Thatcher’s War: The Iron Lady on the Falklands

Thatcher’s War: The Iron Lady on the Falklands
Margaret Thatcher

The definitive inside account of the Falklands War, written by Margaret Thatcher herself.On 21 May 1982, the British people watched with a mixture of pride and fear as their troops landed under heavy aerial bombardment at San Carlos Bay in the Falkland Islands. Since 1833 the islands had been under British sovereignty, and when Argentina launched a full-scale invasion on 2 April 1982 Margaret Thatcher decided to retaliate swiftly and aggressively. Over the following days a task force of 10,000 troops and 44 warships was assembled and despatched to the South Atlantic.Britain’s first major armed conflict since the Korean War, the Falklands War cost the lives of 236 British and 750 Argentine soldiers. When the Argentine garrison surrendered on 2 June, the public swung in favour the Conservative government, and Margaret Thatcher’s second term in office was secured. This – in the Iron Lady’s own words – is the inside story of the Falkland’s War.

THATCHER’S WAR

The Iron Lady on the Falklands

Margaret Thatcher

Contents

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Nothing remains more vividly in my mind, looking back on my years in No. 10, than the eleven weeks in the spring of 1982 when Britain fought and won the Falklands War. Much was at stake: what we were fighting for eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world – above all that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force. When I became Prime Minister I never thought that I would have to order British troops into combat and I do not think I have ever lived so tensely or intensely as during the whole of that time.

The first recorded landing on the Falklands was made in 1690 by British sailors, who named the channel between the two principal islands ‘Falkland’s Sound’ in honour of the Treasurer of the Navy, Viscount Falkland. Britain, France and Spain each established settlements on the islands at various times during the eighteenth century. In 1770 a quarrel with Spain caused the British Government of the day to mobilize the fleet and a naval task force was prepared, though never sent: a diplomatic solution was found.

The islands had obvious strategic importance, possessing several good harbours within 500 miles of Cape Horn. In the event that the Panama Canal is ever closed their significance would be considerable. But the Falklands were an improbable cause for a twentieth-century war.

The Argentine invasion of the Falklands took place 149 years after the beginning of formal British rule there, and it seems that the imminence of the 150th anniversary was an important factor in the plotting of the Argentine Junta. Since 1833 there has been a continuous and peaceful British presence on the islands. Britain’s legal claim in the present day rests on that fact, and on the desire of the settled population – entirely of British stock – to remain British. The principle of ‘self-determination’ has become a fundamental component of international law, and is enshrined in the UN Charter. British sovereignty has strong legal foundations, and the Argentinians know it.

Some 800 miles to the south-east of the Falklands lies South Georgia, and 460 miles further out, the South Sandwich Islands. Here the Argentine claim is even more dubious. These islands are dependencies of the United Kingdom, administered from the Falklands. Their climate is severe and they have no settled population. No state claimed them before British annexation in 1908 and there has been continuous British administration since that time.

My first involvement with the Falklands issue came very early in the life of the 1979 Parliament. It was clear that there were only two ways in which the prosperity of the Falkland Islanders could be achieved. The more obvious and attractive approach was by promoting the development of economic links with neighbouring Argentina. Yet this ran up against the Argentine claim that the Falklands and the dependencies were part of their sovereign territory. Ted Heath’s Government had signed an important Communications Agreement in 1971 establishing air and sea links between the islands and the mainland, but further progress had been blocked by the Argentinians unless sovereignty was also discussed. Consequently it was argued that some kind of accommodation with Argentina would have to be reached on the question of sovereignty. Arguments of this kind led Nick Ridley (the responsible minister) and his officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to advance the so-called ‘lease-back’ arrangement, under which sovereignty would pass to Argentina but the way of life of the islanders would be preserved by the continuation of British administration. I disliked this proposal, but Nick and I both agreed that it should be explored, subject always to the requirement that the islanders themselves should have the final word. Their wishes must be paramount.

