Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel

An Australian-born Scot, Clark Kerr was born Archibald John Kerr Clark, the son of John Kerr Clark (1838–1910), originally from Lanarkshire, Scotland, and Kate Louisa (1846–1926), daughter of Sir John Struan Robertson, five times Premier of the Colony of New South Wales.[1] His family emigrated to England in 1889. In 1911 he assumed the surname of Kerr in addition to that of Clark.[2] He attended Bath College from 1892 to 1900.[3]

Clark Kerr entered the Foreign Service in 1906. Early on, he made the mistake of challenging the Foreign Office over its Egyptian policy. Consequently, he found himself posted to a series of capitals in Latin America. He was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to various Central American republics between 1925 and 1928,[4] to Chile between 1928 and 1930,[5] to Sweden between 1931 and 1934[6] and to Iraq between 1935 and 1938.[7]

He distinguished himself enough in these posts to secure a prestigious appointment as Ambassador to China between 1938 and 1942 during the Japanese occupation.[8] In the ensuing years, he developed a close relationship with Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek and spent most of his posting explaining why Britain could not offer him any substantive aid in his struggle against the Japanese invaders.

He argued for British aid to China based upon humanitarian concerns, the preservation of British economic influence, and the principle of national self-determination. Despite the lack of aid from Britain, he impressed the Chinese with his interest in Confucian philosophy. He also impressed the Chinese with his determination. After the British consulate in Chungking was almost completely destroyed by Japanese bombing in 1940, other diplomatic missions evacuated, but he kept the Union Jack flying close to Chinese government buildings. He regularly swam in the Yangtze River, and after meeting American writer Ernest Hemingway he dismissed him derisively: "Tough? Why, I'm tougher than he is!"[9]

Kerr shaking hands with George Marshall at the Tehran Conference

He was moved to Moscow in February 1942[10] where he forged a remarkable relationship with Stalin and facilitated a number of Anglo-Soviet diplomatic conferences. His work there and at the Big Three Conferences (such as Yalta and Potsdam) put him at the centre of international politics during the final, pivotal years of the Second World War. Throughout his posting in Moscow he sought clearer direction from the Foreign Office in London. Lacking it, he often fell back upon a directive received from Churchill in February 1943: "You want a directive? All right. I don't mind kissing Stalin's bum, but I'm damned if I'll lick his arse!"[11]

As the war neared its end, Kerr became increasingly concerned about Soviet plans for the post-war world. He did not think that they planned to begin spreading world revolution, but he did think that they were preparing to exert their influence well beyond their pre-war sphere of influence. He voiced deep-seated concerns about Soviet expansionism for the first time in a lengthy memorandum on Soviet policy dated 31 August 1944. In the memo, he forecast three likely results of the war: the removal of any immediate threat to Soviet security, the consolidation of Stalin's dominant position, and the Soviet use of Communist Parties in other countries to serve interests of "Russia as a state as distinct from Russia as a revolutionary notion."[12] This closely resembled the conclusions that George F. Kennan included in a telegram to Washington a few months later.

After the war Clerk Kerr was appointed Ambassador to the United States, a post he held until 1948.[13] An acquaintance of Guy Burgess and Donald Duart Maclean's superior in Washington, he took their defection to the USSR badly. The affair cast a shadow over Inverchapel's career.[14] He died in 1951.

Clark Kerr was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1935 New Year Honours[15] and a Knight Grand Cross in 1942[16] and was sworn of the Privy Council in 1944.[2] In 1946 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Inverchapel, of Loch Eck in the County of Argyll.[17]

Lord Inverchapel's personal life has been described as colourful: a close confidant of the Kaiser's sister in the years before the Great War, he was also a disappointed suitor of the Queen Mother before his marriage, divorce, and remarriage, to a Chilean lady 29 years his junior. Politically on the left, a noted wit and unconventional in manner, he was sometimes suspected of excessive understanding for the Soviet position. His biographer, Donald Gillies, considers rumoured pro-Soviet sympathies highly unlikely.

Inverchapel is best remembered in the public imagination for a much reproduced note he is said to have written in 1943 to Lord Pembroke while Ambassador to Moscow.[18] A copy of the letter was published in The Spectator in 1978, with the comment that "an acquaintance has been delving among the Foreign Office records for the war years".[19]

"My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr, H.M. Ambassador"

Lord Inverchapel married a lady belonging to the Chilean aristocracy Doña María Teresa Díaz y Salas, of Santiago, Chile, in 1929, daughter of Don Javier Díaz y Lira and Doña Ventura Salas y Edwards. He died in July 1951, aged 69. The barony died with him as he had no children.[2]

• Donald Gillies, Radical diplomat: the life of Archibald Clark Kerr, Lord Inverchapel, 1882–1951; I.B.Tauris publishers, London and New York, 1999. ISBN 978-1-86064-296-8
• Erik Goldstein, 'Kerr, Archibald John Kerr Clark, Baron Inverchapel (1882–1951)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32422

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel.

• Clark Kerr's letter to Lord Pembroke
• Photograph of Clark Kerr at the National Portrait Gallery.