Council to honour poet who fell at Somme in 1916

A poet who was killed at the Somme while fighting in the first World War is to be commemorated by a Dublin local authority.

A poet who was killed at the Somme while fighting in the first World War is to be commemorated by a Dublin local authority.

Fingal County Council is to create a memorial to Tom Kettle (1880-1916) who was born in north Co Dublin and educated at O'Connell Boys' CBS, North Richmond Street, Clongowes Wood and UCD.

He was the son of Andrew Kettle, a leading Land League activist. Called to the Bar in 1905, he was also elected nationalist MP for East Tyrone in 1906 and was a dedicated supporter of the women's suffragette movement.

He resigned his seat in 1910 having been appointed to the professorship of national economics in UCD the previous year.

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Kettle joined the Irish Volunteers on their formation in 1913 and was in Belgium to procure arms when the first World War started. He took a commission in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and was killed at Givenchy on the Somme in September 1916. Kettle was one of several poets killed taking part in the Great War.

His politics were Redmondite but the treatment of those who took part in the Easter Rising 1916 deeply affected him.

He was an emerging poet of some stature whose memorial in St Stephen's Green, Dublin, includes part of a poem he wrote to his daughter before his death.

Fingal County Council's decision came in response to a motion from Cllr Tom Kelleher (Lab) calling on the council to recognise the achievements of the poet by commissioning a work of art display in or near Fingal County Hall.

Council officials said it is appropriate that Kettle be specifically honoured in his native place, and the expressed intention of the council to so commemorate him.