William Hoey Kearney Redmond (13 April 1861 – 7 June 1917) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP). He was also a lawyer and soldier Denman, Terence in: McGuire, James and Quinn, James (eds): Dictionary of Irish Biography From the Earliest Times to the Year 2002; Royal Irish Academy Vol. 8, Redmond, William Hoey Kearney ("Willie") pp.422-23; Cambridge University Press (2009) who was killed in action in World War I.
Family background He came from a Catholic gentry family of Norman descent long associated with County Wexford for seven centuries. His father, William Redmond, was a Home Rule Party MP for Wexford Borough from 1872 to 1880 and was the nephew of the elder John Edward Redmond who is commemorated in Redmond Square near Wexford railway station. He had a brother and two sisters. Willie Redmond's five-years elder brother was John Redmond who became leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. His mother was a daughter of General R.H. Hoey of the Wicklow Rifles and the 61st Regiment.
Early life Redmond grew up at Ballytrent, County Wexford, the second son of William Archer Redmond and his wife Mary, née Hoey of Protestant stock from County Wicklow. William like his father was educated at Clongowes Wood College from 1873 to 1876, previously attending the preparatory school at Knockbeg College and St. Patrick's, Carlow College (1871–72). After school he first apprenticed himself on a merchant sailing ship, then took a commission in the Wexford militia the Royal Irish Regiment on 24 December 1879 (Stephen Gwynn commenting "he was an instinctive soldier") . At first contemplating a regular army career, he became a second lieutenant in October 1880, then resigned in 1881.Denman, Terence: A lonely Grave: The Life and Death of William Redmond, p. 17-21; Irish Academic Press (1995),
On 24 February 1886 he married Eleanor Mary Dalton (died 31 January 1947), eldest daughter of James Dalton. They had one son who died early in 1891 at the age of five.
He was called to the Irish Law bar as a barrister in 1891,Ferguson, Kenneth: King’s Inns Barristers 1868–2004, The Honourable Society of King’s Inns (2005), but never practised. For most of his early career he lived on a stipend from the Irish Parliamentary Party. The first regular salary for an MP was set in 1911.
Land agitation After leaving the army, he immediately joined Charles Stewart Parnell in the Irish National Land League agitation. In February 1882 he was arrested in possession of seditious literature and sentenced under the Irish Coercion Act and imprisoned for three months in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, together with Parnell (with whom he shared a cell), William O'Brien, John Dillon and others. He never wavered in his loyalty to Parnell even after the latter's fall.
He went to the United States in June 1882 with Michael Davitt to collect funds for the Land League. He and his brother John Redmond then travelled to Australia in February 1883 to raise funds, collecting £15,000 sterling for the nationalist cause. They developed close links with James Dalton of Orange, New South Wales, meeting two lady members of his wealthy and very influential family who later became their wives. They both then travelled to the United States where they collected a further £15,000 sterling, many others following their example in the next years (Davitt, O'Brien, John Dillon, Eduard Blake).Denman, A lonely Grave, p. 24
In his absence in 1883, he was elected as MP for his father's old constituency of Wexford Borough, taking his seat at Westminster. When that constituency was abolished at the 1885 general election, he was returned for Fermanagh North. His time in this constituency as an Ulster MP was important. He became overly enthusiastic about reconciling Protestants to home rule, and his hopes for Protestant and catholic amity, which later emanated in his expectations of seeing Irish unity forged in the trenches on the western front,.
During this decade many were his narrow escapes from capture by police during the Land League campaign when he and William O’Brien and others like them made the country ring with their exploits. For resisting a tenant's eviction in 1888 he was imprisoned to three months hard labour. During the Parnell Commission he was cited as one of eight who had “established and joined the Land League organisation with the intent by its means to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland as a separate nation”.Horgan, John J.: Parnell to Pearse p.196, Brown & Nolans Ltd., Dublin (1948)
Political career
His father supported the Home Rule Movement and in his election address in 1874, he declared "Home Rule is absolutely essential to the good government of the country".Denman, A lonely grave p.21 At the centre of Willie Redmond's political philosophy stood the belief he had inherited from his father on Irish home rule. Home Rule was necessary he declared, because the Union has "depopulated our country, has fostered sectarian strife, has destroyed our industries, and ruined our liberties".Denman, A lonely grave p.22, sub-note: Fermanagh Times, 3 December 1885
He was an ardent, extrovert parliamentarian and like other Irish members "hated British rule in Ireland with fierce intensity". The two characteristics which dominated his character – a boyish enthusiasm and a simple unselfish sincerity – were stimulated by political action. What endeared him to the people was his fearless spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. Where the fight was fiercest there he was always to be found; and he would never ask anyone to do what he was not prepared to do himself. He was during the eighties and nineties, the enfant terrible of Irish politics.Horgan, John J.: pp.194-95 He was ejected several times from the House of Commons for his verbal excesses and involved in several violent confrontations with Unionist MPs, but nevertheless remained popular even with his political opponents. On Irish platforms he often spoke of insurrection though he remained a constitutionalist at heart.Denman, A lonely Grave pp. 30–43
When the Irish Party split after Parnell's fall and death in 1891, which shook Redmond deeply, he had supported Parnell entirely, whom he later saw as a saviour-like figure, and even though a devout Catholic voiced deep grievance at the antagonism of his Church to Parnell, which necessitated changing his constituency from Fermanagh to Clare after a priest declared that it would be a sin to vote for him.Denman, A lonely Grave p.43 In the 1892 general election, he was then elected MP for the East Clare constituency, from which he was returned unopposed from the next 1900 general election until his death in 1917, in which time he did his best to preserve national unity.Horgan, John J.: p.196
Singular stand
In condemning the South Africa Boer War in 1899 he joined with the younger nationalists such as Arthur Griffith, James Connolly and Maud Gonne. He was co-treasurer of the Irish Transvaal committee. The United Irish League (UIL) gave him opportunity to re-unite with the anti-Parnellites in the Irish Party under his brother's leadership in 1900, when he again travelled to the United States with Davitt to announce the re-unification.Denman, A lonely Grave pp.47–61
William was very different from his brother John. He was volatile, spontaneous, open-hearted and more radical on many social issues, such as female suffrage, which he supported. A First World War colleague, Colonel Rowland Fielding, was to describe him as a "charming fellow with a gentle and very taking manner."
