Iron Britannia

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by Anthony Barnett


  A book written in haste is certain to contain errors, for which I am entirely to blame. However, I hope that the reader will not be too annoyed. I enjoyed writing Iron Britannia and would like it to be read for pleasure.

  21 August 1982

  Chronology

  April 2 Argentina seizes the Falkland Islands.

  3 House of Commons holds special Saturday debate.

  4 Argentinian force captures South Georgia.

  5 Lord Carrington resigns as Foreign Secretary, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible sail from Portsmouth to head Task Force.

  6 UK says no negotiated solution without total Argentinian withdrawal. Second Parliamentary debate, Tony Benn demands return of Task Force. EEC applies sanctions.

  7 UK announces 200 mile exclusion zone around the Islands from 12 April.

  8 US Secretary of State General Haig arrives in London to attempt a mediating peace shuttle.

  12 Haig returns to London after round trip to Buenos Aires. Blockade goes into force.

  13 Haig returns to Washington, Junta appeals to UN.

  14 Third Parliamentary debate, Michael Foot continues to endorse Task Force.

  16 Transcript of conversation between Reagan and Haig leaked in which the US President says that ‘Maggie wants a skirmish’.

  19 Task Force off Ascension island, grows massively with reinforcements. Thatcher rejects Junta’s peace plan.

  25 British forces re-capture South Georgia.

  26 UN Secretary General says Resolution 502 applies to UK as well as Argentina.

  27 Foot calls on Thatcher to accept the UN peace call.

  29 UK announces total air-exclusion zone over Falklands, Argentina announces its own counter-blockade.

  30 Reagan announces that US will support Britain, confirming failure of Haig Mission, as Peruvian initiative begins.

  May 1 British bomb Port Stanley airstrip, first air clashes (3 Argentinian planes downed). Peruvian peace initiative said to be acceptable.

  2 British nuclear submarine Conqueror sinks General Belgrano outside the exclusion zone and at least 200 miles from Task Force. Over 300 Argentinian sailors killed. Peruvian peace initiative fails.

  3 British helicopters attack two Argentinian patrol ships.

  4 HMS Sheffield sunk by Exocet missile, a Harrier shot down.

  7 Britain extends its exclusion zone to 12 miles off Argentina’s coast.

  12 QE 2 sails from Portsmouth as troopship; arguments in UK over role of media and government, right-wing condemns war criticism.

  15 British commando attack on Pebble Island.

  16 EEC renews its sanctions against Argentina.

  18 EEC imposes increase in farm prices on UK, over-riding Britain’s ‘veto’.

  20 Final House of Commons debate on eve of landing. 33 MPs vote against use of the Task Force.

  21 Task Force lands over 1,000 British troops at San Carlos unopposed and begins to consolidate its bridgehead; strength increases to 5,000.

  22 Argentinian Air Force begins to sink British ships in intense bombing runs.

  28 Goose Green taken by British forces. Pope arrives in the UK.

  June 3 British call on Argentinian garrison at Port Stanley to surrender. Tories win Mitcham and Morden by-election.

  7 Reagan arrives in London on way to Paris summit.

  8 Heavy British losses at Bluff Cove (50 killed).

  11 Pope arrives in Buenos Aires.

  14 Ceasefire arranged as Argentinians in Port Stanley surrender.

  1 Glare of War

  WHEN HISTORY repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, the second farce. Despite its Marxist origin, the aphorism is now a received wisdom. Perhaps that alone is good reason to abandon the idea. Certainly we have gone beyond it. The British recapture of the Falkland Islands was obviously a repeat performance, although there is argument over precisely what was taking place again. It reminded some of the original eviction of Argentina by an English fleet in 1833, while Trevor-Roper compared it to the even earlier confrontation with Spain over the islands in 1770. The most apt and widely drawn comparison however, has been with the Suez crisis of 1956. Indeed, when the British Parliament gathered on 3 April 1982 for a special Saturday debate on Argentina’s invasion, readers of that morning’s Times were told: ‘The emergency sitting of the Commons will be the first on a Saturday since 3 November 1956, over Suez.’ Yet the 1956 Anglo-French invasion of Egypt was itself a clownish attempt by the two European powers to recreate their colonial domination over the Suez Canal. Today, therefore, British history has entered a new stage. We are witnesses to the repeat of a repeat, and as befits the late modern world it was played out on television and in the press. If the first time is tragedy and the second farce, the third is spectacle: the media event that was launched when the British fleet set sail for the South Atlantic.

