Iron Britannia

by Anthony Barnett

  Sir John Eden was then selected to address the House with his distinctive point of view. The Foreign Office, he thought, or at least ‘elements’ within it ‘have been wanting to be rid of what they have regarded as a tiresome problem.’ How dull and sensible. But now, revenge would be exacted, to preserve by force one of the few remaining colonies as Sir Nigel Fisher had described it. The species would not be allowed to become extinct while knights such as Sir Nigel and Sir John had any sway. Force must be mounted, said Sir John, the Government was committed, Thatcher should make sure that her commitment, ‘is carried through to the earliest possible fulfilment. The honour of the country demands nothing less.’

  Donald Stewart, a Scottish Nationalist from the Western Isles, was then recognized. He too had constituents who worked in the Falklands and he was also a member of the Falklands lobby. The sequence of Sir John Eden followed by Donald Stewart, as speakers in the ‘debate’, revealed one of its determining patterns. On the one hand a succession of ultra-right-wing Tories from the South Coast (Sir John Eden represents Bournemouth West); on the other, MPs from the Celtic fringe with Falkland interests. It would be hard to think of a less representative combination for the defence of British democracy. Argentina’s claims to the sovereignty of the Falklands were ‘totally unfounded’ according to Stewart. The Government should have been prepared. ‘I hope that this matter can be resolved without force, but if force is necessary, so be it.’

  The MP for Honiton, Devonshire, came next. Sir Peter Emery regarded the House as ‘absolutely unanimous’, with ‘perhaps one exception’.

  The British House of Commons is determined to ensure that the British Falkland Islands people shall be removed from the yoke of the Argentine Government…. We must risk nothing that could bring about defeat…. If that action of withdrawal has not been taken within 10 or 14 days stipulated by the Government, a state of war should exist between Argentina and Britain.

  At last a pillar from the Labour Party rose, a man of experience with a constituency in a major city: Douglas Jay from London’s Battersea. But it was possible to distinguish him from the previous speaker only by the degree of grammatical coherence and ordered phraseology that he brought to his demand for war.

  The Foreign Office is a bit too much saturated with the spirit of appeasement. I hope that, apart from anything else, the Foreign Office will now examine its conscience, if it has one. Second, I trust … that there will be no cash limits on any effective action that we now take. Thirdly … Diplomacy can succeed only if it is visibly supported by effective action …. What matters now is that these people wish to remain British, and that is the right to self-determination … as the whole history of this century has shown, if one gives way to this sort of desperate, illegal action, things will not get better, they will get worse.

  It is possible to discern a difference in mental attitude of the southern Tory knights from that of the squires of Labourism. The former are more intensely patriotic. It is the internal decay and shrivelling of what it means to be British, that upsets them. For the Labour nationalists, however, it is the decline of Britain in the world that matters; theirs is the more external, global and ‘historical’ perspective.

  Up popped Sir Bernard Braine (Conservative). to prove the point. He began his remarks with an astute observation of the occasion: ‘This remarkable debate has been characterised by high-calibre speeches showing acute perception of the problem.’ And he went on to add his own finely engineered perceptions, concluding:

  The time for weasel words has ended. I expect action from the Government; and I hope that we shall get it. However, let there be no misunderstanding. Unless the Falkland Islands are quickly restored to lawful British sovereignty, and unless their people are freed from the dreadful shadow under which they have lived for a decade or more, the effect on the Government will be dire.

  He had already stated that he would withdraw his support from the Government if it failed in its duty. In Parliamentary terms, this meant that Sir Bernard and his bunch of diehards would support an Opposition motion of censure on the Government for its handling of the Falklands, unless Thatcher and her Cabinet acted with full determination. Only 30 fanatics would be needed to march into the lobby behind Michael Foot and Douglas Jay to bring down the appeasers.

  Sir Bernard’s speech was not quite finely calculated enough, in the tactical sense. Had he gone on foaming a bit longer, his would have been the last contribution to the ‘debate’ before the two winding-up speeches from the front-benches. Nor was the full force of Sir Bernard’s passion communicated by the tidy columns of Hansard.

