Ivone Kirkpatrick

Sir Ivone Augustine Kirkpatrick KCMG, KCB (1897 – May 25, 1964) was a British diplomat.

Kirkpatrick left school to join the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and was wounded in the Great War. He was mentioned in despatches twice and awarded the Belgian Croix de guerre. After being wounded he was sent to Holland as a spymaster. He entered the diplomatic service almost immediately after in 1919. He was first secretary at the British Embassy at Rome from 1930 to 1932; chargé d'affaires at the Vatican in 1932-33; and first secretary at the British Embassy at Berlin from 1933 to 1938. He held a number of diplomatic offices throughout the Second World War, as well as Controller of European Services of the BBC in 1941.

When Rudolf Hess landed in Britain in May 1941 he was questioned by Kirkpatrick as he was a Foreign Office expert on Germany. His report on Hess was shown only to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal Clement Attlee and Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook. [Martin Gilbert, "Finest Hour. Winston S. Churchill 1939-1941" (Heinemann, 1983), p. 1087.]

He was also Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office in 1945 and Deputy Under-Secretary in 1948. He became Permanent Under-Secretary for the German Section at the Foreign Office in 1949 and British High Commissioner for Germany in 1950-53; then, he was Permanent Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1953 to 1957. He then retired from the diplomatic service and became Chairman of the Independent Television Authority from 1957 to 1962.

As Permanent Under-Secretary during the Suez Crisis Kirkpatrick was in favour of a strong line against Colonel Nasser. In a letter to the British Ambassador on 10 September 1956, Kirkpatrick said:

[I] f we sit back while Nasser consolidates his position and gradually acquires control of the oil-bearing countries, he can and is, according to our information, resolved to wreck us. If Middle Eastern oil is denied to us for a year or two, our gold reserves will disappear. If our gold reserves disappear, the sterling area disintegrates. If the sterling area disintegrates and we have no reserves, we shall not be able to maintain a force in Germany, or indeed, anywhere else. I doubt whether we shall be able to pay for the bare minimum necessary for our defence. And a country that cannot provide for its defence is finished. [Keith Kyle, "Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East" (I. B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 225-6.]

Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh said of Kirkpatrick: "He was so sharp that he cut". [Ibid, p. 88]

Notes

Publications

*"The Inner Circle: The Memoirs of Ivone Kirkpatrick" (London: Macmillan, 1959).
*"Mussolini: Study of a Demagogue" (London: Odhams, 1964).