  Will reality and spectacle eventually collide? It was remarkable how well the British public relations side of the Falklands affair stood up. It was helped, of course, by a quick and, in part, fortuitous victory. Nonetheless, the manipulation of opinion was at least as masterful (and as important) as the military operation. Initially a clear majority wanted to see no loss of life and, for some weeks after the Task Force had sailed, held that the Falklands were not worth a single British death. Yet 256 were killed on the British side, along with three Falklanders, and 777 wounded. Argentina suffered at least 1,800 dead, missing and injured.1 This casualty list was found acceptable. It was even seen as agreeably ‘light’, given the intensity of the combat. The figures were glossed as a measure of British military prowess, for being so low. But they were based on a gross miscalculation, not of the incompetence of Argentina’s army—in which British estimates that it would fail to perform proved accurate—but in the persistence of its air force, predicted in the House of Commons by Tarn Dalyell, a critic of the expedition. Indeed, if the ‘profusion’ of unexploded Argentine bombs had gone off, the story might have had another ending. Despite the skill of the British operation, ‘it would have been impossible to continue’, one officer commented, had the enemy ordnance been correctly fused.2 Yet the British got away with it and now see this as a demonstration of their virtue. Britannia never shows remorse.

  But if the British Government managed to ‘wrap up’ the Falklands War, and then to issue it on video, something else has been unwrapped in the process. For all the talk of truth being the first casualty of war, the Gothic excesses of conflict may clarify, especially as they bring domestic forces to a head. The glare of war can illuminate darkness just as the flash of lightning at night can reveal a white image of the surrounding landscape. When the darkness sets in again and the thunder rolls on, those who love the spectacle will talk about the lightning. I am interested in what it showed: in particular, what the Falklands war can tell us about Britain today.

  In the postwar years, when a welfare state of sorts was built in Britain and even pioneered in some respects, the country’s image was of a society in social peace. True, this was disturbed by poor industrial relations at times. But mass unemployment was regarded as a thing of the past, not only because Keynesianism supposedly made it redundant, but also because unemployment would rend apart the special fabric of Britain’s postwar consensus. In spite of all appearances, or indeed because of them, a classless sense of ‘fair-play’ was seen to preside over social relations within the UK. All loved the Queen, and the amusing antique ceremonies of monarchy thus unified classes and regions. The quiet sense of shared self-confidence was conjured up by the unarmed ‘bobby’; the police were like uncles who kept a kindly eye out for understandable misdemeanours, crimes of passion and the very infrequent villain. There was no country like it.

  It has never been clear to me what proportion of the population actually believed this vision they were all supposed to share. It was a ‘worldview’ of the United Kingdom generated domestically, rather than a reality at any time. Yet it was also more than public relations. Its projection needed sincerity more than
cynicism, even if that sincerity was self-deceptive.

  But who could hold such a view today as the essential attribute of ‘Britishness’? The Falklands crisis coincided with the first anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands and the start of the campaign in which Thatcher linked the attitude of the government in Westminster directly to the death of prisoners in Northern Ireland. Riots followed in June 1981 right across England (significantly omitting the major cities of Scotland and Wales). A reaction to the brutal policing of blacks especially, the riots saw the full deployment of hit-squads by the police and the first mainland use of CS gas. The notable behaviour of British football gangs in Europe could now be seen as an expression of the ‘real’ England, rather than a youthful exception to it. Today, the Falklands expedition has completed this transfer of the British image in the eyes of the world—from phlegmatic bobby to enthusiastic commando.