  The very thought that our people, 1,800 people of British blood and bone, could be left in the hands of such criminals is enough to make any normal Englishman’s blood—and the blood of Scotsmen and Welshmen—boil too.

  It was so much finer to hear than to read. He was apoplectic: ‘B B B British b b b blood and b b bone’ he stammered. ‘Any normal Englishman’s b b blood’, he raved on, in full flight, drugged by ethnicity, when some slight mental process stirred as he recalled that it was Britain, not England, he was supposed to speak for. The islanders are—to a man (women have yet to enter his consciousness as other than victims it seems)—mainly Scottish and Welsh. The English who are involved with the Falklands to any significant degree are its absentee landlords, shareholders in the Falkland Islands Company and Empire-minded MPs. So Sir Bernard quickly threw the blood of the Scotsman and the Welshman back into the boiling brew.

  An outsider coming into the visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons at that moment might have asked why the honourable member’s blood was so disturbed. Was it because four million of his fellow citizens had been deprived of a paying job? Was it that good, higher education was being dismantled in the United Kingdom? Was it that a million of Sir Bernard’s fellow Englishmen who happen to be black were being subjected to excessively firm police measures? Was it even due to the Falkland Islanders being deprived of their right of ‘self-determination’? Of course not. It was none of these things. The visitor would simply have witnessed the froth and curdle of an old ruling class now going off its rocker.

  Finally, a voice from Scotland was heard to demand some—a bit—of proportion. George Foulkes was recognized. We know why, as Tarn Dalyell has explained, ‘I went to the Speaker’s Secretary, standing by his chair, to ask him to call a dissenting voice’.18 The great ‘debate’ had been a pre-selected beauty contest with only those whose patriotic features were deemed bulbous enough, allowed to display themselves before the public. The Speaker gave way at the very end.. Foulkes had four minutes to ‘dissent’. But he felt completely on the defensive:

  I have some reservations about what seems to have been emerging, almost unanimously, as the view of the House.

  He was interrupted, and replied:

  My gut reaction is to use force. Our country has been humiliated. Every honourable member must have a gut reaction to use force. But we must also be sure that we shall not kill thousands of people in the use of that force … I am against the military action for which so many people have asked because I dread the consequences that will befall the people of our country and the people of the Falkland Islands.

  Gut reactions and the sentiment of dread were hardly a convincing way to argue an alternative.

  The two concluding speeches followed, the first from John Silkin, Labour’s shadow spokesman for defence. His was probably the most hypocritical of all the contributions. He began by claiming that Michael Foot was now ‘the leader of the nation’. The day was not one for judgements or recriminations however—Silkin agreed. He then dedicated his entire speech to often skilful recriminations against the Government, and judged that the Prime Minister should go. She, the Secretary for Defence and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, ‘are on trial today’. Silkin’s conclusion to them: ‘The sooner you get out the better.’

  Between scoring points against the Thatcher Government, Silkin assured the House that, ‘Our t
houghts are with our fellow citizens in the Falkland Islands’ (his thoughts were thus not at all on gaining office for himself). With Parliament so steamed up, nobody would interject that the Falklanders were not in fact ‘fellow citizens’ but second-class subjects. Silkin had a more touching sentiment yet:

  I make one appeal above all others to the Government. Let us ensure that our dear fellow citizens in the Falkland Islands are kept in touch with us as much as possible. Let us extend our broadcasts.

  As for Galtieri, the worst in a bunch of fascists:

  When he says to us that he will respect the rights and property and, above all, the lives and freedom of our people, we have a right to wonder whether this is true in view of what he does to his own people.

