The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  Unfortunately, the Americans now sought to revive diplomatic negotiation. Al Haig wanted to involve the Brazilians in a settlement which (contrary to what he had earlier suggested) must, he claimed, come before the final defeat of the Argentine forces on the island. These proposals were really the wrong ones at very much the wrong time. We had already made it clear that unconditional Argentine withdrawal and the return of British administration were now our goals. But I knew that we could not afford to alienate the United States, particularly at this stage. We kept in contact with Mr Haig both about the question of how to provide for and repatriate Argentine prisoners of war and more generally about our plans for the long-term future of the islands.

  What would have been quite wrong was to snatch diplomatic defeat out of the jaws of military victory — as I had to tell President Reagan when he telephoned me late at night on Monday 31 May. It was not very satisfactory for either of us that I should not have had advance warning of what he was likely to say and as a result I was perhaps more forceful than friendly. The President had, it seems, again been speaking to the President of Brazil who shared his view that the best chance for peace was before the Argentinians suffered complete humiliation. As the UK now had the upper hand militarily, we should strike a deal. I could not accept this. I told him that we could not contemplate a cease-fire without Argentine withdrawal. Having lost ships and lives because for seven weeks the Argentinians refused to negotiate, we would not consider handing the islands over to a third party. I understood the President’s fears. But I asked him to put himself in my position. I was sure that he would have acted in the same way as I did if Alaska — part of his own country, inhabited by his own people — had been similarly threatened. Moreover, I agreed with an excellent television interview he had given in which he had said that if the aggressor were to win, some fifty other territories, affected by similar disputes, would be at risk. This conversation was a little painful at the time but it had a worthwhile effect. The Americans now clearly understood our position and intentions. I would have a further opportunity shortly to talk to President Reagan in person during the forthcoming G7 summit at Versailles.

  In the meantime, we had to deal delicately with a five-point peace plan which had been advanced by the UN Secretary-General. The pressure for a cease-fire sponsored by the UN Security Council was growing. On Wednesday 2 June after the Secretary-General had announced that he had given up his own efforts, Spain and Panama, on behalf of Argentina, sought to press to the vote an apparently innocuous Draft Resolution on a cease-fire which would have had exactly the effect we were determined to avoid. It was touch and go whether the Spanish would even now manage to obtain the necessary nine votes which would force us to veto the resolution. We ourselves lobbied as hard as possible. The vote was postponed until Friday.

  At noon that day I flew to Paris for the G7. My first and most important meeting was, of course, with President Reagan who was staying at the US Embassy. We talked alone, as he preferred it. I thanked him for the great help we had received from the United States. I asked him what the Americans could do to help repatriate the Argentine PoWs. I also requested that the American vote should support us at the Security Council.

  The mood at Versailles seemed very different from that which was now prevailing at the UN in New York. The heads of government were staying in the Petit Trianon. After dinner we had a long discussion about the Falklands and the response was generally sympathetic and helpful. Later the British delegation and I withdrew to the sitting-room which we had been allocated. We had been talking for about fifteen minutes when a message came through from the Foreign Office and Tony Parsons that a vote was about to be taken in the Security Council and that the Japanese were voting against us. As theirs was the ninth vote required for the resolution to pass this was particularly irritating. So much for the previous undertakings of cooperation. I tried hard to contact Mr Suzuki, the Japanese Prime Minister, to persuade him to reverse the decision and at least abstain. He could not possibly have gone to bed in such a short time. But I was told that he could not be reached.

  Attention was, in fact, somewhat diverted from our problems by the extraordinary behaviour of the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mrs Kirkpatrick. Having cast her veto alongside ours, she announced only minutes later that if the vote could be taken again she would, on instructions just received, abstain. Ironically, this rather helped us by distracting media attention from our veto. However, that had not been the intention. Apparently, succumbing to pressure from the Latin American countries, Al Haig had telephoned her from Versailles telling her to withdraw her vote of support from us but she had not received the message in time. There was a still more embarrassing sequel to this event for the United States. Just before lunch in the Palace of Versailles, the television cameras were allowed in and an American journalist asked President Reagan what had lain behind the US confusion at the United Nations the previous evening. To my amazement, he said that he did not know anything about it. He had not been told. The journalist then turned to me. I had no intention of rubbing salt into a friend’s wounds, so all I said was that I did not give interviews over lunch.

  That same morning the Japanese Prime Minister gave me an extremely lame explanation of Japan’s vote in support of the resolution, claiming that he believed that it would lead to Argentine withdrawal. However, President Mitterrand’s summing up at his press conference after the conclusion of the G7 was excellent and totally supportive.