There was, however, another option – far more costly. We could implement the recommendations of the long-term economic survey produced in 1976 by the former Labour minister, Lord Shackleton, and one recommendation in particular – the enlargement of the airport and lengthening of the runway. Such a commitment would have been seen as evidence of the British Government’s determination to have no serious talks about sovereignty and it would have increased our capacity to defend the islands, since a longer runway would have allowed for rapid reinforcement by air. This in turn might have provoked a swift Argentine military response. Unsurprisingly, no government – Labour or Conservative – was prepared to act while there seemed any possibility of an acceptable solution and lease-back had become the favoured option.

However, as I rather expected, the islanders would have nothing to do with such proposals. They distrusted the Argentine dictatorship and more than that, they wanted to remain British. The House of Commons too was noisily determined that the islanders’ wishes should be respected.

However, what all this meant for the future of the Falklands in the longer term was less clear. We were keen, if we could, to keep talking to the Argentinians, but diplomacy was becoming increasingly difficult. In 1976 the Argentinians had established and had maintained since a military presence on Southern Thule in the South Sandwich Islands, which the Labour Government did nothing to remove and which ministers did not even reveal to the House of Commons until 1978.

Then, in December 1981, there was a change of government in Buenos Aires. A new three-man military Junta replaced the previous military government, with General Leopoldo Galtieri as President. Galtieri relied on the support of the Argentine Navy, whose Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Anaya, held particularly hardline views on the Argentine claim to the ‘Malvinas’.

There were talks in New York at the end of February 1982 which seemed to go well. But then the Argentinian line hardened abruptly. With hindsight this was a turning point. But it is important to remember how much aggressive rhetoric there had been in the past, none of it coming to anything. Moreover, based on past experience our view was that Argentina was likely to follow a policy of progressively escalating the dispute, starting with diplomatic and economic pressures. Contrary to what was said at the time, we had no intelligence until almost the last moment that Argentina was about to launch a full-scale invasion. Nor did the Americans: Al Haig later told me that they had known even less than we had.

A factor in all this was the American Administration’s policy of strengthening ties with Argentina as part of its strategy of resisting Cuban-based communist influence in Central and South America, and the Argentinians had gained a wildly exaggerated idea of their importance to the United States. They convinced themselves on the eve of the invasion that they need not take seriously American warnings against military action, and became more intransigent when diplomatic pressure was applied on them afterwards to withdraw.

Could they have been deterred? In order to take action to deter Argentina militarily, given the vast distance between Britain and the Falklands, we would have had to have some three weeks’ notice. Further, to send down a force of insufficient size would have been to subject it to intolerable risk. Certainly, the presence of HMS Endurance – the lightly armed patrol vessel which was due to be withdrawn – was a military irrelevance. It would neither deter nor repel any planned invasion. (Indeed, when the invasion occurred I was very glad that the ship was at sea and not in Port Stanley: if she had been, she would have been captured or blown out of the water.) Most important perhaps is that nothing would have more reliably precipitated a full-scale invasion, if something less had been planned, than if we had started military preparations on the scale required to send an effective deterrent. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we would always like to have acted differently. So would the Argentinians. This was the main conclusion of the Committee of Inquiry, chaired by Lord Franks, which we set up to examine the way we had handled the dispute in the run-up to the invasion. The committee had unprecedented access to government papers, including those of the intelligence services. Its report ends with the words: ‘We would not be justified in attaching any criticism or blame to the present Government for the Argentine Junta’s decision to commit its act of unprovoked aggression in the invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982.’

It all began with an incident on South Georgia. On 20 December 1981 there had been an unauthorized landing on the island by what were described as Argentine scrap metal dealers; we had given a firm but measured response. The Argentinians subsequently left and the Argentine Government claimed to know nothing about it. I was more alarmed when, after the Anglo-Argentine talks in New York, the Argentine Government broke the procedures agreed at the meeting by publishing a unilateral communiqué disclosing the details of discussion, while simultaneously the Argentine press began to speculate on possible military action before the symbolically important date of January 1983. On 3 March 1982 I minuted on a telegram from Buenos Aires: ‘we must make contingency plans’ – though, in spite of my unease, I was not expecting anything like a full-scale invasion, which indeed our most recent intelligence assessment of Argentine intentions had discounted.

