‘I think the PM will be well pleased’,11 boomed a cheerful Julian Amery, as we walked out of the chamber together. She probably was. Amery talked openly about the guidance he had been given by Ian Gow. It was not the first or the last example of how Margaret Thatcher sometimes undermined her ministers by surreptitiously getting her aides to brief against them.
The collapse of the leaseback deal sent its own message to the military junta in Buenos Aires. In an erratic way they were already flexing their muscles over Las Malvinas, as they called the Falklands. Now they deduced that Britain lacked the will and the means to defend the Islands by military force. Failure to disabuse the Argentines of this impression was a mistake for which Margaret Thatcher was partly responsible. She had insisted on substantial defence cuts in 1981, appointing a new Defence Secretary, John Nott, to implement the reductions in the defence budget that his predecessor Francis Pym had avoided by threatening resignation.
She did not take enough interest in the strategic implications of Nott’s cost-cutting plans. He decided that his axe would fall on the surface fleet. The expensive aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible were to go. A more political decision was the scrapping of the Royal Navy’s ice patrol ship in the South Atlantic, HMS Endurance. Its decommissioning saved only £3 million but the symbolism of this cut was diplomatically disastrous. As Carrington warned in three separate minutes to Nott, the withdrawal of Endurance’s minor military capabilities (two helicopters, twenty Royal Marines and four Ack-Ack guns) might be interpreted as a strategic weakening of Britain’s commitment to the Islanders.12
Margaret Thatcher did not intervene in these Ministry of Defence versus Foreign Office exchanges about HMS Endurance. She was dismissive of the ship’s military capabilities, saying that it could only go ‘pop, pop, pop’13 to Ridley’s successor, Richard Luce. On 9 February 1982 she endorsed the withdrawal of Endurance when answering a Parliamentary Question from her predecessor, Jim Callaghan. He had handled a previous episode of sabre-rattling by the Argentines in 1977 by sending a submarine to the Falklands. Eventually, Margaret Thatcher followed his example on 28 March 1982, with a similar order to the Navy, but by then it was a case of too little, too late.
Earlier in the year a confusing series of events had been unfolding in the South Atlantic. They included more threatening noises from the junta; an unauthorised landing by Argentine scrap-metal dealers on the island of South Georgia on 20 December 1981; a suspiciously anodyne session of Anglo-Argentine talks at the UN in January 1982; and some aggressive editorials in the Buenos Aires newspapers demanding the return of Las Malvinas.
These signs of trouble were complacently misinterpreted by the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister did not have her eye on the ball either. But on 3 March she did annotate one telegram from the British Embassy in Buenos Aires, reporting on Argentine press speculation with the words, ‘We must make contingency plans’.14 Yet neither she nor anyone else in her government did anything to follow this up for the next three weeks. This was an omission which seemed of low significance in Whitehall but it had high consequences in Argentina. For the month of March was the last window of opportunity in which any moves or messages of deterrence could have been sent to the military junta. Alas nothing was done.
PARLIAMENT’S WAR
Margaret Thatcher was caught off guard by the junta’s preparations to invade the Islands. In the last days of March she began to focus on the signs of impending hostilities. On Sunday 29 March, she sent two nuclear-powered submarines and two frigates to reinforce HMS Endurance, which was on one of her last patrols before decommissioning. But the submarines would take two weeks to reach the South Atlantic. The Prime Minister was worried, but she still did not believe an invasion was imminent.
Her false optimism was shattered when, on the evening of Wednesday 31 March, she received a call in her office at the House of Commons saying that the Defence Secretary wanted an immediate meeting to discuss the Falklands. The news brought by John Nott was shattering. He reported that the Argentine Fleet had put to sea and was likely to invade the Islands by Friday 2 April. ‘If they are invaded, we have got to get them back’, declared the Prime Minister, only to be told that in the view of the Ministry of Defence the Falklands could not be retaken once they had been seized. For her, this was a shameful prospect.15
The gloom of the meeting deepened, partly because most of those attending it were indecisive junior ministers. Lord Carrington was away in Israel so the Foreign Office was represented by Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce, both briefed to propose well-meaning but ineffective diplomatic moves. The Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Terence Lewin, was visiting New Zealand so military advice was transmitted through two pessimistic civilians – John Nott and the MoD’s Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Frank Cooper. They advised that the Islands, once seized by the Argentines, could not be recaptured. Margaret Thatcher expressed her feelings of outrage, but they were feelings made more painful by her growing realisation of impotence.
Then, like a dramatic moment in a play, a surprise intruder took centre stage and changed the plot. He was Admiral Sir Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. For reasons of MoD protocol, he had not been asked to attend the meeting. But once he heard it was taking place he decided he was coming anyway, so he turned up at the House of Commons, arrayed in the splendour of the First Sea Lord’s full dress uniform,* which he was wearing for a ceremonial dinner later that evening.
