John Redmond (1 September 1856-6 March 1918) was the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 6 March 1918, succeeding Charles Stewart Parnell and preceding John Dillon.
Biography[]
John Redmond was born in Kilrane, County Wexford, Ireland in 1856, and he was educated at Trinity College Dublin. His father, an MP, secured him a position as clerk of the House of Commons, and he was called to the Irish bar in 1886. Redmond became an MP for New Ross in 1881, and joined Charles Stewart Parnell's Irish Parliamentary Party. Redmond led the minority of the party which supported Parnell after his fall over the O'Shea divorce scandal, and was elected a Parnellite MP for Waterford in 1891 (the seat he held until his death in 1918). When the party reunited in 1900, Redmond became its leader. He pushed the Liberal Party government into introducing the third Home Rule bill for Ireland in 1912. Opposition to Home Rule from Ulster unionists forced H.H. Asquith's government to insist on partition, which Redmond reluctantly accepted only as a temporary solution. World War I delayed the enactment of Home Rule, and Redmond suggested that the Irish Volunteers be used for internal defense, not for foreign service. Asquith rejected this, and Redmond was persuaded to encourage Irish enlistment in the British Army. This alienated him further from the militant nationalists, whose popularity increased dramatically at his expense after the Easter Rising of 1916. He died before his Irish Parliamentary Party was virtually wiped out by Sinn Fein at the 1918 Coupon Elections.