On 20 March we were informed that the previous day the Argentine scrap metal dealers had made a further unauthorized landing on South Georgia. The Argentine flag had been raised and shots fired. In answer to our protests the Argentine Government claimed to have no prior knowledge. We first decided that HMS Endurance should be instructed to remove the Argentinians, whoever they were. But we tried to negotiate with Argentina a way of resolving what still seemed to be an awkward incident rather than a precursor of conflict, so we withdrew our instructions to Endurance and ordered the ship to proceed instead to the British base at Grytviken, the main settlement on the island.

As March drew to a close with the incident still unresolved we became increasingly concerned. On Sunday evening, 28 March, I rang Peter Carrington to express my anxiety at the situation. He assured me that he had already made a first approach to Al Haig, the US Secretary of State, asking him to bring pressure to bear. The following morning Peter and I met at RAF Northolt on our way to the European Council at Brussels and agreed to send a nuclear-powered submarine to reinforce HMS Endurance and to make preparations to send a second submarine. I was not too displeased when news of the decision leaked. The submarine would take two weeks to get to the South Atlantic, but it could begin to influence events straight away. My instinct was that the time had come to show the Argentines that we meant business.

In the late afternoon of Tuesday 30 March I returned from Brussels. By that time Peter Carrington had already left on an official visit to Israel. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence had been working to prepare up-to-date assessments and review the diplomatic and military options. The following day – Wednesday 31 March – I made my statement to the House reporting on the Brussels summit, but my mind was focused on what the Argentinians were intending and on what our response should be. The advice we received from intelligence was that the Argentine Government were exploring our reactions, but that they had not contrived the landing on South Georgia. By now I was deeply uneasy. Yet still I do not think that any of us expected an immediate invasion of the Falklands themselves.

I shall not forget that Wednesday evening. I was working in my room at the House of Commons when I was told that John Nott wanted an immediate meeting to discuss the Falklands. I called people together. Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce attended from the Foreign Office, with FCO and MoD officials. (The Chief of Defence Staff was in New Zealand.) John was alarmed. He had just received intelligence that the Argentinian Fleet, already at sea, looked as if they were going to invade the islands on Friday 2 April. John gave the MoD’s view that the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized. This was terrible, and totally unacceptable: these were our people, our islands. I said instantly: ‘If they are invaded, we have got to get them back.’

I asked the Chief of the Naval Staff, Sir Henry Leach, what we could do. He was quiet, calm and confident: ‘I can put together a task force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft, support vessels. It will be led by the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. It can be ready to leave in forty-eight hours.’ He believed such a force could retake the islands. All he needed was my authority to begin to assemble it. I gave it him, and he left immediately. We reserved for Cabinet the decision as to whether and when the task force should sail.

Now my outrage and determination were matched by a sense of relief and confidence. Henry Leach had shown me that if it came to a fight the courage and professionalism of Britain’s armed forces would win through. It was my job as Prime Minister to see that they got the political support they needed. But first we had to do everything possible to prevent the appalling tragedy.

Our only hope lay with the Americans – people to whom Galtieri, if he was still behaving rationally, should listen. We drafted and sent an urgent message to President Reagan asking him to press Galtieri to draw back from the brink. This the President immediately agreed to do.

At 9.30 on Thursday morning, 1 April, I held a Cabinet, earlier than usual so that a meeting of the Overseas and Defence Committee of the Cabinet (OD) could follow it before lunch. The latest assessment was that an Argentine assault could be expected about midday our time on Friday. We thought that President Reagan might yet succeed. However, Galtieri refused altogether at first to take the President’s call. I was told of this outcome in the early hours of Friday morning and I knew then that our last hope had now gone.

At 9.45 on Friday morning Cabinet met again. I reported that an Argentine invasion was now imminent. We would meet later in the day to consider once more the question of sending a task force – though to my mind the issue by this stage was not so much whether we should act, but how.

