John Redmond's Last Years

"The last thing I desire is to attack Mr. Barrie and his friends. But they are not free agents. I was shocked when I heard that a section here openly avowed the need to refer back to some outside body. If we had been told we were going into a body which would consist of two orders of members, it would have been difficult to get us here."

On the essential point Ulster had made no concession. What did Mr. Barrie say in his formal document? 'We are satisfied that for Ireland and for Great Britain a common system of finances with one Exchequer is a fundamental necessity.' If they denied the taxing power to Ireland, any proposal on these lines must give Ireland less than any proposal for Home Rule ever put forward. This was Ulster's original position and they had not budged an inch.

"This is their response to the Empire's S.O.S. Is it worthy of Ulster's Imperial loyalty? I don't believe it is their last word."

Lord Londonderry, however, in replying, did not add any ground of hope. The last speech of the day announced that of six trade unionists five would support the compromise.

Redmond that evening put on the notice paper a motion adopting Lord Midleton's proposals provided that they "be adopted by His Majesty's Government as a settlement of the Irish question and legislative effect be given to them forthwith."

On the day before this motion was tabled, a party was given at Lord Granard's house which everybody attended, and which marked the most festive moment of our comradeship. When we separated on the Friday most men were absolutely confident of an agreement covering four-fifths of the Convention.

Still, during that week there was no sign of any change in tone. Members of the local bodies who had gone to their homes at the week's end came back just as much inclined to settle as before.

I met Redmond on the night of Monday, January 14th. He had seen no one in these ten days. He told me that he was still uncertain what would happen, but asked me to get one of the leading County Councillors to second his motion. Next morning I came in half an hour before the meeting to find the man I wanted. When I met him he was full of excitement, and said, "Something has gone wrong; the men are all saying they must vote against Redmond." Then it was evident that propaganda had been busy to some purpose.

When Redmond came in to his place, I said, "It's all right. Martin McDonogh will second your motion." He answered with a characteristic brusqueness, "He needn't trouble. I'm not going to move it; Devlin and the Bishops are voting against me."

He rose immediately the Chairman was in his place.

"The amendment which I have on the paper," he said, "embodies the deliberate advice I give to the Convention.

"I consulted no one—and could not do so, being ill. It stands on record on my sole responsibility.

"Since entering the building I have heard that some very important Nationalist representatives are against this course—the Catholic bishops, Mr. Devlin—and others. I must face the situation—at which I am surprised; and I regret it.

IV

A new stage in the history of the Convention now opens. In the interval between the meeting which began by Redmond's withdrawal of his amendment and that of the following week, Sir Horace Plunkett went to London and laid the situation before the Prime Minister. Redmond had also written to Mr. Lloyd George stating that no progress could be made unless Government would declare its intentions as to legislation. The Chairman came back with the following letter in his pocket:

10 DOWNING STREET,

WHITEHALL, S.W. 1,

January 21, 1918.

DEAR SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,

In our conversation on Saturday you told me that the situation in the Convention has now reached a very critical stage. The issues are so grave that I feel the Convention should not come to a definite break without the Government having an opportunity of full consultation with the leaders of the different sections. If, and when, therefore, a point is reached at which the Convention finds that it can make no further progress towards an agreed settlement, I would ask that representatives should be sent to confer with the Cabinet. The Government are agreed and determined that a solution must be found. But they are firmly convinced that the best hope of a settlement lies within the Convention, and they are prepared to do anything in their power to assist the Convention finally to reach a basis of agreement which would enable a new Irish Constitution to come into operation with the consent of all parties.

Yours sincerely,

D. LLOYD GEORGE.

It was agreed in private conference that only one view should be presented from the Nationalist side, and that the view of what was at this point clearly the majority. Redmond, in agreeing to act as a delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim for full fiscal responsibility—which, like other Nationalists, he regarded as in the abstract Ireland's right. But illness prevented him from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime Minister on February 13th.

On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament—the last he was to ask there. It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of aircraft in Dublin—one of the things for which he was pressing in his ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the war. I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House, and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn Féiners, in which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the aerodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish. But the main thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention. Everything, in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but ruin and chaos.

He spoke of his health. A bout of sickness which had prostrated him at Christmas in Dublin had left him uneasy. He was at the time, I thought, unduly alarmed about himself, and I believed that the continuance of this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very little experience of ill-health. I left him with profound compassion for his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his state of body.

Ireland's strong claim to some control of indirect taxation was admitted; but it was laid down that till two years after the war the fixation and collection of customs and excise should be left to the Imperial Parliament: and that at the end of the war a Royal Commission should report on Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure and should submit proposals as to the fiscal relations of the two countries.

For the war period, Ireland was to contribute "an agreed proportion of the Imperial expenditure," but was to receive the full proceeds of Irish revenue from customs and excise, less the agreed contribution. The police and postal services were to be reserved also as war services.

These provisions were laid down as essentials. A suggestion was made of an Ulster Committee within the Irish Parliament, having power to modify or veto measures, whether of legislation or administration, in their application to Ulster.

The question now before the Convention was whether it should or should not accept this offer, which differed from the Midleton proposals in that it withheld the control of excise as well as of customs, and that it retained control of police and Post Office for the war period. It also adumbrated an Ulster Committee, which had been an unpopular suggestion when put forward in the presentation stages. On the other hand, it offered great material inducements in the proposed expenditure for land purchase and for housing. Some of the County Councillors who had been most vehement in their opposition to the Midleton compromise were now disposed to think this too good an offer to let go, but believed it could be obtained without their taking the responsibility of voting for it. It was necessary to point out that the Irish party could not lower a standard of national demand set up by the Nationalists in the Convention, and that if they did so they would be hooted out of existence.

