The Centenary Decade triggered a fresh discussion about the political party and its ex-chief, John Redmond – a character frequently central to debates regarding two major events in recent Irish history: the Easter Uprising and the First World War. As per Margaret O’Callaghan, “the history of Ireland can be a war chest whence squabbling parties pull narratives, figures, and occurrences to refine as tools in present political strife”, it can indeed be said that Redmond, as she asserts, is “an especially powerful emblem to bring to battle”.
The death anniversary of Redmond on March 6th, 2018, was commemorated by the state with a symposium hosted by the National University of Ireland in synergy with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, the School of History at University College Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy. The basis of the book John Redmond and Irish Parliamentary Traditions are formed by the papers presented at the symposium and the discourse given by Alvin Jackson at the Royal Irish Academy.
The papers in the book include histories extending far beyond the Uprising and the First World War by examining Redmond in the context of past and present politicians like Charles Stewart Parnell and Isaac Butt, rivals such as Edward Carson, while discussing his daughter-in-law Bridget Redmond and the lingering effect of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and Redmondism as a political philosophy. As the authors have shown, grasping the predicaments, achievements and downfalls of Redmond and his party can unlock a substantial amount of information about current Irish politics, the partition and relations between Ireland and England.
When Redmond passed away in 1918, his son replaced him in his parliamentary role. The term Redmondite continued to live on in the Irish political lexicon through wars, democratisation, independence, sectarian division, the emergence and rejuvenation of new political movements and even through centenary celebrations. John Redmond’s birth in 1856 in Ireland was significantly different from the Ireland he died in, in 1918, The life and time of him and his party not only help in understanding a great deal about Irish history but they also highlight potential paths that his contemporaries might have envisaged.
Nicholas Mansergh once propounded that in altered conditions, Redmond could have been likened to an Irish version of Botha – who led during the Boer War and eventually served as the initial prime minister of South Africa as well as a notable personage in the British Empire of his era. Employing a framework that sets the history of the IPP from 1879 onward against the backdrop of Isaac Butt’s legacy, Colin Reid exhibits a portion of not only the global extent of Redmond’s political ideology but also its traits that pertain to the UK. As the thinker who made the term “home rule” part of the political vocabulary in Ireland, Butt exuded a more substantial effect on Redmond than any future leader.
Although it’s common for interpretations of Redmond to bring attention to his inability to rival Parnell in the exercise of personal authority, academic agreement has regularly depicted Redmond as a “chairman” compared to a “chief”, Pauric Travers asserts. However, Travers’ evaluation of the fundamental impulses in Redmond’s political career signifies that the stern judgement of Redmond, when weighed against Parnell, at times disregards the circumstances surrounding the leadership of both men.
Naturally, partition and war feature heavily in all conversations focusing on the IPP, under the leadership of Redmond. Michael Wheatley contests any idea indicating an unavoidable fall of the Irish Party or describing it as a run-down political body on the brink of being replaced during the chaos of World War I. It is worth noting that Wheatley uniquely identifies the highly active sectors of the Home Rule campaign from Redmond’s political project, even prior to his ill-starred appeal to Irishmen to take part in the global war.
Wheatley suitably depicts a “policy standstill” resulting from unfolding events in Ireland and Europe that jeopardised the party’s ascendancy, prior to the revolutionary impact of the 1916 Easter uprising. Analysing Redmond and Carson, Jackson extends the conversation to contemporary times. He links significant parallels between plans for excluding Ulster counties, varied plans for Home Rule and partition with ongoing debates related to “hard” and “soft” borders in the context of Brexit.
Redmond, although arguably the first leader to confront the complexities of sovereignty and border issues, was certainly not the inaugural nationalist leader (male) met with the challenges of women’s political involvement and suffrage. His actions, like those of his peers, warrant review. Margaret Ward contends that the expansive accounts of Irish history during this period often overlook the gendered implications of a Home Rule agreement that excluded the female populace.
In her narrative, Ward acknowledges the feminist crusade. She contextualizes the oddity of men ensuring other men that their political and cultural identity wasn’t at risk under Home Rule, while continuing to exclude Irish women of all political affiliations from claiming citizenship rights within the impending constitutional arrangement. She summarizes her argument stating, “Long before the risk of jeopardising Home Rule was raised to deter the passing of a women’s suffrage amendment, Redmond and many other colleagues were against women’s voting rights.”
Even after Redmond’s death in 1918 and the Party’s devastating election defeat six months later, this did not signal the termination of Redmond’s ideologies or the Party. Scrutinizing nationalist parties since 1918, such as O’Donoghue, considers Sinn Féin, the Treaty’s split parties and the Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland. While there was no literal revival of the IPP, the older Irish Party maintained more influence in Ulster. However, despite the prominent roles of Joe Devlin and others in the Nationalist Party, it bare few similarities to the Irish Party in grassroots or parliamentary politics.
Contrastingly, Sinn Féin, which gained valuable insights from its Home Rule predecessors, set the groundwork for Civil War politics. Former Home Rulers pursuing power in independent Ireland had to align with those from revolutionary backgrounds.
Focusing on the political journey of Bridget Redmond through a gendered perspective, Claire McGing positions her within the male-centric political environment of the Free State. By highlighting Redmond’s contribution beyond the political structure inherited from her spouse, William Archer, McGing casts fresh perspective on the public life contributions of Waterford’s last “guardian of the Redmondite flame”.
Lastly, Paul Bew investigates the insights that can be derived from Redmond’s politics, particularly in the current era where the topics of unity and Anglo-Irish relations are stimulating public discourse once again. He proposes that:
Over the past century, numerous factions have attempted and failed to reconcile the contentious issue of partition that Redmond broached with his proposed compromise. He was not presenting a resolution, but rather the most reasonable and equitable compromise to the existing rights of all parties involved. This fundamental discord has remained central to British-Irish relations, from the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, the Boundary Commission, to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, the 1998 Belfast Agreement, and now to the post-Brexit situation between the UK and the EU. Bew even goes as far as to question whether the ideals of Redmondism could be maintained after Brexit, and if an independent Irish State more aligned with Europe rather than the UK is actually more in line with the legacy of James Connolly and Roger Casement, rather than Redmond’s.
A hundred years subsequent to Redmond’s time, his influence has been interpreted differently, particularly with reference to his role from 1912 to 1918. However, throughout his career, Redmond was impeded to different extents and at various times by the internal workings of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the complex political climate of Ireland and its relationship with Britain. Redmond’s earlier career from 1880 to 1900 is not often fully examined. Indeed, O’Callaghan contends that from these decades, the expectations placed upon Redmond’s career might be overly burdensome.
Comparative analyses of Irish parliamentary traditions often leave Redmond in the shadow of figures like the mysterious Parnell and the charismatic O’Connell, Collins and de Valera. According to Jackson, the fact that Redmond symbolised such notions as compromise, ambiguity and struggle may be deemed unfortunate, but it authentically reflected much of Irish individual and collective historical experiences. This, he claims, underlines both Redmond’s genuineness and his relevance to us all today. The compromise, ambiguity and struggles experienced in lofty politics between the 1870s and the 1950s were not isolated incidents; they contributed significantly to the formation of contemporary Ireland.
The third instalment in a series of books commemorating the Decade of Centenaries has been issued by UCD Press. This book, entitled “John Redmond and Irish Parliamentary Traditions” was devised and edited by Martin O’Donoghue and Emer Purcell, demonstrating the National University of Ireland’s continual efforts in publishing.