Communications with the Falklands were often interrupted due to atmospheric conditions. On Friday morning the Governor of the Falklands – Rex Hunt – sent a message telling us that the invasion had begun, but it never got through. (Indeed, the first contact I had with him after the invasion was when he reached Montevideo in Uruguay, where the Argentinians flew him and a number of other senior people, on Saturday morning.) It was, in fact, the captain of a British Antarctic Survey vessel who intercepted a local Falkland Islands ham radio broadcast and passed on the news to the Foreign Office. My private secretary brought me final confirmation while I was at an official lunch.

By now discussion was taking place all over Whitehall about every aspect of the campaign and feverish military preparations were under way. The army was preparing its contribution. A naval task force was being formed, partly from ships currently at Gibraltar and partly from those in British ports. The Queen had already made it clear that Prince Andrew, who was serving with HMS Invincible, would be joining the task force: there could be no question of a member of the royal family being treated differently from other servicemen.

Cabinet met for the second time at 7.30 in the evening when the decision was made to send the task force. What concerned us most at this point was the time it would take to arrive. We believed, rightly, that the Argentinians would pile in men and materiel to make it as difficult as possible for us to dislodge them. And all the time the weather in the South Atlantic would be worsening as the violent storms of the southern winter approached.

More immediate and more manageable was the problem of how to deal with public opinion at home. Support for the dispatch of the task force was likely to be strong, but would it fall away as time went on? In fact, we need not have worried. Our policy was one which people understood and endorsed. Public interest and commitment remained strong throughout.

One particular aspect of this problem, though, does rate a mention. We decided to allow defence correspondents on the ships who reported back during the long journey. This produced vivid coverage of events. But there was always a risk of disclosing information which might be useful to the enemy. I also became very unhappy at the attempted ‘even-handedness’ of some of the comment, and the chilling use of the third-person – talk of ‘the British’ and ‘the Argentinians’ on our news programmes.

It was also on Friday 2 April that I received advice from the Foreign Office which summed up the flexibility of principle characteristic of that department. I was presented with the dangers of a backlash against the British expatriates in Argentina, problems about getting support in the UN Security Council, the lack of reliance we could place on the European Community or the United States, the risk of the Soviets becoming involved, the disadvantage of being looked at as a colonial power. All these considerations were fair enough. But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen’s subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister.

In the short term, we needed to win our case against Argentina in the UN Security Council and to secure a resolution denouncing their aggression and demanding withdrawal. On the basis of such a resolution we would find it far easier to win the support of other nations for practical measures to pressurize Argentina. But in the longer term we knew that we had to try to keep our affairs out of the UN as much as possible. With the Cold War still under way, there was a real danger that the Security Council might attempt to force unsatisfactory terms upon us. If necessary we could veto such a resolution, but to do so would diminish international support for our position. The second long-term goal was to ensure maximum support from our allies, principally the US, but also members of the EC, the Commonwealth and other important western nations. This was a task undertaken at head of government level, but an enormous burden fell on the FCO and no country was ever better served than Britain by our two key diplomats at this time: Sir Anthony Parsons, Britain’s UN Ambassador and Sir Nicholas (Nico) Henderson, our ambassador in Washington.

At the UN Tony Parsons, on the eve of the invasion, was busy outmanoeuvring the Argentinians. The UN Secretary-General had called on both sides to exercise restraint: we responded positively, but the Argentinians remained silent. On Saturday 3 April, Tony Parsons managed a diplomatic triumph in persuading the Security Council to pass what became Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 502, demanding an immediate and unconditional withdrawal by the Argentinians from the Falklands. It had not been easy. The debate was bitter and complex. We knew that the old anti-colonialist bias of the UN would incline some Security Council members against us, were it not for the fact that there had been a flagrant act of aggression by the Argentinians. I was particularly grateful to President Mitterrand who was among the staunchest of our friends and who telephoned me personally to pledge support on Saturday. (I was to have many disputes with President Mitterrand in later years, but I never forget the debt we owed him for his personal support throughout the Falklands crisis.) France used her influence in the UN to swing others in our favour. I myself made a last-minute telephone call to King Hussein of Jordan, who also came down on our side. He is an old friend of Britain’s and I did not have to go into lengthy explanations to persuade him to cast Jordan’s vote on our side. He began the conversation by asking simply: ‘What can I do for you, Prime Minister?’ In the end we were delighted to have the votes we needed for the Resolution and to avoid a veto from the Soviet Union. But we had no illusions as to who would be left to remove the aggressor when all the talking was done: it would be us.