The year 1902 saw him imprisoned again in Kilmainham for an inflammatory speech in support of the UIL, causing "social discord". He was unhappy at the renewed Party split with O'Brien in 1903 after O’Brien achieved the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903. Redmond, a strict teetotaller but committed smoker, devoted much time to encouraging tobacco growing in Ireland. In the following years he travelled widely visiting Irish communities around the world. Impressed by the dominion status enjoyed by Canada and Australia, it influenced his concept of self-government for Ireland, for which he made impassioned speeches, canvassing for it in 1911 and 1912 across Britain and Ireland.Hennessey, Thomas: Dividing Ireland, World War I and Partition, 'National Identity, Home Rule and Ulster' pp. 20-25, Routledge Press (1998)
With the passing of the third Home Rule Act 1914 in the House of Commons in May 1914, it “was of great sadness to him” that William O'Brien's independent All-for-Ireland League party withheld voting for the act (on the grounds that it was a ‘partition deal’).Denman, A lonely Grave pp.62–72
When the Irish Volunteer Movement was recognised by the Irish Party in 1914 he threw himself into it heart and soul. He was by nature always a soldier, its spirit of comradeship and discipline appealed to him. In order to obtain arms for the Volunteers he undertook a dangerous and difficult mission to Brussels.Horgan, John J.: p.197
World War I
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, his brother John Redmond called on Irish Volunteers to enlist in Irish regiments of the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions of Kitchener's New Service Army in the hope that this would strengthen the cause of later implementing the Home Rule Act, suspended for the duration of the war. This caused a split in the Volunteer movement and Willie Redmond was one of the first to volunteer for army service as a member of the National Volunteers. He addressed vast gatherings of Volunteers, Hibernians and the UIL, encouraging voluntary enlistment in support of the British and Allied war cause.
In November 1914 he made a famous last recruiting speech in Cork when standing at the open window of the Imperial Hotel he spoke to the crowd below: I speak as a man who bears the name of a relation who was hanged in Wexford in ’98—William Kearney. I speak as a man with all the poor ability at his command has fought the battle for self-government for Ireland since the time—now thirty two years ago—when I lay in Kilmainham Prison with Parnell. No man who is honest can doubt the single-minded desire of myself and men like me to do what is right for Ireland. And when it comes to the question—as it may come—of asking young Irishmen to go abroad and fight this battle, when I personally am convinced that the battle of Ireland is to be fought where many Irishmen now are—in Flanders and in France—old as I am, and grey as are my hairs, I will say ‘Don’t go, but come with me.’Horgan, John J.: pp.197-98
Redmond felt that he might serve Ireland best in the firing line, “if Germany wins we are all endangered”.Denman, A lonely Grave pp. 81–84 He was one of five Irish MPs who served with British army Irish brigades, J. L. Esmonde, Stephen Gwynn, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan being the others, as well as former MP Tom Kettle.
War service
Redmond was commissioned as a captain in the 6th Royal Irish Regiment in February 1915 at the age of 53, with whom he previously had served 33 years before. After refresher training in the New Barracks, Fermoy, he went out to France on the Western Front with the 16th (Irish) Division, composed of Irish volunteer troops, under the command of Major-General William Hickie, in the winter of 1915–16. As a captain he commanded 'B' Company of his battalion, and was soon in action, receiving a Mention in Dispatches from the British Expeditionary Force in France & Flanders Commander-in-Chief Douglas Haig.Denman, A lonely Grave p.86 Whilst the Regiment was on the march he was in the habit of refusing to ride horse-back, instead marching on foot with the men under his command, and declined to let his batman carry his pack when they were moving up to the trenches.Horgan, John J.: p.195