  Neither Tony Parsons nor I was particularly surprised that we had finally had to use our veto. In retrospect, we were very lucky — and it was a tribute also to Tony Parsons’s skill — that we had not had to veto such a resolution much earlier.

  By now, my thoughts were again on what was happening in the Falklands. Our troops had struck out against other Argentine positions. There had been no Argentine counter-attack. Major-General Moore had arrived to assume command of all land operations and the 5th Infantry Brigade (5 Brigade), reinforcing our troops on the islands, had landed on 1 June. The main problem was to transport enough equipment and ammunition forward in preparation for the final assault on the ring of mountains which protect Port Stanley.

  President Reagan arrived in Britain on Monday evening on an official visit and I met him at the airport. The next day he was due to speak to Members of both Houses of Parliament. But it is the terrible losses we suffered at Bluff Cove which are etched on my mind for that day. The landing ships, Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad, full of men, equipment and munitions, had been sent round to Bluff Cove and Fitzroy in preparation for the final assault on Port Stanley. The clouds cleared while the ships were still unloading the Rapier missiles which would protect them from air attack and the Argentinians scored hits on both. Sir Galahad had not discharged its troops and the result was great loss of life and many survivors were left with terrible burns. The Welsh Guards took the brunt of it. As on all these occasions, the natural reaction was ‘if only’ — above all, if only the men had been taken off and dispersed as soon as they arrived then nothing like this number of casualties would have been suffered. But the losses would have been even greater were it not for the heroism of the helicopter pilots. They hovered close to the burning oil slicks around the ship and used the draught from their rotors to blow life rafts full of survivors away from the inferno into which they were being drawn.

  Again, there were almost insuperable problems in releasing news of casualties. Rumours of very large numbers were spread by the Argentinians. Families were frantically worried. But we decided to hold up details of the numbers lost — although of course (as always) relatives were individually informed. We knew from intelligence that the Argentinians thought that our casualties were several times worse than they were and that they believed this would hold up our attack on Port Stanley. The attack on Mount Longdon, Two Sisters and Wireless Ridge was due to begin on Friday night. Surprise was vital.

  I hoped against hope that our worst losses were behind us. But earl
y on the morning of Saturday 12 June the No. 10 duty clerk came up to the flat with a note. I all but seized it from him, expecting it to say that the attack on the mountains around Port Stanley had begun. But the news was very different. I kept the note, which reads:

  HMS Glamorgan struck by suspected Exocet missile. Ship is in position 51/58 South. Large fire in vicinity of hangar and in gas turbine and gear room. Power still available. Ship making ten knots to the South.

  –MoD as yet have no details of casualties and wouldn’t expect them for several hours. They will keep us informed.

  Glamorgan had been bombarding the Argentine positions in Port Stanley and on the hills around before the forthcoming battle. She had in fact been hit by a land-based Exocet while on her way out of the area.

  How bitterly depressed I was. At moments like this I felt almost guilty at the comfort, protection and safety in No. 10 while there was so much danger and death in the South Atlantic. That day was the Trooping of the Colour for the Queen’s birthday. For the only time that I can remember the ceremony was marred by a downpour of rain. It was unpleasant for the Guards, but with the news so bad and the uncertainty so great, it seemed appropriate. I wore black, for I felt that there was much to mourn. John Nott arrived shortly before I was to take my place on the stand. He had no further news. But he thought he would have been told if the attack had not started. Afterwards, dripping wet, the guests, including Rex and Mrs Hunt, dried out before the fires in No. 10 as best we could.

  Shortly before 1 o’clock we heard that all our military objectives had been achieved. But there had been a stiff battle. Two Sisters, Mount Harriet and Mount Longdon had been secured. The plan had been to press on that night to take Mount Tumbledown, still closer to Port Stanley, but the troops were tired and more time was needed to bring up ammunition, so it was decided to wait. I went up to Northwood that afternoon to hear precisely what was happening. There was better news there about Glamorgan; her fires were under control and she was steaming at 20 knots.

  More than ever, the outcome now lay in the hands of our soldiers on the Falklands, not with the politicians. Like everyone else in Britain, I was glued to the radio for news — strictly keeping to my self-imposed rule not to telephone while the conflict was underway. On my way back from Chequers to No. 10, that Sunday (13 June), I went via Northwood to learn what I could. What was to turn out to be the final assault was bitterly fought, particularly at Mount Tumbledown where the Argentinians were well prepared. But Tumbledown, Mount William and Wireless Ridge fell to our forces, who were soon on the outskirts of Stanley.

  I visited the islands seven months later and saw the terrain for myself, walking the ground at first light in driving wind and rain, wending my way around those grim outcrops of rock which made natural fortifications for the Argentine defenders. Our boys had had to cover the ground and take the positions in thick darkness. It could only have been done by the most professional and disciplined of forces.

