Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Redmond, a leader of Irish nationalism unjustly airbrushed from history, writes Charles Lysaght
Delivering the graveside oration for John Redmond, the long-time leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, in Wexford in March 1918, his successor John Dillon said of him that he had bent all his energies to the reconciliation of his own countrymen of all sections and also the reconciliation between the people of this country and the people of Great Britain. Dillon also claimed for Redmond that he had struck down all the obstacles to Irish freedom across the water and had left the whole of England friendly to his country's freedom so that now there remained but one obstacle.
That obstacle was unionist Ulster to whose permanent partition from the rest of Ireland Redmond had never been able to agree. Violent nationalists who had upbraided Redmond for his weakness on the issue were forced eventually to accept partition as the price of independence. Partition, as it developed, remained a poison besetting our own politics and British-Irish relations for the rest of the 20th century.
As we inch our way towards reconciliation in the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement, it is fitting that we should focus on Redmond, the 150th anniversary of whose birth occurs today. He was the elected leader of the Irish majority from 1900 to 1918, a longer period than any national leader except O'Connell and de Valera. On Redmond's watch the land question was solved and Ireland became a nation of landowners. A National University was created that educated the professional class of an independent Ireland. In 1914 the Home Rule Act was put on the statute book.
This was a culmination of a life's work converting British public opinion. After he had carried a motion in favour of home rule at the Oxford Union in 1907, a local newspaper remarked: "It is doubtful if the Union has ever heard or will ever hear again a speech that will have such influence on its hearers." As an effective ambassador for Irish nationalism in England, John Redmond's performance surpassed that of any other Irish leader.
It is to his credit that there was no real will in any party in Britain to resist self-government for most of Ireland after 1914. Indeed, it was British public opinion, moulded over the years by Redmond, that forced Lloyd George's government to call off the Black and Tans and negotiate with the Sinn Féin leaders in 1921. It was a debt ungenerously never acknowledged by its political beneficiaries.
Instead, they preferred to upbraid Redmond as an imperialist and blame him for having sent so many Irish to fight in the Great War. Yet, what else could he have done? If nationalist Ireland was not prepared to support Britain in its time of peril, how could it expect any support from them in dealing with the Ulster unionists? How far the British would have gone in imposing home rule on Ulster if the Redmondite strategy had not been negated by the 1916 rebellion and the emergence of Sinn Féin as the voice of nationalist Ireland, we shall never know.
But what is certain is that those events caused successive British governments to give the Ulster unionists the most favourable deal possible for most of the rest of the 20th century. The result was a more complete Protestant ascendancy in Ulster than had existed previously. Those who paid the price were the Ulster Catholics. This engendered more violence, which drew its inspiration from the violent nationalism of the 1916-23 period.
Only the tragic events in Northern Ireland since 1969 have caused people to question whether Redmond's way, rather than the path of violence and more immediate separation set in train by the 1916 rebellion, would have served us better, and to reassess him as an historical figure.
Redmond's own vision, it must be said, fell short of a totally independent Ireland. In his introduction to Tom Kettle's Open Secret of Ireland (1911) he looked forward to "that brighter day when the grant of full self-government would reveal to Britain the open secret of making Ireland her friend and helpmate, the brightest jewel in her crown of Empire". Redmond valued the Empire for the links with Irish communities in countries such as Australia, where he had found his first wife, the mother of his children.
This Empire nationalism was of his time and, perhaps, of his class of Irish Catholic. It did offer a basis for an accommodation with Irish unionists by maintaining the British link as a guarantee for them. No better accommodation was subsequently found. The British statesmen of the day showed a lamentable lack of vision in allowing a fellow-feeling with unionists to divert them from an outcome that would have served Britain's long-term interests.
Much of Redmond's world view is no longer relevant. But in the conviction that persuasion and compromise, rather than violence and confrontation, is the way forward and that close friendly relations with Britain offer the best hope of containing the excesses of unionism, there was an enduring wisdom that has taken Irish leaders a long time to relearn.
Of Redmond it was said that he spoke like a Greek orator and looked like a Roman emperor. He was honourable to a fault. But such was his reserve that it is difficult to form a more intimate picture. From 1900 he lived quietly in London with his second wife, always declining invitations from political hostesses. When Parliament rose, he retreated to the solitude of Aughavanagh in Wicklow, the former shooting lodge of his old leader Parnell to whom he had remained loyal to the end.
While Redmond would have been counted as of the gentry, the few people outside his family who were admitted to his friendship were old Parnellites, who were not counted as such. He was so venerated by his constituents in Waterford (including the legendary pig-dealers of Ballybricken) that they went on returning members of the Redmond family to the Dáil into the second half of the 20th century.
In the last year of his life, making his way to conciliate the unionists at the Irish Convention, Redmond was assaulted by Sinn Féin activists (including Todd Andrews) and had to take refuge in the Irish Times building.
With his policy of reconciliation in shreds, he died, in his own words, a heart-broken man, having given Ireland a lifetime of political service that seems to have been largely unpaid. He left less than £2,000.
If there have been more spectacular Irish leaders there has been none more worthy.
Charles Lysaght is a barrister and writer