We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag. We fought with the support of so many throughout the world. The Security Council, the Commonwealth, the European Community, and the United States. Yet we also fought alone—for we fought for our own people and for our own sovereign territory.
Now that it is all over, things cannot be the same again for we have learned something about ourselves—a lesson which we desperately need to learn.
When we started out, there were the waverers and the fainthearts. The people who thought that Britain could no longer seize the initiative for herself.
The people who thought we could no longer do the great things which we once did. Those who believed that our decline was irreversible—that we could never again be what we were.
There were those who would not admit it—even perhaps some here today—people who would have strenuously denied the suggestion but—in their heart of hearts—they too had their secret fears that it was true: that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world.
Well they were wrong. The lesson of the Falklands is that Britain has not changed and that this nation still has those sterling qualities which shine through our history.
This generation can match their fathers and grandfathers in ability, in courage, and in resolution. We have not changed. When the demands of war and the dangers to our own people call us to arms—then we British are as we have always been—competent, courageous and resolute.
When called to arms—ah, that’s the problem.
It took the battle in the South Atlantic for the shipyards to adapt ships way ahead of time; for dockyards to refit merchantmen and cruise liners, to fix helicopter platforms, to convert hospital ships—all faster than was thought possible; it took the demands of war for every stop to be pulled out and every man and woman to do their best.
British people had to be threatened by foreign soldiers and British territory invaded and then—why then—the response was incomparable. Yet why does it need a war to bring out our qualities and reassert our pride? Why do we have to be invaded before we throw aside our selfish aims and begin to work together as only we can work and achieve as only we can achieve?
That really is the challenge we as a nation face today. We have to see that the spirit of the South Atlantic—the real spirit of Britain—is kindled not only by war but can now be fired by peace.
We have the first pre-requisite. We know we can do it—we haven’t lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor. We have proved ourselves to ourselves. It is a lesson we must not now forget. Indeed it is a lesson which we must apply to peace just as we have learned it in war. The faltering and the self-doubt has given way to achievement and pride. We have the confidence and we must use it.
Just look at the Task Force as an object lesson. Every man had his own task to do and did it superbly. Officers and men, senior NCO and newest recruit—every one realized that his contribution was essential for the success of the whole. All were equally valuable—each was differently qualified.
By working together—each was able to do more than his best. As a team they raised the average to the level of the best and by each doing his utmost together they achieved the impossible. That’s an accurate picture of Britain at war—not yet of Britain at peace. But the spirit has stirred and the nation has begun to assert itself. Things are not going to be the same again.
All over Britain, men and women are asking—why can’t we achieve in peace what we can do so well in war?
And they have good reason to ask.
Look what British Aerospace workers did when their Nimrod aeroplane needed major modifications. They knew that only by midair refuelling could the Task Force be properly protected. They managed those complicated changes from drawing board to airworthy planes in sixteen days—one year faster than would normally have been the case.
Achievements like that, if made in peacetime, could establish us as aeroplane makers to the world.
That record performance was attained not only by superb teamwork, but by brilliant leadership in our factories at home which mirrored our forces overseas. It is one of the abiding elements of our success in the South Atlantic that our troops were superly led. No praise is too high for the quality and expertise of our commanders in the field.
Their example, too, must be taken to heart. Now is the time for management to lift its sights and to lead with the professionalism and effectiveness it knows is possible.
If the lessons of the South Atlantic are to be learned, then they have to be learned by us all. No one can afford to be left out. Success depends upon all of us—different in qualities, but equally valuable.
During this past week, I have read again a little known speech of Winston Churchill, made just after the last war. This is what he said:–
We must find the means and the method of working together not only in times of war, and mortal anguish, but in times of peace, with all its bewilderments and clamour and clatter of tongues.
Thirty-six years on, perhaps we are beginning to re-learn the truth which Churchill so clearly taught us.
We saw the signs when, this week, the NUR came to understand that its strike on the railways and on the Underground just didn’t fit—didn’t match the spirit of these times. And yet on Tuesday, 8 men, the leaders of ASLEF, misunderstanding the new mood of the nation, set out to bring the railways to a halt.
Ignoring the example of the NUR, the travelling public whom they are supposed to serve, and the jobs and future of their own members, this tiny group decided to use its undoubted power for what?—to delay Britain’s recovery, which all our people long to see.
Yet we can remember that on Monday, nearly a quarter of the members of NUR turned up for work.
Today, we appeal to every train driver to put his family, his comrades, and his country first, by continuing to work tomorrow. That is the true solidarity which can save jobs and which stands in the proud tradition of British railwaymen.
But it is not just on the railways that we need to find the means and the method of working together. It is just as true in the NHS. All who work there are caring, in one way or another for the sick.
