in Belgium, gave him a first hand account of the suffering inflicted on the population and he was deeply moved. After the war reports of German atrocities were widely dismissed as British propaganda, but modern historical scholarship has shown that the atrocities were very widespread.

Redmond also believed that, by defending the right of a small nation like Belgium to exist against the power of Prussian totalitarianism, Irish soldiers would vindicate the right freedom for their own country. “I am speaking the truth when I say of the Irish race as a whole that they would feel covered with humiliation if when this war is over they had to admit that their rights and liberties had been saved by the sacrifices of other men while Irishmen remained safe at home and took no risks,” he said. He also fatally underestimated the potential of his opponents, dismissing Sinn Fein as “a handful of pro-German shirkers.”

If the war had ended in a few months, as all the experts predicted at the time, Redmond’s tactics might have worked, but it went on and on and the carnage of the Western Front cast Redmond’s encouragement to enlist in a very different light. After the Woodenbridge speech, the Volunteers split. Redmond initially held on to the vast majority, with 150,000 nominal members compared to the 5,000 or so who left to form the new Irish Volunteers. Eoin MacNeill headed the breakaway group, but, more significantly, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) dominated its executive. As the War dragged on, the National Volunteers declined, through enlistment or demoralisation, while the Irish Volunteers flourished, joining with Sinn Fein in opposing recruitment and ultimately supporting the notion of a German victory.

In 1915 the British political situation changed with the inclusion of the Conservatives in a coalition Government to prosecute the war. Asquith was still prime minister but the pro Irish Liberals were no longer in control. The Ulster Unionist leader, Carson, joined the cabinet and became an influential member. Asquith did offer a cabinet post to Redmond, but he refused to accept it, in the belief that it would undermine his authority as the leader of Irish nationalism. Redmond was undoubtedly right in his assessment, but his position was undermined in any case. Although he had achieved a political victory by having all of Ireland excluded from the imposition of conscription, the public became steadily more disenchanted with the war as it dragged on through 1915 and into 1916.

1916 and Aftermath
Then in 1916 came the Rising that changed the political situation utterly. The Rising was the project of a minority within a minority. The plot was devised by a select band of IRB militants, without the knowledge of the wider IRB and in defiance of MacNeill’s authority. It was far from being a popular revolt, but the destruction of central Dublin, the courage of its leaders and, most importantly of all, the executions that followed its defeat, turned the tide of public opinion. It marked the end of Redmond’s authority as the political leader of Irish nationalism. As the London Times noted, the Sinn Féin movement “from the first was directed as much against Mr Redmond and the nationalist Party as against Great Britain.”

Redmond was shattered by the Rising, which came as much of a surprise to him as to the British Government. In the Commons he expressed feelings of “detestation and horror” at what he regarded as a German plot and “treason to Home Rule.” He also pleaded with Asquith for restraint and rightly forecast that the executions’ policy would make martyrs of the rebels. His point was proved in a series of by-elections in 1917, when supporters of the Rising defeated the Irish Party candidates. Redmond then suffered two devastating and inextricably linked blows, one personal and the other political. His brother Major Willie Redmond, an MP for Clare, was killed on the Western front. To make matters worse, the resultant by-election was won by Eamon de Valera, the senior surviving commandant from the Rising. John Redmond died prematurely at the age of 62 in March 1918, knowing that his political life had ended in failure.

After 1916 Redmond had few illusions and realised that everything he stood for was about to be swept away. Speaking to Lady Fingall, not long before he died, he advised her: “Do not give your heart to Ireland, for if you do you will die of a broken heart.” As Lady Fingall remarked: “He spoke truly of himself, alas.”

Assessment
On the face of it, Redmond exemplifies the dictum that all political careers end in failure. He has to take some of the blame for that failure, for mistakes at various stages of his political career. His political caution prevented him from taking advantage of the real prospect of conciliation between moderate nationalists and unionists in the early years of the 20^th century. Despite his own personal inclinations towards a rapprochement, he shied away to appease more truculent colleagues like Dillon. A bolder approach might have paved the way for Home Rule on the basis of conciliation and consent favoured by William O’Brien.

