*
A week after the Falklands War had ended, as the nation basked in the glow of victory, Princess Diana gave birth to a boy. To the newspapers the arrival of Prince William, coming so soon after the liberation of Port Stanley, seemed a moment of almost unimaginable ecstasy. It was as if, after years of driving rain, the clouds had parted, the sun was shining and the green fields were wreathed in splendour. Who now could doubt that Britain was Top Nation once again?
‘THE CROWNING GLORY’, exulted the Express, whose columnist Peter McKay was beside himself with enthusiasm:
What times we live in! The excitement surrounding a royal birth. A famous victory in the Falklands. A nation which, according to all recent opinion polls, exults in a common aim.
There cannot have been a June like it for 30 years. Indeed, since June 1953 – the Queen’s Coronation, coinciding with the conquering of Everest! And the Express headline over both events which said: ‘ALL THIS – AND EVEREST TOO!’
There will always be something ridiculous about a nation in the throes of self congratulation. Sometimes it is a dangerous condition.
But surely, our triumphs of these days in the summer of ’82 seem right and proper, a consequence of our having been a good and true people.
McKay recognized that the glow would fade eventually, and that people would revert to ‘fighting one another, ridiculing each other’. Such was the British way. But ‘we may have to wait for a long time’, he wrote, ‘to see the likes of this summer and the excitement of these days. Days in which we seemed incapable of defeat.’38
For Mrs Thatcher, these were days of glory. On 3 July, in her first major party speech since the end of the war, she addressed the faithful at Cheltenham Racecourse. The train drivers’ union ASLEF was threatening an all-out strike in protest at British Rail’s decision to bring in more flexible rosters, and most of her advisers had warned her not to exploit victory too obviously. But now she threw off the fetters:
Today we meet in the aftermath of the Falklands Battle. Our country has won a great victory and we are entitled to be proud …
Now that it is all over, things cannot be the same again, for we have learned something about ourselves – a lesson which we desperately needed 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.
More than any other speech she ever gave, this was her apotheosis. What had always driven her, underpinning her beliefs in free enterprise and the small state, was her unyielding faith in British greatness, and her horror at its decline. But now Britain was reborn in battle. This was the true spirit of the South Atlantic:
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 …
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.
Her audience loved it.39
All her enemies now seemed to be running up white flags. Two weeks later, the train drivers’ strike collapsed, the TUC having threatened to suspend them unless they went back to work. ‘SURRENDER’, gloated the front page of the Express. For the paper’s labour correspondent, a bearded young man called Peter Hitchens, this was proof that the trade unions’ power had been broken. The Winter of Discontent was a fading memory, the steelworkers had fought and lost, even Derek Robinson was yesterday’s man. In part, Hitchens admitted, this reflected the fact that ‘most of our old industrial battlegrounds are now industrial graveyards’. But it also reflected the new, more conservative spirit at the top of the unions. There was, Hitchens thought, just one exception: ‘Mr Arthur Scargill of the Mineworkers, desperate to have a fight with someone, about something, as soon as he has finished his holiday in Communist Cuba. One thing stands between him and what he wants, and that is the democracy of the Mineworkers’ Union.’40
By now the Task Force was steaming home. On Saturday 10 July, Alan Clark flew out to welcome the Canberra, which was due to dock in Southampton the next morning. When he spotted the great liner’s escort from his Sea Otter plane, he ‘felt very moved’:
I saw that little frigate and thought how she and her sister ships had sailed the whole length of the world to uphold the honour of the country and of the Royal Navy. What a truly wonderful epic event in our history was that Falkland Islands war. I have said this so many times in so many places, and on each occasion I can still feel almost tearful. There will never again be anything like that.41
At dawn on Sunday morning the Canberra sailed into Southampton harbour. Aboard were more than 2,000 Royal Marines, as well as hundreds of other servicemen and members of the ship’s original crew, who had volunteered to stay on board during the Falklands campaign. Also aboard was the Mirror’s Paul Callan, who described the scene the next day:
At first they were only tiny white plumes in the 6 am heat haze hovering at that point in the Solent where the sky ended and the sea began.
Then, as the wearied Canberra pushed herself home through the frisky sea, the wispy little shapes became definite.
They were sailing craft of every conceivable size – sleek yachts, lumbering catamarans, even dumpy dinghies – and all were tearing through the waters to welcome home a liner more used to the luxurious murmur of world cruises than the ugly clamour of war …
Out of the dawn’s horizon [came] a joyful Dunkirk of a welcome – a mass of boats which grew into thousands as they bobbed and wobbled excitedly like children around a favourite parent.