  Oh, he said that, did he? It is strange that nobody mentioned the Junta’s pledge during the debate, in which the Falklanders’ ‘rights’ figured so prominently. Only Michael Foot had glimpsed the possible embarrassment of this aspect of the Argentine take-over, to dismiss it in advance. Fortunately, with the debate being so short and the speakers so ‘representative’, no MP who spoke was foolish enough to demand that the Junta’s offer be seriously tested. Naturally, one would have to do much more than ‘wonder’ at the veracity of Galtieri’s promise; yet measures could have been suggested to help ensure that such a promise was observed. To speak like this, however, would be to speak treason: to face realities and care for people rather than defending sovereignty. No such blackguard rose to shame the House from the opposition front-bench.

  John Nott, Secretary of State for Defence, then made the final contribution to the day’s discussion. He did not address himself seriously to the future. As he tried to defend the Government’s lack of preparation almost all of Nott’s speech concerned the past. How could it have allowed Argentina to have walked over the Falklands? Why had he not taken some preemptive action to deter the aggression, as Labour had in 1977? Wasn’t it he who had run down the navy? Nott struggled with little conviction to defend the record. Goaded beyond endurance he asked the House:

  If we were unprepared, how is it that from next Monday, at only a few days notice, the Royal Navy will put to sea in wartime order and with wartime stocks and weapons? … I suggest that no other country in the world could react so fast and the preparations have been in progress for several weeks.

  Several weeks? An exceedingly interesting suggestion, especially as it came from the Secretary of State for Defence himself.

  Nott then concluded. He told the House that the situation was ‘extremely grave’.

  We intend to solve the problem and we shall try to solve it continuingly by diplomatic means, but if that fails, and it will probably do so, we shall have no choice but to press forward with our plans. (My emphasis.)

  One of these ‘plans’ had already fallen into place:

  We can at least … give to the armed forces the unanimous backing of the House in the difficult task that they are being asked to undertake.

  The ‘unanimous’ House of Commons adjourned. Britain had been sent to war.

  Notes

  1 Sunday Times, ‘Insight’, 20 June 1982, based on research by Peter Beck.

  2 Economist, 19 June 1982.

  3 Martin Walker, Guardian, 19 June 1982.

  4 Economist, as cited. (My emphasis).

  5 Ibid.

  6 Ibid.

  7 The Times, 5 April 1982.

  8 John Shirley, Sunday Times, 20 June 1982.

  9 Interview on the 10.00 pm BBC News, 23 June 1982.

  10 15 July 1982, p.21.

  11 Patrick Bishop, Observer, 20 June 1982.

  12 ‘The 1980 census showed a population of 1,813 of which 1,360 were born in the Islands and 302 in Britain’. (The Falkland Islands and Dependencies, Reference Services, Central Office of Information, London March 1982. p.1.)

  13 All quotations from the debate are taken from Hansard.

  14 Foot’s attitude is also a variant of what F.S. Northedge has termed the ‘national arrogance’, which he describes as ‘the most persistent assumption in British thinking on foreign policy’. Namely: ‘the idea that the rest of the world is rather like an unruly child which has a divine obligation to defer to its elders and betters like the British … but which from time to time may be prevented from doing so by either sheer stupidity, or suppression by some upstart dictator ….’ (Descent from Power, London 1974, p. 360).

  15 Tribune, 14 and 21 May 1982.

  16 Article 51 of the UN Charter reads: ‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security’.

  17 In its lead editorial, 19 June 1982.

  18 London Review of Books, 20 May 1982.

  3 Churchillism

  TO LISTEN to the House of Commons debate on 3 April 1982 was like tuning in to a Wagnerian opera. Counterpoint and fugue rolled into an all-enveloping cacophony of sound and emotion. Britannia emerged once more, fully armed and to hallelujahs of assent (accompanied by fearful warnings should She be again betrayed). A thunderous ‘hear, hear’ greeted every audacious demand for revenge wrapped thinly in the call for self-determination. Dissent was no more than a stifled cough during a crescendo of percussion: it simply confirmed the overwhelming force of the music.

