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JOHN
REDMOND
To Daragh, for her support and unending patience,
and
to Maila, Sahra and Esme.
JOHN
REDMOND
SELECTED LETTERS AND MEMORANDA, 1880–1918
EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
DERMOT MELEADY
First published in 2018 by
Merrion Press
An imprint of Irish Academic Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© Dermot Meleady, 2018
9781785371554 (Cloth)
9781785371561 (Kindle)
9781785371578 (Epub)
9781785371585 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Interior design by www.jminfotechindia.com
Typeset in Minion Pro 10.5/13.5 pt
Cover design by edit+ www.stuartcoughlan.com
Cover/jacket front: John Redmond. Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo.
Cover/jacket back: John Redmond seated at desk in study; photo by A. H. Poole; image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 The Young Wexford MP, 1880–1890
Chapter 2 Defending Parnell, 1890–1891
Chapter 3 Leading the Parnellites: The Split and Electoral Politics
Chapter 4 Leading the Parnellites: The Second Home Rule Bill
Chapter 5 Reunification and Leadership, 1900–1902
Chapter 6 The Land Act and Conciliation, 1902–1907
Chapter 7 The Fight for Legislative Reform, 1906–1909
Chapter 8 The Lords, the Budget and the Veto, 1909–1911
Chapter 9 The Third Home Rule Bill and Unionist Resistance, 1912–1913
Chapter 10 The Volunteer Movement and Partition, 1914
Chapter 11 The War and Irish Recruiting, 1914–1916
Chapter 12 The Party and the Newspapers
Chapter 13 Rebellion and its Aftermath, 1916
Chapter 14 The American Organisation
Chapter 15 The Party in Crisis, 1916–1917
Chapter 16 Last Chance for Constitutionalism, 1917–1918
Chapter 17 Private and Family Life
Endnotes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All items from the Redmond Papers, William O’Brien Papers, J.F.X. O’Brien Papers, William J. Walsh Papers, T.P. Gill Papers, T.C. Harrington Papers, John Muldoon Papers, Joseph McGarrity Papers, J.J. Horgan Papers, Patrick Ford Papers and W.G. Fallon Papers used in this book appear courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
All items from the Dillon Papers appear by permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.
Items from the Asquith Papers appear by permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and those from the Lloyd George Papers by permission of the Parliamentary Archives, Westminster.
My thanks are due to the directors, executives and librarians of the National Library of Ireland, the manuscript library of Trinity College Dublin, the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Parliamentary Archives, Westminster for their assistance in the use of these manuscripts.
Finally, I am grateful to the Redmond family, the National Library of Ireland, the Mary Evans Library and the Chicago History Museum for permission to reproduce images used in this book.
ABBREVIATIONS
| NLI | National Library of Ireland |
| TCD | Manuscripts Library, Trinity College Dublin |
| RP | John Redmond Papers |
| WOBP | William O’Brien Papers |
Introduction
John Redmond left no diary or volume of memoirs. Of his contemporaries who did, the two most important were also his two bitterest political foes throughout much of his career. His deputy leader, John Dillon, who led the Irish Parliamentary Party for a brief spell between Redmond’s death in March 1918 and the Party’s (and his own) political annihilation nine months later, enjoyed nine years of retirement. Had he chosen to publish his memoirs, he might have been expected to leave us an account of his relationship with Redmond – of the strengths and stresses inherent in their joint stewardship of the Party as well as of their earlier mutual hostility during the Parnell Split.
As it was, the only sympathetic memoir came from Stephen Gwynn, the Party’s MP for Galway City and one of its few members who had taken an active part in the wartime recruiting campaign with an enthusiasm approaching that of Redmond himself, enlisting, aged 51, in the 16th (Irish) Division and serving as a captain in a Connaught Rangers battalion on the Western Front. In John Redmond’s Last Years, Gwynn produced an elegiac account of his leader during the Home Rule crisis, the rebellion and its aftermath. However, Gwynn had not known Redmond in the years of the Split or the earlier period of his leadership. And, in describing Redmond’s sojourns at Aughavanagh, he may have overstated its seclusion as a place of retreat and recreation while underplaying its significance as a place of work also, a place where he kept up with his voluminous correspondence just as diligently as in London and where he received many visitors.
The memoirs came instead – and they were certainly prolific