The main argument of those who advised against acceptance was that Ministers had pledged themselves to act in any case. Let them. We could best help by enunciating our own programme. Then they would know the real facts of the Irish situation. If a majority of the Convention accepted the proposals of the Prime Minister's letter, there was no pledge that the Bill would be on those lines. We needed to keep a bargaining margin in what we put forward. It was even suggested that the Government proposals would be more likely to attract support in Ireland if put forward as a generous offer from a largely Unionist Government than if published as a compromise to which Nationalists had condescended.

At this moment interest centred on the discussion in private councils of Nationalists. The debates in full Convention were animated, but somewhat unreal by comparison. Lord Midleton's motion had been dropped, by consent, for a series of resolutions tabled by Lord MacDonnell which were in substance an acceptance of Government's proposal.

But neither in the private councils nor in the public debates had we Redmond's presence. His illness had grown serious; an operation was necessary; it passed over hopefully, and on Tuesday, March 5th, when the debate resumed, Mr. Clancy had a telegram saying that he was practically out of danger.

The Convention adjourned its work, although time pressed most seriously, till after the interment. Ireland is a country where a public man can always count on a good funeral. The body was brought to Kingstown, and thence by special train to Wexford, where he had expressed the wish to be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with which he had been most closely associated. Hundreds of men came from distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was carried in long and imposing procession through the streets. Over the grave Mr. Dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the Irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words. Some day, no doubt, a monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of Wexford, where his great uncle's statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and from all Irish regiments in the Army.

But I say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour to put in lasting shape a tribute to John Redmond was made in the Convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of Irish Nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his death had interrupted.

If that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the Southern Unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise. They were willing to recommend self-government only if the Convention recommended the reservation of customs to the Imperial Parliament. This point had become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which they attributed to it.

Once the sticking-point was passed, the divided Nationalists recombined, and we were all at one in our mutual felicitations on the harmony which prevailed at the close. But as one of our rank and file said in my ear, "If we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of harmony? And mind you now, it was not easy to give it."

The troubles which Nationalists brought on themselves by supporting Lord Midleton were answered by the troubles which his group met for supporting Nationalist demands. The men who refused to make the compromise possible have the laugh of us. Neither section of us who voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of unpopularity. We had followed Redmond's policy and we shared Redmond's fate. We had done our best to help the British Government and that Government itself defeated us.

But no legislation followed. Once more an Irish issue became involved in the wheels of the English political machine.

We have ourselves in part to thank for it. We might in January have taken Redmond's advice, and Lord Midleton's declared view that legislation would follow might have proved correct. Yet, what use are might-have-beens? History is concerned with what happened, and our work in the Convention dragged itself on till the great German offensive had been launched and the Allied line pushed back to the very gates of Paris, and Government was at its wits' end for men. It is hard to blame a Ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done produced infinite mischief and no good result. Immediately after the Convention's report (signed upon April 8th) had been received, Government proposed to apply conscription to Ireland.

It is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this proposal they dare not have come upon the British people with so extreme demands for compulsory service as were made. But by making it Ministers tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the Convention had to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in Ireland they gained not one man. The proposal, as Redmond had always told them, proved impossible to carry out.

I believe that Redmond could have persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to adopt in April the course on which—but after the harm was done—he fell back in June, when Lord French asked for a large, but limited, number of recruits to refill the Irish Divisions within a specified time—at the end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other measures must be taken. Here, however, we are back in the region of speculation. Conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in Ireland. Redmond's words, "Better for us never to have met than to have met and failed," stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in Irish history.

That is the Convention's epitaph as, I think, he would have written it. How shall we write his own?

And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. His love of Ireland was free from all attendant hates. His resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him: "He was always an optimist." The speaker did not mean—he could not have meant—that in those last months Redmond was sanguine. He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives and with his own love of Ireland.

The way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful to him. I do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty.

All this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. But he was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. Without the least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. His tastes, whether in literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which he himself established. Without subtlety of interpretation, his judgments cut deep into the heart of things. You could not hear him speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his personality.

A statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts in counsel and by his power of guiding action. As a counsellor, he was supreme. He had that faculty for anticipating the future, that broad, far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that momentary outcry. In these qualities of insight and foresight I have only seen one man approach him, the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, to whose credit stands the greatest work of Imperial reconciliation accomplished in our day. But Redmond had supremely what the wise old Scotsman lacked—the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for his wisdom and his vision.

He could persuade, but he could not compel. His was not the magnetism which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason—the power which was possessed by his first and only leader, Parnell. Redmond's appeal was to men's judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie deepest and most potent in the heart of man. That was the limitation to his greatness. He could lead only by convincing men that he was right.

If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but by those who desired the same end. Yet admit that he failed and that he fell from power. No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which control of administration and patronage bestows. He left his people improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree, as compared with their state when he began his work.

Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for Ireland's, because he had not won through to the goal. His action upon the war was his life's supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it had failed to achieve its end. By that action let us judge him, for all else is trivial in comparison beside it.

But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had to bargain with. No one in August 1914 anticipated the course of the war. No one foresaw the need for the last man available. It was more than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed themselves forward for service. All that he really had in his hand to give or to withhold was the value of Ireland's moral support. Could he by waiting his time have made a better bargain?

When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of Ireland's history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong counter-emotion. He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries would be gone. In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to England. In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset, he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. But apart from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be served. Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of. How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were divided from Ireland on the war?

This fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. Had Ireland from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war's opening into the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the strong yet divergent strains that make up Ireland itself.

To have served long and faithfully without reward—to have given all of life to one high purpose—to have faced a great crisis greatly—these are claims enough for Redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and followers may be justified when it is judged. The grave has closed over him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his life's labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead.

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