A hiatus occurred at the St Stephens entrance to the House of Commons when the Admiral’s medals, out of sight beneath his overcoat, set off the metal detector alarms. An inflexible police constable insisted on detaining the First Sea Lord for twenty minutes in a side room. Rescued by Ian Gow, he eventually reached the Prime Minister’s office in a foul temper. ‘He erupted into the room’, was how Sir Antony Acland, Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, described the Admiral’s entry.16
After the Prime Minister had summarised the discussion so far she asked Sir Henry Leach what the Royal Navy could do. ‘I can put together a Task Force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft and 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’, replied the Admiral, assuring her that such a force could retake the Islands.17 ‘Not only can we do it, we will be the laughing stock of the world if we don’t do it’, declared Sir Henry. His certainty contradicted the pessimism of the military options the Prime Minister had been given a few minutes earlier by the Defence Secretary. She seized on the optimistic scenario because the First Sea Lord’s strategy was just what she wanted to hear. It transformed the dynamics of her meeting.
Two factors emerged that evening which were to govern the decision-making process in the early stages of the Falklands War. The first was the readiness of the Royal Navy. The second was the resolution of the Prime Minister.
The Royal Navy was expecting the unexpected ahead of any other part of the government. Admiral Leach and the Commander in Chief of the Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, had been taking a prescient view of the developing situation on the Falklands for over a week, ever since it had first been mooted in Whitehall that submarines might have to be despatched to the South Atlantic as a precautionary measure. The Admirals and their staffs had used the week to work up much larger contingency plans, a move which was made easier by the participation of many British warships in a large NATO exercise already taking place off Gibraltar. So Sir Henry Leach’s remarkable confidence in the Royal Navy’s preparedness to despatch a task force was well founded. It was based on some clever forward thinking and planning for a fleet that was already at sea on the NATO exercise.18
Fortified by the report given to her by the First Sea Lord, Margaret Thatcher was decisive and resolute. She immediately authorised the Navy to prepare the task force to sail, subject to the approval of the cabinet the following morning. But for all her ringing endorsement of the Leac
h plan, when the meeting ended and she was left alone in the room with John Nott, the Prime Minister asked: ‘Can we really do this, John?’
The Defence Secretary was far from certain, given the general doubts that were being expressed in his department by everyone other than the First Sea Lord.
‘I just don’t know yet, Prime Minister’, replied Nott. ‘I’ve had no formal advice. But these Islands are 8,000 miles away, and we can’t be sure that we can handle the logistics.’
‘John, we must!’19 was the response.
Her firmness set the tone during the hectic meetings and preparations of the next forty-eight hours. Events were moving so fast that big decisions were taken on the hoof by military chiefs reporting directly to the Prime Minister. The civil service, apart from the No. 10 private secretaries, were largely out of the loop. Margaret Thatcher had an instinctive trust in the professionalism of the armed forces, and she urged them on with a resolution that they found inspirational.
For all her decisiveness, the Prime Minister’s confidence was far from impregnable in those early days as the risks were pointed out to her. On Friday 2 April, the landing of the Argentine invasion force on the Falklands was confirmed. Outwardly the business of peace-time government was continuing as usual at No. 10. According to her diary, Margaret Thatcher was scheduled to host a lunch for university vice-chancellors. The Minister of State for Higher Education who had arranged it, William Waldegrave, assumed that the event would be cancelled. Not so. Over lunch in the small dining room, Margaret Thatcher explained to the great men of academia how they should run their universities, all the time reading urgent notes on the Falklands brought in by private secretaries. The vice-chancellors departed, looking somewhat shell shocked. Alone in the room with Waldegrave, the Prime Minister gripped his arm and confided, ‘William, the problem is we shall have no proper air cover’.20
The political situation at home initially looked almost as fragile as the military prospects on the islands. The House of Commons was recalled for an emergency debate on the morning of Saturday 3 April. Before the sitting began, Conservative back-benchers met in a crowded upstairs committee room. The mood was indignant. As one of the sixty or so MPs present, I well recall the number of times phrases like ‘national humiliation’, ‘day of shame’, ‘catalogue of missed warnings’, ‘guilty men’ and ‘hour of infamy’ rang through the air. Several older colleagues spoke of the dangers of ‘another Suez’. One lone voice said it had been a black day ‘but one which could yet end in glory’.21 But the overall tone was almost entirely negative and critical. The Chief Whip, Michael Jopling, who took notes throughout, left the room looking shaken. The same was true of the Prime Minister, whose car was booed as it passed through the gates of the Palace of Westminster.22
Margaret Thatcher had recovered her composure by the time she rose to speak in the debate. She knew from an overnight opinion poll that 60 per cent of the public were blaming her for allowing the debacle to take place. She was aware that some of her back-benchers were now calling for ministerial blood. Even some senior figures in the government were ridiculing the idea of recapturing the Islands. The Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe, joked on the day after the invasion that Britain was at war but that it would ‘probably be over by tea time’.23
Another cabinet minister harbouring doubts was John Biffen. As he was a good friend I chatted to him shortly before the debate began and asked him what he thought. ‘This will be our poor man’s Vietnam’, was his sardonic reply.24 It was, to put it mildly, a disconcerting response. It later emerged that on the previous day the Prime Minister had gone round the cabinet table asking every one of her colleagues if they supported sending the task force. All said yes apart from Biffen. Although he was the sole dissenter there were several others who supressed their misgivings. Margaret Thatcher enjoyed saying in later life that the cabinet were ‘rock solid – afterwards’.25
The Prime Minister struck the right notes of gravity and decisive action when she opened the debate. It seemed a somewhat low-key speech, perhaps because she was tired and also because hers was almost the most moderate voice on that morning of high emotion. Just how high those emotions were running became apparent from the roar of approval that went up from all parts of the House when she condemned ‘this unprovoked aggression by the Government of Argentina against British territory. It has not a shred of justification and not a scrap of legality.’26 Another thunder of ‘hear, hear’ greeted her crucial announcement: ‘A large Task Force will sail as soon as all preparations are complete. HMS Invincible will be in the lead and will leave port on Monday.’27
With the possibility of war now looming, Parliament went into patriotic overdrive. The Leader of the Opposition, Michael Foot, soared to heights of impassioned eloquence as he proclaimed it was Britain’s ‘moral duty, political duty and every other kind of duty’28 to repel the Argentine invaders. From his bellicose speech, and from almost every other contribution to the debate, the overriding impression was that the House of Commons had become united in its determination to reverse the Argentine seizure of the Islands by British military force.