Even the Marines were visibly moved. Some were so overcome they turned away and ‘just stared out to sea, lost in the ocean of their own thoughts’. As the Canberra edged close to the quay, they could see the red, white and blue of the flags and hear the ‘hoarse greetings of mothers, fathers, wives, children and lovers’. The returning heroes had clearly been keeping up with the news: on deck, one group displayed a banner that read ‘CALL OFF THE RAIL STRIKE – OR WE’LL CALL AN AIR STRIKE!’ And as they fell into the arms of their families, they were pleased to see that Britain had not changed. ‘Cor,’ one Marine muttered as a ‘well-shaped young girl popped up topless from behind a blue flag’. ‘Now that’s a fine pair of welcomes.’42
As luck would have it, the Marines had made it back in time for what was surely the cultural highlight of the age. Broadcast from the London Coliseum on 18 July, ITV’s National Salute to the Falklands Task Force from the British Theatre was a remarkable occasion by any standards. Vera Lynn was there, of course. So were Laurence Olivier, John Mills, Richard Todd, Christopher Lee, Roger Moore and Anthony Andrews. Who Dares Wins’s Lewis Collins was there, alongside Martin Shaw and Gordon Jackson, his fellow Professionals. Robert Powell, Ronnie Corbett, Adam Ant, Les Dawson, Paul Daniels, Alvin Stardust, Kim Wilde, Leslie Crowther … the ‘galaxy of stars’, as the programme modestly put it, just went on a
nd on. Even Prince Charles was there, having torn himself away from his nappy-changing duties. At the end, to the palpable delight of the audience, the cast assembled on stage to sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. But not everybody liked it. ‘Thank goodness I didn’t get mixed up in that!’ recorded an appalled Kenneth Williams. ‘It was excruciating: the sort of patriotic jingoism and amateur theatricals which leave you squirming.’43
There was one last Falklands story before the summer was over, though it was more like an episode of Yes Minister than a night at the London Coliseum. This was the official service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was preceded by weeks of comical acrimony. The problem was that although Mrs Thatcher was keen to celebrate victory and mourn the fallen, the church authorities, many of whom had been passionately opposed to the war, were determined to suppress any mention of the Falklands at all. Every aspect, from the choice of hymns to the wording of the order of service, provoked intense bickering. The President of the Methodist Conference, Dr Kenneth Greet, who had attacked the war in the Guardian, said there should be no hint of celebration and did not want any members of the armed forces to read lessons. The Catholic cardinal Basil Hume refused to countenance the word ‘liberation’. Most alarmingly for the government, the Dean of St Paul’s, Dr Alan Webster, a pacifist with strong left-wing sympathies, seriously proposed that the service should be dedicated to ‘reconciliation’ with Argentina, with half of it conducted in Spanish.
To Mrs Thatcher, all this seemed beyond parody. When she heard about the Dean’s plan, one aide said, ‘her eyes widened in absolute horror’. As John Nott remarked, Dr Webster had completely missed the point that this was meant to be a service for the ‘families of the British dead’, who were unlikely to be consoled by hearing the Lord’s Prayer in the language of General Galtieri. At one point Nott urged her to call the whole thing off and have a military service on Horse Guards Parade instead. But in the end they found a compromise. The churchmen agreed that Falklands veterans could read lessons after all, while Mrs Thatcher agreed to drop any mention of celebration. Dr Webster even abandoned his plan to read the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish, though he made one last plea that a Spanish translation be included in the order of service. ‘Why?’ scribbled Mrs Thatcher.44
In the event, the service on 26 July passed off without a word of Spanish. But since the clergymen had made no secret of their misgivings, the press were spoiling for a fight. Their chosen target was a man who, ironically, knew more than most about the reality of battle. During the Second World War, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, had served as a tank commander in the Scots Guards. His men affectionately called him ‘Killer’, and after leading an attack to knock out three German guns under heavy fire, he had been awarded the Military Cross. In a further irony, he had privately supported the Falklands War and explicitly told the congregation that sometimes force was necessary. But the deaths of so many young men, he added, were nothing to celebrate. He was ‘thankful’ the war was over, for it was ‘impossible to be a Christian and not to long for peace’. And in words that many people interpreted as a rebuke to the press, he noted that it was sometimes ‘those spectators who remained at home who continue to be most violent in their attitudes, and untouched in their deepest selves’.