When Home Rule did materialise, Redmond completely underestimated the strength of Unionism and initially persuaded Asquith and his cabinet to accept his flawed analysis. Then his reluctant acceptance of partition as a temporary expedient undermined his authority and fuelled more extreme nationalism. Redmond’s enthusiastic encouragement of Irishmen to join up in the first eighteen months of the war further weakened his authority, when the war continued for far longer than he, or almost anybody else, had anticipated. Redmond also fatally underestimated the strength of extreme nationalism, represented by the IRB and Sinn Féin. His advice to Birrell not to clamp down on the Volunteers paved the way for the “success” of the Rising. The result was that his enemies swept the Irish Party into the dust heap of history in 1918.

Yet, for all his shortcomings, it is arguable that that modern Ireland is far closer to Redmond’s political dream that it is to the messianic visions of the 1916 leaders. The modern Irish state is a smooth running parliamentary democracy, committed to the rule of law and an enterprise economy. Ireland is an outward looking country, rather than the introverted “ourselves alone” society developed by his republican opponents during the first half of the independent state’s existence.

More importantly, the values of democratic politics, epitomised by Redmond, ultimately prevailed over the cult of violence epitomised by the 1916 Rising. While the shadow of the gunman has never quite vanished from Irish life, and continues to prove a fatal attraction for a tiny minority, the norms of parliamentary democracy have withstood the challenge in successive generations.

Irish sovereignty has been pooled through the European Union and not within the British Empire, as Redmond had hoped but, after many decades of suspicious and sour co-existence, relations with Britain are now excellent, with the two governments working closely together to deal with the residual problems of Northern Ireland.

The endurance of Irish democracy, which has made it one of the oldest continuous parliamentary democracies in the world, is a tribute to the roots put down in Irish soil by Redmond and his predecessors, Parnell and O’Connell. Redmond would surely feel at home in the Dáil chamber, even if his oratory was of a higher quality than that usually on offer in Leinster House.

By contrast, it is hard to believe that leaders of the 1916 Rising, who seized control of Irish nationalism from Redmond, would be quite as happy with the way things turned out. Modern Ireland is hardly the Gaelic speaking, devoutly Catholic, anti-materialist nation dreamed of by Padraig Pearse when he made his blood sacrifice. Neither is it the dictatorship of the proletariat envisaged by James Connolly.

The distorted version of history that traces Irish independence solely to 1916, and the Fenian tradition from which it sprang, has had an unhealthy impact on Irish democracy and provided ideological cover for the minority in successive generations who have tried to destroy it. In his pioneering reassessment of modern Irish history, written for Studies in 1966, but only published in 1972, Fr Francis Shaw, S.J., pointed out the layers of contradiction inherent in the popular myth of modern Irish history, which is still fostered by those in power. Not only does it condemn the majority of the population, who had no sympathy with the Rising when it happened, it also “asks us to praise in others what we do not esteem in ourselves” by disowning the democratic values that have underpinned the history of independent Ireland.

Restoring credibility to those democratic values, after the excesses of the Celtic Tiger, is the most important task facing the present generation of Irish politicians. The country is currently facing a deep crisis that will pose a challenge to the authority and legitimacy of all its major institutions. The values of integrity and democratic political moderation epitomised by Redmond as are important today as ever.

Stephen Collins is Political Correspondent of the Irish Times 

The following books gave me valuable information about John Redmond and his times:

Paul Bew
John Redmond (Dundalk 1996)

John Pius Boland
Irishman’s Diary: A Day in the Life of an Irish M.P. (London 1942)

S.J. Connolly
The Oxford Companion to Irish History (London 1998)

Elizabeth Countess of Fingall
Seventy Years Young (London 1937; reissued 1991)

Charles Lysaght (ed)
Great Irish Lives (London 2008)

Dermot Meleady 
Redmond: the Parnellite, (Dublin, 2008)

Fr Francis Shaw, S.J.
“The Canon of Irish History: A Challenge” in Studies, Vo. 61, no. 242, Spring, 1972, pp 113-153)