The fall-back position that the despatch of the fleet was a diplomatic bargaining chip rather than an instrument of retaliation evaporated during the debate. The one or two voices that entered caveats about the difficulties of waging a war across 8,000 miles of ocean were given a rough ride. ‘Let us hear no more about logistics – how difficult it is to travel long distances’, declared Sir Edward du Cann, Chairman of the 1922 Committee. ‘I do not remember the Duke of Wellington whining about Torres Vedras. We have nothing to lose now except our honour. I am clear that that is safe in the hands of my right hon. Friend.’29
Margaret Thatcher was seen to be nodding at this implication that the war and the nation’s honour had been personally entrusted to her. In the next speech, Enoch Powell made the same point in memorably chilling language.
The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received a soubriquet as the ‘Iron Lady’. It arose in the 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 hon. Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two this House, the nation, and the right hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.30
Margaret Thatcher’s body language as she heard Enoch Powell’s challenge was a combination of nodding and squirming. Watching her, I sensed at the time that his thrust had gone deep. If she ever had any doubts about crossing the Rubicon to war, they were removed by the House of Commons on that Saturday morning. Some commentators subsequently described the parliamentary mood as ‘jingoistic’, ‘gung-ho for war’ and completely ‘over the top’. But as one who was present in the chamber throughout the debate, I had no doubt that MPs from every corner of the political spectrum were reflecting the feelings they had already heard voiced in their constituencies. The country would not settle for anything less than the eviction of the Argentine invaders from the Falklands. As a result there was remarkably little difference in the tone of the speeches, whether they came from the unilateralist left (Michael Foot) or the imperialist right (Julian Amery). It was a genuinely British response to an outrage against British people by a foreign dictatorship in violation of international law. Margaret Thatcher had reflected those attitudes and her instincts were confirmed by a united Parliament. She had swung all parties behind her decision to send a task force. But as Enoch Powell had hinted, any weakening in this resolve would put her own political future in peril.
In the hours immediately following the debate, the patriotic unity of the public speeches in the chamber was diluted by many expressions of private cynicism in the corridors and committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster. ‘She’ll be out if she don’t deliver what she promised, and she’ll be in for a long time if she do’,31 was the opinion of Alec Woodall, the Labour MP for Hemsworth. He was an ex-miner, a staunch old Labour patriot and a
personal friend as my House of Commons pair.
Another interesting opinion that afternoon came from Nicholas Ridley. I found him sitting morosely in the smoking room nursing an outsize brandy.
‘I blame the Tory Right’, he grumbled. ‘But for them we could have avoided this bloody mess.’
‘Do you include Margaret in “them”?’ I asked.
‘Yes she was part of it. But now we’ve got to back her to the hilt.’32
In some Tory circles there was less straightforwardness, and more vindictiveness. The disaster of the debate had been the winding-up speech of John Nott, who seemed to lose his nerve and the high ground of the argument. He made the great mistake of attacking the previous Labour government for alleged inconsistencies in their earlier handling of the Falklands. After many interruptions, which he did not handle well, he sat down amidst raucous calls of ‘Resign!’ – some from his own back benches. This was rough stuff for a government on the brink of committing the nation’s armed forces to a war, but worse was to come.
Immediately after the debate ended, Margaret Thatcher convened a meeting of senior ministerial colleagues in her House of Commons office behind the Speaker’s chair. Although John Nott was shaken by the mauling his speech had received a few minutes earlier, he was calm in comparison to some others present, notably Willie Whitelaw, described as being ‘in a frightful flap’, and the Chief Whip, Michael Jopling, who excitably reported that the party was ‘in a state of chaos’,33 with rebellions and resignations of the whip imminent. Margaret Thatcher agreed with her Chief Whip’s suggestion that the best way to steady her parliamentary troops would be to call an immediate party meeting in Committee Room 10, to be addressed by both the Defence and Foreign Secretaries.
Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality Page 42