  When the War Cabinet met on Monday morning all that we knew was that the battle was still in progress. The speed with which the end came took all of us by surprise. The Argentinians were weary, demoralized and very badly led — as ample evidence at the time and later showed. They had had enough. They threw down their arms and could be seen retreating through their own minefields into Stanley.

  That evening, having learnt the news, I went to the House of Commons to announce the victory. I could not get into my own room; it was locked and the Chief Whip’s assistant had to search for the key. I then wrote out on a scrap of paper which I found somewhere on my desk the short statement which, there being no other procedural means, I would have to make on a Point of Order to the House. At 10 p.m. I rose and told them that it had been reported that there were white flags flying over Port Stanley. The war was over. We all felt the same and the cheers showed it. Right had prevailed. And when I went to sleep very late that night I realized how great the burden was which had been lifted from my shoulders.

  For the nation as a whole, though the daily memories, fears and even the relief would fade, pride in our country’s achievement would not. In a speech I made in Cheltenham a little later, on Saturday 3 July, I tried to express what the Falklands spirit meant:

  We have ceased to be a nation in retreat. We have instead a newfound confidence — born in the economic battles at home and tested and found true 8000 miles away … 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 flickering of a flame which must soon be dead. No — we rejoice that Britain has rekindled 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.

  CHAPTER IX

  Generals, Commissars and Mandarins

  Meeting the military and political challenge of communism from the autumn of 1979 to the spring of 1983

  PEACE AND ARMAMENTS

  On Wednesday 23 June 1982 I travelled to New York to attend a special session of the General Assembly on disarmament, which the United Nations had called while the Falklands campaign was still in progress. The speech I made expressed my view of the role of defence and negotiations on disarmament with singular clarity. I had become increasingly unhappy about the language used on such occasions. Everyone talked about peace as if that in itself were the sole aim. But peace is not enough without freedom and justice and sometimes — as we were demonstrating in the Falklands — it was necessary to sacrifice peace if freedom and justice were to prevail. I was also convinced that much cant was spoken about the arms race, as if by slowing down the process of improving our defences we would make peace more certain. History had repeatedly demonstrated quite the opposite.

  I began by quoting President Roosevelt: ‘We, born to freedom and believing in freedom, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.’ I then went on to note that nuclear war was indeed a terrible threat, but conventional war a terrible reality. Since the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there had been no conflicts in which nuclear weapons had been used — but some 140 conflicts fought with conventional weapons in which approaching 10 million people had died. In any case:

  The fundamental risk to peace is not the existence of weapons of particular types. It is the disposition on the part of some states to impose change on others by resorting to force against other nations and not in ‘arms races’, whether real or imaginary. Aggressors do not start wars because an adversary has built up his own strength. They start wars because they believe they can gain more by going to war than by remaining at peace … I do not believe that armaments cause wars [nor that] action on them alone will … prevent wars. It is not merely a mistaken analysis but an evasion of responsibility to suppose that we can prevent the horrors of war by focusing on its instruments. They are more often symptoms than causes.

  This was the analysis which underlay the defence and security policies I intended the Government to pursue. It provided me with a view of international power politics without which we would have had no clear sense of direction. But of course it did not of itself resolve particular problems. Throughout my first years in office I repeatedly found myself trying to reconcile five different objectives. First, there could only be strictly limited resources available for defence, particularly when the economy was growing slowly or not at all. This meant that although defence expenditure was increased, it was vital that better value for money be obtained. Second, we had regularly to assess the priority we would give to the demands of NATO policy and those other areas of British interest outside the NATO area. Third, Britain had to help ensure that NATO responded effectively to the steadily increasing Soviet military threat. Fourth, as part of this, it was vital to maintain western unity behind American leadership. Britain, among European countries, and I, among European leaders, were uniquely placed to do that. Finally, nowh
ere more than in defence and foreign policy does what I have come to consider ‘Thatcher’s law’ apply — in politics the unexpected happens. You have to be prepared and able to face it. There was to be no lack of examples in my years in office.

  THE MILITARY BALANCE

  Well before I entered Downing Street I was preoccupied with the balance of military power between the NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact. NATO has always been a defensive alliance of western style democracies. It was founded in April 1949 in response to the growing aggression of Soviet policy, made plain by events such as the Soviet-backed communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade the previous year. Although the United States is the leading power in NATO, ultimately it can only seek to persuade not coerce. In such a relationship the danger of dissension always exists. The Soviet aim, only thinly disguised, right up until the time when a united Germany remained in NATO, was to drive a wedge between America and her European allies. I always regarded it as one of Britain’s most important roles to see that such a strategy failed.