To Runcie’s critics, all this was absolutely disgraceful. In a striking sign of the times, the Sun branded him the ‘Arch-Wimp of Canterbury’. The immensely right-wing Tory backbencher Sir John Biggs-Davison declared that it was ‘revolting for cringing clergy to misuse St Paul’s to throw doubt upon the sacrifice of our fighting men’. Another of Mrs Thatcher’s MPs, the similarly ferocious Julian Amery, claimed that the sermon was typical of the ‘pacifist, liberal, wet establishment’ who had been ‘shocked by our going to war and even more shocked at our winning victory’.45
Mrs Thatcher was widely reported to have hated the sermon, even though she made a point of congratulating Runcie afterwards. But most of her ministers were more generous. ‘I felt he spoke exactly for me,’ said Willie Whitelaw, who had fought alongside Runcie in Normandy. ‘His words at St Paul’s were those of a soldier who understood war, and he expressed his admiration for those who fought and gave their lives.’ And even Alan Clark, who had fortified himself with a sticky bun from a café ‘staffed entirely by black people’, thought the service ‘could have been worse’. His attention was monopolized by the grieving families behind him, not least because so many of the widows were ‘raging beauties’. ‘With the exception of the very young children, who were excited and jolly,’ he wrote, ‘most of the relatives looked deeply unhappy.’ Many of them spent the service in tears. Later, on his way out, Clark passed ‘row after row of next of kin. Anxiously I scanned their faces, but the only emotion I could see was anguish, sheer anguish.’46
In Newton Abbot, Mary Richards watched the service on television. She was relieved that ‘it was not turned into Party Politics … I was taught God is love and the Church is right to try and teach us to love each other and forgive each other … I would not like to think the C of E represent Mrs Thatcher’s views as I have never felt Mrs Thatcher and her followers are compassionate.’ At one point that summer her grown-up daughter remarked: ‘I don’t know how Maggie Thatcher gets away with it.’ But Mary just felt tired of the whole business:
We are now fed up with it. Every time we turn the TV on something else is coming home. It’s like a party political programme.
I am just glad it’s all over. Every time we watch all that pomp and glory I think of the boys that never came back and the wounded young men and the sorrow it has caused many families.
Our family has not been involved in any of these celebrations and I don’t know anyone else who has.
Just glad it’s over.
For Margaret Thatcher, though, it was never over.47
1. To her admirers, Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s warrior queen, leading the nation into a bold new era. Yet by the time the Sunday Times Magazine ran this extraordinary cover, Britain was in recession, the cherubs were in revolt and her armour looked distinctly rusty.
2. The new Britain. The pleasures of Asteroids, 1982.
3. New Romantics model their exciting hairstyles.
4. The old Britain. Holidaymakers enjoy a summer’s day in Skegness.
5. Delegates at Labour’s tumultuous Brighton conference, 1981.
6. By the autumn of 1980, Mrs Thatcher’s brave new world looked like an unmitigated disaster. Jim Prior keeps his distance at the Conservative party conference.
7. Sir Geoffrey Howe and Lord Carrington do their best to look supportive.
8. These were terrible years for British industry. British Leyland’s Michael Edwardes polishes his Austin Metro;
9. Derek Robinson puts a brave face on his dismissal.
10. Striking South Wales steelworkers give their verdict on the Thatcher experiment.
11. As the recession deepened, an entire generation seemed destined for the scrapheap. Unemployed youngsters outside a derelict factory in Billingham, Teesside.
12. The dole queue in a south London social security office.
13. The stuff of nightmares. Few people were reassured by the Protect and Survive booklet.
14. Let alone by the mordant humour of the peace movement’s Gone with the Wind parody.
15. Little wonder, then, that tens of thousands joined CND’s march in London in October 1981.
16. Sport as a window into the national soul. Visiting Turin for the 1980 European Championships, England’s football hooligans do their best to charm the locals.
17. But snooker’s Steve Davis strikes a rather more family-friendly pose on Tiswas.
18. ‘Every record begins with a bleep.’ Gary Numan wonders if ‘friends’ are electric.
19. While the similarly grim-faced Human League slap on the eye make-up.
20. But Duran Duran are clearly having a much more amusing time.
21. Electoral defeat triggered a civil war in the
Labour Party. As leader, Michael Foot, found it impossible to impose his authority.
22. David Owen is appalled by the 1981 Wembley conference;
23. A rather more cheerful Shirley Williams campaigns for the SDP.
24. On the left, Tony Benn, struck an ever more messianic figure, inspiring love and loathing in equal measure.
25. His supporters included the Greater London Council’s leader Ken Livingstone, pictured with Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and an unidentified fellow enthusiast.
26. The Maze hunger strike marked a macabre new phase in Northern Ireland’s history. A masked republican poses beside graffiti supporting the strikers.
27. Graffiti in one of Belfast’s Protestant areas sends a less sympathetic message.
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