  In one sense its timing was accidental, determined by the troubles of Argentina and the strains within its military Junta. In another, the whole thing could not have come at a more convenient moment for Thatcher. The Conservative Party’s popularity, although recovering somewhat from a winter nadir, remained stubbornly low. The only bright spot on the horizon for Tory prospects was the intense division of opinion within the Labour Party that made it seem an improbable alternative. At the same time both the main parties were confronted by the liquidation of their duopoly. The rise of the Social Democrats in alliance with the-Liberals threatens more than the usual challenge. For should they come even close to victory in the next election, proportional representation may be introduced and the structure and certainties of the old Parliamentary parties will be gone forever. After apparently faltering at the final gate, Roy Jenkins—the effective founder, ‘statesman’ and now leader of the SDP—won a critical Scottish by-election to return to the House of Commons at the end of March. Within days Galtieri’s forces stormed Port Stanley.

  The rise of the SDP, the fissures within the two main parties (the divisions amongst the Conservatives are less discussed but no less significant), the unprecedented volatility of the opinion polls, are all part of the general crisis in Britain—one now so protracted that the very word seems to induce a yawn. Perhaps indeed it is the work of sleepwalkers. Certainly most discussion of the British crisis is either ponderously beside the point or sensationally trivial, as attention is displaced away from the political centre.

  Slowly, however, the perceived location of the crisis has moved in on the country’s masters, while material conditions continue to degenerate. The regiments of the unemployed have grown much faster than even the military budget under Thatcher’s direction: officially three million, actually around four million, and the numbers beginning to experience the long-term debilitation of being unwaged mounting even more sharply. By the same token—or lack of it—bankruptcies have reached a record: 5,500 in the first half of 1982, a 75% rise on 1981. During the three months of the Falklands War 226 companies went into liquidation every week, while a torrent of capital cascaded into overseas investments.3

  The Falklands crisis was born of these circumstances. It joined the now venerable tradition of quack cures imbibed by the British political establishment in the hopes of a relatively painless solution to its woes. The media welcomed the dispatch of the task force with a zeal similar to its enthusiasms for anti-union legislation, entry into the Common Market, the advent of North Sea oil, or monetarism. (Perhaps the Falklands created a slightly greater spectrum between enthusiasm and scepticism than normal, but that was all.) In their time all these seemed marvellous ways to reverse Britain’s decline without challenging the nature of sovereignty in the UK. After the Falklands victory, in a major speech at Cheltenham to which we shall return (reproduced in full in the Appendix, p. 149 below), Thatcher baptized ‘the spirit of the South Atlantic’, as the ‘real spirit’ of Britain. ‘The spirit has stirred and the nation has begun to assert itself. Things are not going to be the same again … Britain has ceased to be a nation in retreat.’ In Thatcher’s presentation, the long crisis is essentially over. Britain has been cured! In private, other politicians may scoff at such sleight of hand, while they envy the conviction with which it is played. Meanwhile, they and Thatcher share as a controlling vanity the belief that whatever else may be wrong with the UK, at least ‘the British know how to rule’. Thatcher may seem to have challenged this idea with her assault on gentrified amateurs and her cult of professionalism. But both notions, of ‘professionalism’ and ‘amateurism’ alike, as used in British politics today, share the same presumption: that sovereignty is something that belongs to an elite by special right. The style of domination is in dispute and behind this there is a clash of interests, but no challenge to the received institutions of privilege. It is this which has made Thatcher’s celebration of the Falklands War at one and the same time novel and conservative. She has given the Parliamentary nation a new expression, but she has expressed its longings and desires to escape from accumulated frustrations. She may have exploited the opportunity of the Falklands War, but it was pressed upon her by Parliament itself.