  Later, opposition would make itself heard above the storm. But it was drowned out at the crucial moment. In part this was arranged. As we have seen, scheming took place to ensure a ‘united House’. MPs took six days to debate entry into the Common Market in 1973. They went to war for the Falklands in three hours. The result was to preempt public discussion with a fabricated consensus. In the immediate aftermath of Argentina’s take-over of the islands, most people could hardly believe it was more important than a newspaper headline about some forgotten spot. Suddenly they were presented with the unanimous view of all the party leaders that this was a grave national crisis which imperilled Britain’s profound interests and traditional values. The decisive unity of the Commons was thuggish as well as inspired. The few who feared the headlong rush were mostly daunted and chose the better part of valour. Innocent islanders in ‘fascist’ hands, the nation’s sovereignty raped: it seemed better to wait and let things calm down. The war party seized the occasion with the complicity of the overwhelming majority of MPs from all corners of Parliament. On 3 April there was scarcely an opposition to be outmanoeuvred. The result was that even if one continued to regard the Falklands as insignificant, there clearly was a Great Crisis. Within what is called ‘national opinion’ there was no room to disagree about that: one had either to concur or suffocate. The Commons united placed British sovereign pride upon the line; and sovereignty is not a far away matter, people feel it here at home just as they identify with their national team in a World Cup competition, however distant. With a huge endorsement from the press, Parliament had ensured that the nation—so we were told—spoke with one voice, had acted with purpose and solidarity and had thus gambled its reputation on a first-class military hazard.

  Many trends were at work—consciously or blindly—to prepare for such a moment. But much more important, and what gave the militants the ‘unity’ essential to their cause, was the general condition that allowed them to succeed so handsomely. It held the Commons in the palm of its hand. It orchestrated the one-nation sentiments of the three geniuses of the occasion—Enoch Powell, Michael Foot and David Owen—who bound Thatcher so willingly to Hermes. To analyse this general condition properly would take a thick book, for it has many symptoms. Moreover the condition is so deeply and pervasively a part of England, so natural to its political culture, that it is difficult to see, impossible to smell as something distinct. Like the oxygen in the air we breathe, and which allows flames to burn, it is ordinarily intangible. Perhaps the Falklands crisis will at last bring the mystery into sight.

  To provoke and assist this di
scussion of the pathology of modern British politics, I will be bold and assertive. Yet it should be borne in mind that I am only suggesting a possible description; one which will certainly need correction and elaboration. First, we need a name for the condition as a whole, for the fever that inflames Parliamentary rhetoric, deliberation and decision. I will call this structure of feeling shared by the leaders of the nation’s political life, ‘Churchillism’. Churchillism is like the warp of British political culture through which all the main tendencies weave their different colours. Although drawn from the symbol of the wartime persona, Churchillism is quite distinct from the man himself. Indeed, the real Churchill was reluctantly and uneasily conscripted to the compact of policies and parties which he seemed to embody. Yet the fact that the ideology is so much more than the emanation of the man is part of the secret of its power and durability.

  Churchillism was born in May 1940, which was the formative moment for an entire generation in British politics. Its parliamentary expression was a two-day debate which ended on 8 May with a crucial division on the Government’s conduct of the war. Churchill himself had already entered the cabinet, which remained under Chamberlain’s direction. After the hiatus of the ‘phony war’, an attempt by the British to secure control of Norway had ended in disaster. Although Churchill also bore responsibility for the misadventure, it was Chamberlain who was felt to be out of step with the time. Attlee asked for different people at the helm. From the Conservative back-benches Leo Amery repeated a testy remark of Cromwell’s, ‘In the name of God, go!’. The Government’s potential majority of 240 crashed to 80. In the aftermath Churchill emerged as Prime Minister with, as I will discuss in a moment, the crucial support of Labour to create a new National Coalition. Within days, the war took on a dramatically different form, and then a catastrophic one, as the Germans advanced across Holland and into France. The British army was encircled and the order to evacuate given on 27 May. Through good fortune some 300,000 were pulled back across the Channel and Dunkirk became a symbol not only of survival but also of ‘national reconciliation’ and ultimate resurgence as it coincided with the emergence of Churchill’s coalition.1