John Dillon

Extract from RIA Dictonary of Irish Biography by Frank Callanan

The Liberal electoral landslide of January 1906 appeared to transform the prospects for home rule.... As home rule came to the fore in the wake of the two general elections of 1910, Dillon, Joseph Devlin (qv), and T. P. O'Connor were Redmond's closest collaborators. On 2 March 1913 Redmond and Dillon, along with O'Connor and Devlin, reluctantly agreed to the proposal pressed by Lloyd George that individual Ulster counties could opt out of home rule for a period of three years, after which they would come under the control of a home rule parliament. Redmond was subsequently compelled to accept an extension of the period of exclusion to six years. Edward Carson (qv) flamboyantly repudiated the concession. Although he attended the Buckingham Palace conference in late July 1914, Dillon largely withdrew into the wings in the final stages of the negotiations that led to the enactment on 18 September of the home rule bill, accompanied by a suspensory act that prevented its coming into operation until the war's end.

On the outbreak of the first world war, Dillon assented to his leader's stance in support of the British war effort, but did not share Redmond's ardour, nor did he participate in the recruiting campaign in Ireland. He became increasingly concerned at the effect on Irish opinion of the government's marked disregard of Irish nationalist sensitivities as the war progressed. For the duration of the rising of Easter 1916 Dillon was the only Irish party leader in Dublin, immured in his house in North Great George's St., a short walk from the General Post Office. On the immediate aftermath he wrote urging Redmond to impress upon the government ‘the extreme unwisdom of any wholesale shooting of prisoners’ (Lyons*, Dillon, 373), and sought to restrain the authorities in Dublin. He reached London on 10 May, and in the commons the next day denounced the executions that had taken place in a speech of formidable vehemence, which outraged many English parliamentarians and startled even some of his Irish colleagues. He highlighted, perhaps a little too starkly, the predicament of the Irish party: ‘you are washing out our whole life work in a sea of blood’ (Lyons*, Dillon, 381). What transpired to be the last of the Dublin executions, including that of James Connolly (qv), took place the following morning. By September 1916 he was writing to O'Connor: ‘. . . enthusiasm and trust in Redmond and the party is dead so far as the mass of the people is concerned’ (Lyons*, Dillon, 403).
*F. S. L. Lyons (1961) The Irish parliamentary party 1890–1910