The Material for Victory: Being the Memoirs of Andrew J.
Kettle. Edited by Laurence J. Kettle. (Dublin: C. J. Fallon. 12s. 6d.) THIS is a document of considerable importance for the study of the Parnell movement. Andrew J. Kettle, a successful North Dublin farmer, was one of the few people prominent in that move- ment who was not an orator, or a journalist, or a lawyer, and who never became in any sense a professional politician. His brief memoirs are therefore free from some distorting influences which affect most other memoirs of the period. He was a shrewd and independent judge of Irish politics—especially agrarian politics—and one of the few men whose advice Parnell liked to seek, or at least whose opinions he liked to hear. Kettle supported Parnell at the time of the divorce crisis, and was his candidate at the Carlow by-election.
The present memoir is notable for its detailed account of certain discussions which preceded the crucial decisions of February, 1881, leading to the transformation of a semi-revolutionary movement into an entirely constitutional one. The import- ance of that phase, when what later became the policy of Sinn Fein—the secession of the Irish Members from Westminster—was canvassed and rejected, is underestimated by most writers on the subject, and Kettle's account must carry consider- able weight. It is interesting that Kettle, though a loyal Parnellite to the end, and socially something of a conservative in Irish terms, writes of Parnell's decision in this phase as 'one of the most un- fortunate retreats ever executed in the unfortunate history of this unfortunate country'. Kettle's own lucid assessments of the positive achievements of Parnellism, and of the original influence of that remarkable woman Anna Parnell, help to make this book a significant contribution to Irish history and to the literature of political revolt.
CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN
Previous page
