39 Facts About Tom Kettle

Thomas Michael Kettle was an Irish economist, journalist, barrister, writer, war poet, soldier and Home Rule politician.

Tom Kettle joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, then on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 enlisted for service in the British Army, with which he was killed in action on the Western Front in the Autumn of 1916.

Tom Kettle was a much admired old comrade of James Joyce, who considered him to be his best friend in Ireland, as well as the likes of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Oliver St John Gogarty and Robert Wilson Lynd.

Tom Kettle was one of the leading figures of the generation who at the turn of the twentieth century gave new intellectual life to Irish party politics, and to the constitutional movement towards All-Ireland Home Rule.

Thomas Kettle was born in Malahide or Artane, Dublin, the seventh of twelve children of Andrew J Kettle, a leading Irish nationalist politician, progressive farmer, agrarian agitator and founding member of the Irish Land League, and his wife, Margaret.

Andrew Tom Kettle influenced his son considerably through his political activities, having been involved from an early age in the constitutional movement to achieve Home Rule.

Tom Kettle had adhered to Charles Stewart Parnell in the 1890 crisis, and stood for election as a nationalist candidate on several occasions.

Tom Kettle enjoyed athletics, cricket and cycling and attained honours in English and French when leaving.

Tom Kettle distributed pro-Boer leaflets during the early months of the South African Second Boer War, and protested against the Irish Literary Theatre production of Yeats' The Countess Cathleen in 1899 over its irreligious story of an unlikely kind-hearted aristocrat who sells her soul to save her tenants.

Tom Kettle went abroad to renew his spirits by travelling on the continent, improving his German and French.

Tom Kettle then read law after admission to the Irish Law bar in 1903, qualifying as a barrister in 1905.

Tom Kettle practiced sporadically, devoting most of his time to political journalism.

Tom Kettle maintained his contacts to University College and his fellow students, participating in debates, contributing to and becoming editor of the college newspaper.

Tom Kettle helped to found the Cui Bono Club, a discussion group for recent graduates.

Tom Kettle attracted the attention of the Irish Party leader John Redmond.

Tom Kettle declined the offer to stand for a parliamentary seat, instead edited a newspaper, The Nationist, an unconventional weekly journal.

Tom Kettle resigned his editorship in 1905 on the grounds of a controversy about an allegedly anti-clerical article.

Tom Kettle won the seat by a narrow majority of 18 votes, becoming one of the few young men to gain admission to the aging Irish Party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Tom Kettle's ideal was an Ireland identified with the life of Europe.

Tom Kettle was a popular professor and his genuine interest in economics reflected in a number of publications concerning financial issues.

Tom Kettle was friends with Thomas MacDonagh, and wrote for his magazine The Irish Review.

Tom Kettle retained his East Tyrone seat in the January 1910 general election but did not contest the second election in December.

Tom Kettle enthusiastically greeted the 1912 Home Rule Bill, likewise the removal of the veto power of the Lords, this veto being the last obstacle to Home Rule.

In 1913 Tom Kettle became involved with the paramilitary Irish Volunteers, a new Irish Nationalist militia that formed in response to the creation in the north of the Ulster Volunteers by Edward Carson to oppose the creation of an all-Ireland government based in Dublin via the passage in the British Parliament in London of the Government of Ireland Act 1914.

Tom Kettle perceived at this moment a threat to Europe's liberty from the nature of the II Reich, and began dispatching war reports from the Brussels warning against the dire threat to Europe from Prussian militarism, depicting the conflict as "A war of Civilization vs Barbarianism".

In consequence Tom Kettle volunteered for active service with the 7th Battalion of the Leinster Regiment, but was refused on the grounds of fragile health.

Tom Kettle subsequently received a commission into the British Army with the rank of Lieutenant, restricted to garrison service at home.

Tom Kettle applied to be an Irish Parliamentary Party candidate for a by-election in East Galway, and though not selected his support for the party did not abate, continuing to advocate both home rule and voluntary enlistment with the British Arms, maintaining that Irishmen had a moral duty to join the allied stand against the displayed tyranny on the European continent of the II Reich.

Tom Kettle was beginning to rely too heavily on alcohol in this period as a psychological palliative to the stress of military active service.

Tom Kettle was angered by actions of the Revolutionary faction that had staged the failed revolt, feeling that they were marring Constitutional Nationalism's long worked for strategy of the rebirth of a sovereign Irish state finding its place amidst the nations in a peaceful fashion, with good spirit amidst its neighbours in Britain.

Tom Kettle's ambition for Ireland in the 20th century was a land and culture with the European continent as its polestar.

Tom Kettle was killed in action with 'B' Company of the 9th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in an attack on German lines on 9 September 1916, near the village of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.

Tom Kettle's name is etched on the monumental arched gateway for the missing of the Somme at Thiepval.

The poet George William Russell wrote about Tom Kettle, comparing his sacrifice with those who led the 1916 Easter Rising:.

Tom Kettle is commemorated on Panel 1 of the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall in London, one of 22 present and former Members of Parliament that lost their lives during World War I to be named on that memorial.

Tom Kettle died, a hero in the uniform of a British soldier, because he knew that the faults of a period or of a man should not prevail against the cause of right or liberty.

Tom and Mary Kettle had one child, a daughter, Elisabeth, who was born in 1913.

Tom Kettle was the brother-in-law of both Francis Skeffington and the journalist Frank Cruise O'Brien, father of the Labour TD and Irish government minister, later UK Unionist Party politician, Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Tom Kettle's best known poem is a sonnet, "To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God", written just days before his death.