  The key political event in the dispatch of the Task Force, which explains why it was sent into combat, and which itself must be explained if we are to seek the cause of the British response, was the behaviour of the House of Commons on 3 April. The day after the Falklands were overrun, Parliament sat for its special session. What happened then may have transformed the chemistry of British politics: it certainly injected onto it an odious stench that will take a long time to clear. In party political terms the outcome was quite remarkable. Previously Thatcher had represented the aggressive wing of the Conservative Party and a definite minority within the country; harsh, even balmy, high on monetaristic evangelism. Espousing the need for home-spun discipline, she stood for short, sharp government. Because she seemed to know what she was doing and what needed to be done, amidst dishevelled political alternatives who appeared to betray their confusion and incompetence, Thatcher retained a support much wider than her band of true followers. Yet she remained an extremist in a country that has always cultivated the worship of moderation.

  The Falklands debate changed that. The House of Commons overwhelmingly endorsed a gesture of military determination to salvage a national humiliation. As The Times put it, it was just like the Second World War when we went in to save the Poles. Except that there remains a difference between 1939 and today: the Poles were Poles, but the Falklanders are British!4 To listen to that Parliamentary debate on the radio was to enter into a kind of collective inanity, in which each speaker held up a distorting mirror for the others to admire themselves in—it was a self-consciously historic occasion.

  It made Thatcher no longer the political outrider. She had come to power through a double Party crisis: the complacency of Labour under Callaghan allowed the Tories to win the 1979 election, while Thatcher herself had grabbed the Conservative leadership after Heath’s demoralizing defeat in 1974. Though no longer an intruder, she remained a misfit until the 3 April debate elevated her into the war leader of a bi-partisan consensus. Or rather a multi-party unanimity, for Liberals and the SDP also spoke out vehemently against the nation’s suffering at the crunch of Argentina’s heel. Thatcher’s new role only became clear after the debate, as the fleet set sail. It was her navy. (The Queen’s yacht Britannia was not dispatched even though it is especially equipped to be turned into a hospital ship in times of war.) During the debate itself, Thatcher and her government were rebuked by the House for having allowed the debacle on the islands to occur in the first place. She was shamed, yet she was also dared, even taunted into action, in particular by Enoch Powell:

  The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received the soubriquet as the ‘Iron Lady’. It arose in context of remarks which she made about defence against the Soviet Union and its allies. But there was no reason to suppose that the Right Honourable Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take great pride in that description. In the next
week or two this House, the nation and the Right Honourable Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.

  Apparently Thatcher nodded her head in agreement. Michael Foot was less personal but delivered just as strong a challenge. The House, the country, was ‘paramountly concerned’, he stated,

  about what we can do to protect those who rightly and naturally look to us for protection. So far they have been betrayed. The Government must now prove by deeds—they will never be able to do it by words—that they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge.

  ‘The Government must now prove by deeds …’ By speaking thus Foot made himself the voice of the House of Commons that day. He was the spokesperson for its fervid assent to the expedition. The Tory Party—especially its right-wing—was suckled and drew comfort from his oratory; the Liberals were out-liberaled by his appeals to the small nations of the world; the SDP was shown what social democracy was all about; the Labour Party could look with pride upon its leader, he was better than Denis Healey after all. With morale all of a crumble on the Tory frontbench, it was Foot who gave true leadership. As he sat down, Edward du Cann, a leading Conservative back-bencher, rose to congratulate him:

  There are times in the affairs of our nation when the House should speak with a single, united voice. This is just such a time. The Leader of the Opposition spoke for us all. He did this nation a service when, in clear and unmistakable terms, he condemned what he called this brutal aggression and when he affirmed the rights of the Falkland Islanders to decide their own destiny.

  Yes, Foot was Churchill and Foot was Bevan, rolled into one. He was the John Bull of the Labour movement, the world statesman confronted by the forces of evil; righteous and determined he spoke for the whole, united House. Foot called for action. Thatcher carried it out. He delivered the country into her hands.

 

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