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For the American judge and author of Municipal Corporations (1872), see John Forrest Dillon (1831-1914); for the Federal Radio Commissioner, see John F. Dillon (1866-1927)

John Dillon (September 4, 1851 - August 4, 1927) was an nationalist politician in Ireland.

The son of John Blake Dillon (1816-1866), a former "Young Irelander", he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, and afterwards studied medicine.

Dillon entered the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1880 as a member for County Tipperary, and was at first an ardent supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell. He was arrested in May 1881 under the Coercion Act, and again in October, after two months of freedom.

In 1883 he resigned his seat for reasons of health, but was returned unopposed in 1885 for East Mayo, which he continued to represent until 1918. He was one of the prime movers in the Irish Land League's famous plan of campaign, which provided that the tenant should pay his rent to the Irish Land League instead of the landlord, and in case of eviction be supported by the general fund. Dillon was compelled by the Court of Queens Bench on December 14, 1886 to find securities for good behaviour, but two days later he was arrested while receiving rents on Lord Clanricarde's estates. In this instance the jury disagreed, but in June 1888 under the provisions of the new Criminal Law Procedure Bill he was condemned to six months imprisonment.

He was, however, released in September, and in the spring of 1889 sailed for Australia and New Zealand, where he collected funds for the Nationalist party. On his return to Ireland he was again arrested, but, being allowed bail, sailed to America, and failed to appear at the trial. He returned to Ireland by way of Boulogne, where he and William O'Brien held long and indecisive conferences with Parnell. They surrendered to the police in February, and were released from Galway gaol in July.

After the divorce case in which the leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, Parnell, was named, most of the party turned against him, Dillon being one of his strongest opponents. Parnell refused to step down and the party split, with Justin McCarthy becoming leader of the majority. John Redmond led the minority grouping after the death of Parnell later in 1891. Dillon took over the leadership of the Irish National Federation of Anti-Parnellites in 1892. The two parties reunited in 1900 with John Redmond as leader and Dillon as deputy leader.

In the autumn of 1896, he arranged a convention of the Irish race, which included 2,000 delegates from various parts of the world. In 1897 Dillon opposed in the House the Address to Queen Victoria on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee, on the ground that her reign had not been a blessing to Ireland, and he showed the same uncompromising attitude in 1901 when a grant to Lord Roberts was under discussion, accusing him of systematized inhumanity. He was suspended on the March 20 for violent language addressed to Mr Chamberlain.

Dillon was present in January 1898 when William O'Brien launched his "United Ireland League" (UIL) on an agrarian platform in Ballina County Mayo. Though helping establish its constitution Dillon was very ambivalent about this new association, marking the first strains in the O'Brien-Dillon relationship. The year was also eventful with the attainment of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 putting the administration of local affairs into Irish hands, not favoured by Dillon. O'Brien's UIL spread rapidly, forcing the Irish Party to reunite under Redmond in 1900, Dillon its deputy leader.

With O'Brien's conciliatory approach in Irish politics winning the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903, it was strongly attacked by Dillon who bore an instinctive dislike of negotiations with landlords. This attack alienated O'Brien who left the Party. The ensuing breach never healed. Dillon subsequently gained control of the UIL in 1904 through its new secretary Joseph Devlin Member of Parliament for Belfast, with whom he maintained a close alliance. The UIL and the IPP practically fused.

In his approach to Irish self-government under Home Rule, he took a more uncompromising stand to Redmond's, who during the Ulster crisis of 1913 was prepared to concede a large measure of local autonomy to Ulster. This was unthinkable for Dillon, who put the integrity of Ireland foremost, and poured scorn on Edward Carson's threat of civil war as being a gigantic bluff. He agreed only reluctantly to Redmond conceding to six counties temporarily opting out of the Home Rule Act 1914, which was then suspended until the end of World War I.

After the 1916 revolt, he intervened with David Lloyd George to prevent the executions. He insisted they would "fill the whole country" with the same type of radicals as opposed to imprisonment. This, he said would leave the radicals with as many supporters as could "fit in a [single gaol] cell". But the British could only contemplate the loss of so many (about 120) good soldiers, many Irish Catholics themselves, that only execution would suffice. He attacked the Government in the British House of Commons and declared that the rebels were "wrong", but had fought "a clean fight". Both of which assertions could be challenged. It was apparent, though, how unbridgeble the chasm in Anglo-Irish relations had became.

After Redmond's death in March 1918, Dillon followed him as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, opposing with tooth and nail the threat of conscription a month later. He made clear in September that the goal of Home Rule was "the establishment of national self-government, including full and complete executive, legislative and fiscal power", and that national solidarity was essential.

It was left to Dillon to fight a last gallant but unsuccessful campaign in the general election of 1918 which swept his party, but certainly not its tradition, into oblivion.

He married in 1895 to Elizabeth (d. 1907), daughter of Lord Justice J. C. Mathew, and died at the age of 76 after witnessing the atrocities of the Anglo-Irish War and the Irish Civil War.

One of his children was James Dillon, leader of the Centre Party and of Fine Gael, who raised hackles and even death threats in Ireland when he quixotically suggested that Ireland actively support the Allies in World War II.

• John Dillon: A biography by F. S. L Lyons ISBN 0-7100-2887-3
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New seat	MP for Mayo East 1885 – 1918	Succeeded by Eamon de Valera