To meet their needs we have already offered to the ancillary workers almost exactly what we have given to our Armed Forces and to our teachers, and more than our Civil Servants have accepted. All of us know that there is a limit to what every employer can afford to pay out in wages. The increases proposed for nurses and ancillary workers in the Health Service are the maximum which the Government can afford to pay.
And we can’t avoid one unchallengeable truth. The Government has no money of its own. All that it has it takes in taxes or borrows at interest. It’s all of you—everyone here—that pays.
Of course, there is another way. Instead of taking money from our people openly, in taxation or loans, we can take it surreptitiously, by subterfuge. We can print money in order to pay out of higher inflation what we dare not tax and cannot borrow.
But that disreputable method is no longer open to us. Rightly this Government has adjured it. Increasingly this nation won’t have it. Our people are now confident enough to face the facts of life. There is a new mood of realism in Britain.
That too is part of the Falklands Factor.
The battle of the South Atlantic was not won by ignoring the dangers or denying the risks.
It was achieved by men and women who had no illusions about the difficulties. They faced them squarely and were determined to overcome. That is increasingly the mood of Britain. And that’s why the rail strike won’t do.
We are no longer prepared to jeopardize our future just to defend manning practices agreed in 1919 when steam engines plied the tracks of the Grand Central Railway and the motor car had not yet taken over from the horse.
What has indeed happened is that now once again Britain is not prepared to be pushed around.
We have ceased to
be a nation in retreat.
We have instead a new-found confidence—born in the economic battles at home and tested and found true 8,000 miles away.
That confidence comes from the re-discovery of ourselves, and grows with the recovery of our self-respect.
And so today, we can rejoice at our success in the Falklands and take pride in the achievement of the men and women of our Task Force.
But we do so, not as at some last flickering of a flame which must soon be dead. No—we rejoice that Britain has re-kindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before.
Britain found herself again in the South Atlantic and will not look back from the victory she has won.
Further Articles
To Be Absolutely Franks …
This was published in the New Statesman on 21 January 1983 immediately after the publication of the Privy Counsellors’ report known as the Franks Report.
LADY BROCKLEHURST: If I had been wrecked on an island, I think it is highly probable that I should have lied when I came back. Weren’t there any servants with them?
LORD BROCKLEHURST: Crichton the butler. Why Mother you are not going to –
LADY BROCKLEHURST: Yes I am George, watch whether Crichton begins any of his answers to my questions with “The fact is,” because that is always the beginning of a lie.
(J. M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton)
It was widely thought that the Franks Report would be an investigation into the causes of the Falklands War, a war that is rightly held to have been unnecessary. Here, at last, we were to be given an account of what went wrong, with some stringent conclusions about how to prevent any recurrence. It would be one of those reports for which the British fancy themselves and in which they take inordinate pride. Americans may mount endless public investigations, the French indulge in scandals, but the British will produce – as it were out of the hat of disaster – a report by a committee that has met in secret that will be accepted as authoritative – because it is factual, unpartisan and true.
How very disappointing, then, that the blame which is made to stick by the Franks Report seems as harmless as bluetack. It peels off without resistance to leave the surface to which it was applied virtually unblemished. The war was unfortunate, but fundamentally nothing serious went wrong. It was just one of those things.
Indeed the Franks Report serves as a justification of the war. Insofar as it calls for some surgery in the machinery of government, it merely demands plastic surgery in the way we are governed.
Its terms of reference, which refer to the way the government discharged its responsibilities towards the Falklands, seem to ask why there was a needless war in the South Atlantic. Implicitly, however, the Commission has asked why it came to be necessary to fight for the Falklands. It presumes the rightfulness of British sovereignty – the key issue at question in the conflict itself.
In its concluding chapter the Report asks ‘Could the present Government have prevented the invasion?’ and then takes the question back over a period of 17 years to 1965. It says: ‘There is no simple answer to it.’ This is rubbish, especially over such a period of time. There is an obvious answer: Yes, successive Governments could easily have prevented the invasion by ceding some part of formal sovereignty over the Falklands to Argentina.
This is the crucial issue. We do not need a committee of ‘The Great and the Good,’ six wise men or even seven dwarfs to tell us that is so. But it seems that we do need such a committee – I mean of six wise men, they must be given all the respect they are due – to confuse us on this central question. In its conclusion the Report states that the British government ‘had to act within the constraints imposed by the wishes of the Falkland Islanders.’ It did not ‘have’ to do so in any passive way. The full paragraph from the Report (No. 338) as a piece of drafting is remarkably unclear.
Over the page, the Report’s first Annex states: ‘Ministers and officials made clear to Argentina on numerous occasions that the wishes of the Falkland Islanders were paramount.’ But this is not what is stated in paragraph 338. After all, if the Islanders’ wishes were ‘paramount,’ these would hardly have been a ‘constraint’ for they would have been policy itself. Furthermore, as we shall see, there were a number of occasions over the years when Ministers were careful not to make the wishes of the Islanders the ‘paramount’ dictate of policy, some of which the Report itself cites. The Commission’s account thus seems to be internally contradictory on the major and decisive issue of substance with which the war was concerned.
