William Hoey Kearney Redmond (13 April 1861 – 7 June 1917) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP), was a lawyer and soldier 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. Willie Redmond's five-years elder brother was John Redmond who became leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and he had two sisters. 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.
Land agitation
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).
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”.
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". 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".