Parliamentarian
After the death in 1906 of Patrick Doogan, the MP for East Tyrone, Kettle accepted the candidature for the vacant parliamentary seat at the resulting by-election. He 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.
Lauded as a future party leader, in late 1906 he went to America, participating in a number of propaganda and fund-raising meetings. In the House of Commons at Westminster he was renowned as an amusing and often caustic speaker, as a staunch supporter of the Irish Party and its constitutional path to Home Rule, also engaging in debates for the provision of higher education for Irish Catholics and on Ireland's economic condition.
He was deeply steeped in European culture. Kettle's ideal was an Ireland identified with the life of Europe. In "Ireland" he wrote:
| “ | . . "My only programme for Ireland consists in equal parts of Home Rule and the Ten Commandments. My only counsel to Ireland is, that to become deeply Irish, she must become European." | ” |
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