Before asking why this should be, what does the Report tell us about past party policies?
*
In August 1968 the Wilson government drew up a Memorandum for public agreement with Argentina. It stated that the UK would recognise Argentinian sovereignty over the Islands, provided that the ‘interests’ of the Islanders were safeguarded and guaranteed to the satisfaction of the UK. There was no mention of the ‘wishes’ of the Islanders themselves. (It thus seems that by the time they got to page 89 the Franks Committee had forgotten what they reported on page 6.) That government also planned to make clear when it released the Memorandum that the transfer of sovereignty would take place only when it was ‘acceptable’ to the Islanders. But again this is quite different from their ‘wishes.’ They might ‘wish’ the Islands to remain British, but given the fact of the UK’s commitment to transfer sovereignty, they would have had to ensure ‘acceptable’ terms. But, ‘critical’ public and press reaction made the Government retreat from its plan. The Falklands were not worth a fuss, it seemed.
However, economic relations between the Islands and Argentina were strengthened, by the Heath government in particular. It formulated the idea of a condominium with Argentina, perhaps linked to joint development in the area but presumably not ‘wished’ by the Islanders either. But then Heath was ejected from office.
When Wilson returned, a further approach was made by the British to extend joint development. Whereupon Vignes, the then Argentine Minister for Foreign Affairs, suggested that this should be linked to ‘a transfer of sovereignty followed by a simultaneous leaseback for a period of years.’ Thus the leaseback proposal – in which nominal sovereignty would become Argentina’s while the actual government of the Islands and their population would remain British – was originally proposed by Argentina itself. The Wilson government turned this down. But the Report does not tell us why.
Naturally, the rebuff seems to have caused extreme resentment on Argentina’s part, which was exacerbated by the dispatch of Lord Shackleton’s team to investigate the development potential of the Islands. Actually, Shackleton concluded that an agreement with Argentina over sovereignty was an essential pre-condition to any satisfactory and lasting improvement on the Islands. However, the Franks Report does not tell us this.
But by July 1977, even the Callaghan administration had decided that ‘substantive negotiations were necessary’ and concluded that it ‘would be forced back in the end on some variation of a leaseback solution linked with a programme of joint economic development.’ Yet when Ted Rowlands went to New York to negotiate on that government’s behalf in December 1977, he ‘was able to avoid proposing leaseback.’ One can almost hear the Franks Committee breathe a collective sigh of relief.
When Thatcher replaced Callaghan, Nicholas Ridley was sent out to the Islands. He found that there was ‘little enthusiasm for the idea of a leaseback.’ Such is the delphic truth, the teasing objectivity of the Franks Committee prose. Of course, we can be quite sure that there was no enthusiasm, no banners or T-shirts saying ‘GIVE US LEASEBACK’, however wise such sentiments might in fact have been. But what we want to know from this authoritative account is whether and on what terms the Falklanders would have found leaseback acceptable – over how many years and with what accompanying compensation? Perhaps if they had also been offered half a million pounds each they might even have been a little enthusiastic.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office concluded that there had to be substantive negotiations, or there would be a high risk of military confrontation. And the report makes clear that from around 1980 the Thatcher government was aware at the very least that it was taking a risk. The Falklands were far more a matter of concern, if still a secondary one, than the public realised.
Ridley should return again to the Falklands, ‘to discover the level of support there’ for a leaseback arrangement, which it had already been agreed would be the best basis for a settlement. But at this meeting, according to a later report in the Economist which seems to have been rather accurate (19 June 1982), Ridley was given a ‘fearful mauling,’ by Thatcher. She was against making any concessions to Argentina and appears to have prevented Ridley from going to the Islands with a clear mandate of government support for a sovereignty settlement. Despite this, the visit found that, although a ‘substantial minority’ of the Islanders opposed leaseback on the Falklands, the ‘majority’ remained ‘undecided,’ according to the Franks Report.
It does not tell us about how these proportions were arrived at. What sort of majority was it? How big was the ‘substantial’ opposition? Perhaps the latter just means loud, rich and influential. At any rate this evasion seems to bear out the argument made by some Islanders, that had Ridley gone with a firm mandate and generous terms he could have gained even majority endorsement in the Islands for a leaseback. Mrs Thatcher, concerned about back-bench resentment of the Zimbabwe settlement, blocked any such move, we can say almost certainly. We cannot be more certain than that, because the Franks Report just does not tell us about Thatcher’s role at the crucial meeting. But we are certainly justified in thinking that the ‘wishes’ of the Islanders have been played with by politicians in Westminster, in particular by the Prime Minister, to further their own short-term ends.
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