John Edward Redmond (1 September 1856 – 6 March 1918) was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, and MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

Redmond was a conciliatory politician who achieved the two main objectives of his political life: party unity and, in September 1914, the passing of the Government of Ireland Act 1914.

John Edward Redmond (the younger) was born at Ballytrent House, Kilrane, County Wexford, his grandfather's old family mansion.

His uncle General John Patrick Redmond, who had inherited the family estate, was created CB for his role during the Indian mutiny; he disapproved of his nephew's involvement in agrarian agitation of the 1880s.

Nevertheless, Redmond supported Healy as the nominee, and when another vacancy arose, this time in New Ross, he won the election unopposed as the Parnellite candidate for the seat.

During the debate which followed Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule in 1886, he declared: "As a Nationalist, I do not regard as entirely palatable the idea that forever and a day Ireland's voice should be excluded from the councils of an empire which the genius and valour of her sons have done so much to build up and of which she is to remain".

In November 1890 the Irish Parliamentary Party split over Parnell's leadership when his long-standing adultery with Katharine O'Shea was revealed in a spectacular divorce case.

Redmond supported the Unionist Irish Secretary Gerald Balfour programme of Constructive Unionism, while advising the Tory Government that its self-declared policy of "killing Home Rule with kindness" would not achieve its objective.

Redmond dropped all interest in agrarian radicalism and, unlike the mainstream nationalists, worked constructively alongside Unionists, such as Horace Plunkett, in the Recess Committee of 1895.

Therefore, he never had as much control over the party as his predecessor, his authority and leadership a balancing act having to contend with such powerful colleagues as John Dillon, William O'Brien, Timothy Healy and Joseph Devlin.

[2][10] The first election of January 1910 changed everything to Redmond's advantage, returning a hung parliament in which his parliamentary party held the balance of power at Westminster; this marked a high point in his political career.

[a] Redmond's party supported the Liberals in introducing a bill to curb the power of the House of Lords, which, after a second election in December 1910 had generated an almost identical result to the one in January, became the Parliament Act 1911.

Redmond used his leverage to persuade the Liberal government of H. H. Asquith[4] to introduce the Third Home Rule Bill in April 1912, to grant Ireland national self-government.

[7] William O'Brien and his dissident All-for-Ireland League warned in similar vein, that the volatile Northern Ireland situation was left unresolved.

[18] Most unionist leaders, especially Sir Edward Carson—with whom Redmond always had a good personal relationship, based on shared experiences at Trinity College Dublin and the Irish bar—threatened the use of force to prevent home rule, helped by their supporters in the British Conservative Party.

[20] The situation took on an entirely new aspect in late March with the Curragh Mutiny together with the spectre of civil war on the part of the Ulster Covenanters, who formed the Ulster Volunteers to oppose Home Rule, forcing Redmond to then in July take over control of their counterpart, the Irish Volunteers, established in November 1913 to enforce Home Rule.

But whatever could be said to shake confidence was said by William O'Brien and Tim Healy, who denounced the Bill as worthless when linked to the plan of even temporary partition and declared that, whatever the Government might say at present, "we had not yet reached the end of their concessions".

Judged from the perspective of that time, Redmond had won a form of triumph: he had secured the passing of Home Rule with the provision that the implementation of the measure would be delayed "not later than the end of the present war", which "would be bloody but short-lived".

Redmond desperately wanted and needed a rapid enactment of the Home Rule Act, and undoubtedly his words were a means to that end.

He praised Irish soldiers, "with their astonishing courage and their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius […] offering up their supreme sacrifice of life with a smile on their lips because it was given for Ireland".

David Lloyd George, recently appointed Secretary of State for War, was sent to Dublin to offer this to the leaders of the Irish Party, Redmond and Dillon.

This was decisive to the future fortunes of the Home Rule movement; the Lloyd George debacle of 22 July finished the constitutional party, overthrew Redmond's power and left him utterly demoralised.

[9] June 1917 brought a severe personal blow to Redmond when his brother Willie died in action on the front at the onset of the Battle of Messines offensive in Flanders; his vacant seat in East Clare was then won in July by Éamon de Valera, the most senior surviving commandant of the Easter insurgents.

It was one of three by-election gains by Sinn Féin, the small separatist party that had played no part in the Rising, but was wrongly blamed by Britain and the Irish media.

Just at this time, Redmond made a desperate effort to broker a new compromise with Irish unionists, when he accepted Lloyd George's proposal for a national convention to resolve the problem of Home Rule and draft a constitution for Ireland.

On 15 January, just when he intended to move a motion on his proposal to have the Midleton plan agreed, some nationalist colleagues—the prominent Catholic Bishop O'Donnell and MP Joseph Devlin—expressed doubts.

The small, neglected cemetery near the town centre is kept locked to the public – his vault, which had been in a dilapidated state, has been only partially restored by Wexford County Council.

Redmond was succeeded in the party leadership by John Dillon and spared the experience of further political setbacks when after the German spring offensive of April 1918, Britain, caught in a desperate war of attrition, attempted to introduce conscription in Ireland linked with implementation of Home Rule.

The Irish Nationalists led by Dillon walked out of the House of Commons and returned to Ireland to join in the widespread resistance and protests during the resulting conscription crisis.

[40] He referred 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".He had above all a conciliatory agenda; in his final words in parliament he expressed "a plea for concord between the two races that providence has designed should work as neighbours together".