Leopold Kerney, Ireland’s revolutionary diplomat

The words “tact”, “discretion” and “subtlety” are terms most people would probably associate with diplomats who are trained and paid to represent their country abroad, who act with skill and work in mutual accord with their host country in order to further the national interests of their own government – be those interests political, economic, cultural or military.

However, such words fail to capture the essence of Ireland’s first generation of diplomats because none were trained in the art of diplomacy, none worked in a conventional diplomatic organisation, all belonged to an illegal entity known as the “Irish Republic” – as far as Britain was concerned – and all operated on an ad-hoc basis with reports smuggled to their political leaders, who were also on the run and in danger of imprisonment or death.

These diplomats formed part of a collective “revolutionary” Irish generation and none was more revolutionary than Leopold Kerney.

Kerney was born in Sandymount, Dublin in 1881 into an “Anglicised atmosphere of contented provincialism” as he later recalled. His father was editor of the Weekly Irish Times and Kerney was raised and educated to be the quintessential Anglo-Irish gentleman. He attended Protestant service, played for the local cricket and rugby teams, was schooled from youth for a career in the British civil service and later attended Trinity College Dublin.

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His decisive break from this world came when he read the works of Irish nationalist writer John Mitchel who argued that British maladministration caused the Irish Famine. From this point on Kerney’s life was devoted to breaking every connection between Ireland and Britain. He believed that only complete economic independence and a re-orienatation of the Irish economy away from Britain and towards the European continent could secure the future prosperity and freedom of the Irish people. He turned his back on his family roots and settled in France – home of revolutionary politics.

For several years he worked as an accountant, married and began a family before a chance meeting with Seán T O’Kelly in 1919 convinced him to join the republican movement. Based in France with no staff and scant financial resources, Kerney travelled the country and encouraged French businesses to buy Irish products and not British. In 1922 he established the first direct shipping route between Ireland and France, thus breaking centuries of British dominance over all aspects of Ireland’s maritime life. He led postwar economic negotiations with other European states and in agreement with the French, had Britain excluded from these conferences as a quid pro quo for German omission.

Then came the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Kerney was approached by Éamon de Valera and agreed to act as the “republican” representative in France. His “treachery”, as his former friends now labelled his actions, would mark him out for life. Not until 1932 when de Valera won the general election was Kerney brought in from the cold but the reception was frosty. His appointment was seen as a political one and the pro-Treaty secretary of External Affairs Joseph Walshe ensured Kerney was placed well away from his benefactor.

In fact Walshe would do everything within his power to frustrate Kerney’s work and blacken his name within the department over the coming years. Kerney served in France before becoming Ireland’s diplomatic representative to Spain in 1935. He secured vital trade agreements to offset the Anglo-Irish economic war and he again showed himself to be something of a maverick.

Whilst the majority of political, ecclesiastical and public opinion supported General Franco in the Spanish Civil War, Kerney argued that Ireland should remain aligned to the leftist Spanish Republic, writing privately to his brother “if there is any question of recognising a certain gentleman\ [Franco], this is not the moment to do so and I hope wiser counsels will prevail”.

In Spain his non-conformist streak continued – he did everything possible to secure the release of former IRA commander Frank Ryan, even going so far as making contact with German military intelligence via a third party. He exposed the false image of Catholicism that Franco showcased by reporting on his crimes: “As I lay awake; in the early hours of Tuesday, 12 June, I heard a volley of shots in the vicinity, followed by several coups de grace”.

During the war Kerney again tore up the diplomatic rule book when he met, without the prior approval of his government, Dr Edmund Veesenmayer on August 24th, 1942 – a senior figure in Hitler’s SS and key organiser in the Holocaust who later transported over 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz – to listen to German plans to help Ireland attain full unity with IRA support.

The meeting occurred as the war was in the balance with German forces poised to enter Stalingrad and Hitler deemed it necessary to already look west and see what Ireland could offer Germany.

Kerney had no doubt about Veesenmayer’s true nature: “I was mindful of the fact that I was in the somewhat delicate position of talking to a gentleman who, if I had looked under the table, might have been capable of disclosing something in the nature of a cloven hoof”. Kerney knew the true face of Nazism and he believed the meeting was important to leave the Nazis “without any doubt as to Ireland’s position of very decided neutrality”.

When Veesenmayer outlined Hitler’s respect for Ireland and the esteem he personally held de Valera in, Kerney rebuffed Hitler’s emissary and reminded him of the bombing of Irish towns, attacks on “our budding merchant navy”, the “dropping of parachutists” and other clandestine operations such as attempts “to form contacts” with the IRA.

Veesenmayer countered that Nazi Germany respected Ireland’s neutral policy but Kerney retorted that Hitler could not be trusted and Irish neutrality must be vigilant as Germany would violate its rights like it had done to other former neutral states: “I suggested that it might suit Germany’s purpose at some time to act without our knowledge”.

In 1946 Kerney reached retirement age but de Valera asked him to lead a ground-breaking mission to South America. The delegation opened the continent to Irish political and economic ties with Argentina and Chile at a time of postwar isolation due to our wartime neutral policy. Kerney also secured more than 250,000 tons of food supplies to offset the “Big Snow” that had ruined the harvest.

The radical diplomat departed the stage but in the background old enemies – chief among them Walshe and Col Dan Bryan of Irish Army Military Intelligence (G2) alongside UCD professor of modern Irish history Desmond Williams – conspired to tarnish Kerney’s reputation. Walshe and Bryan supplied Williams with evidence of Kerney’s renegade activities abroad. The matter became a national spectacle when Kerney brought a libel action to the High Court in 1954 to clear his name.

Revolutionary defines Kerney more than conventional diplomatic terms because he needed to be non-conformist to break away from his roots. His radicalism served him well when he applied himself and his unbending vision for Irish independence has stood the test of time as evidenced in the current title of the department he served (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and in the present Brexit reality facing our island.

His reports from Spain shattered illusions about Franco being an honourable Catholic statesman and his uncompromising decision to meet Hitler’s underling Veesenmayer to hear what the Nazi dictator had planned for Ireland marked Kerney out as anything but orthodox.

This book shows that being revolutionary rather than predictable marked Kerney out as ground-breaking, innovative and progressive in his field. "There is nothing that that can be said about Mr Kerney except that which is good," opined de Valera about Ireland's revolutionary diplomat.
Ireland's Revolutionary Diplomat: A Biography of Leopold Kerney by Dr Barry Whelan of DCU is published by Notre Dame University Press