John Redmond - Legacy and Personal Vision

Legacy and Personal Vision

John Redmond's home town of Wexford remained a strongly Redmondite area for decades afterwards. The seat of Waterford city was one of the few outside Ulster not to be won by Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election. Redmond's son William Redmond represented the City until his death in 1932. A later Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), John Bruton, hung a painting of Redmond, whom he regarded as his hero because of his commitment to non-violence, in his office in Ireland's Leinster House Government Buildings. However, his successor, Bertie Ahern TD replaced the painting with one of Padraig Pearse.

Redmond's personal vision did not encompass a wholly independent Ireland. 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”. For him, Home Rule was an interim step for All-Ireland autonomy:

"His reward was to be repudiated and denounced by a generation which had yet to learn, as they learned three years later when they were forced to accept Partition, that true freedom is rarely served by bloodshed and violence, and that in politics compromise is inevitable. Yet it can be said of John Redmond that none of Ireland's sons had ever served her with greater sincerity or nobler purpose".