The debate in the House of Commons that Saturday is another very powerful memory.

The House was rightly angry that British territory had been invaded and occupied, and many Members were inclined to blame the Government for its alleged failure to foresee and forestall what had happened. My first task was to defend us against the charge of unpreparedness.

Far more difficult was my second task: convincing MPs that we would respond to Argentina’s aggression forcefully and effectively.

My announcement that the task force was ready and about to sail was greeted with growls of approval. But I knew that some saw the task force as a purely diplomatic armada that would get the Argentinians back to the negotiating table. They never intended that it should actually fight, while I felt in my bones that the Argentinians would never withdraw without a fight and anything less than withdrawal was unacceptable to the country, and certainly to me. Others shared my view that the task force would have to be used, but doubted the Government’s will and stamina.

That morning in Parliament I could keep the support of both groups by sending the task force out and by setting down our objectives: that the islands would be freed from occupation and returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment. I obtained the almost unanimous but grudging support of a Commons that was anxious to support the Government’s policy, while reserving judgement on the Government’s performance.

But I realized that even this degree of backing was likely to be eroded as the campaign wore on. I knew, as most MPs could not, the full extent of the practical military problems. I foresaw that we would encounter setbacks that would cause even some of a hawkish disposition to question whether the game was worth the candle. And how long could a coalition of opinion survive that was composed of warriors, negotiators and even virtual pacifists? For the moment, however, we received the agreement of the House of Commons for the strategy of sending the task force. And that was what mattered.

Almost immediately I faced a crisis in the Government. John Nott, who was under great strain, had delivered an uncharacteristically poor performance in his winding-up speech. He had been very harshly treated in the debate. He was held responsible by many of our backbenchers for what had happened because of the Defence Review which he had pioneered. This was unfair; but there was no doubt that the Party’s blood was up: nor was it just John Nott they were after.

Peter Carrington defended the Government’s position that morning in the House of Lords and had a reasonably good reception. But Peter and John then attended a packed and angry meeting of Tory backbenchers. Here, Peter was at a distinct disadvantage: as a peer he had struck up none of those friendships and understandings with backbenchers on which all of us have to rely when the pressure builds. As Ian Gow reported to me afterwards, it was a very difficult meeting, and feelings had boiled over.

The press over the weekend was very hostile. Peter Carrington was talking about resigning. I saw him on Saturday evening, Sunday morning and again in the evening. Both Willie Whitelaw and I did all that we could to persuade him to stay, but there seems always to be a visceral desire that a disaster should be paid for by a scapegoat. There is no doubt that Peter’s resignation ultimately made it easier to unite the Party and concentrate on recovering the Falklands: he understood this.

John Nott also wished to resign. But I told him straight that when the fleet had put to sea he had a bounden duty to stay and see the whole thing through. He therefore withdrew his letter on the understanding that it was made public that his offer to resign had been rejected. Whatever issues might have to be faced later as a result of the full inquiry (which I announced on 8 April), now was the time to concentrate on one thing only – victory. Meanwhile, I had to find a new Foreign Secretary. The obvious choice was Francis Pym, who had had the requisite experience of Foreign Affairs in Opposition and Defence in Government. And so I appointed him, asking John Biffen to take over his former position as Leader of the House of Commons. Francis is in many ways the quintessential old-style Tory: a country gentleman and a soldier, a good tactician, but no strategist. He is the sort of man of whom people used to say that he would be ‘just right in a crisis’. I was to have reason to question that judgement. Francis’s appointment undoubtedly united the Party. But it heralded serious difficulties for the conduct of the campaign itself.