Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (59 page)

A factor in all this was the American Administration’s policy of strengthening ties with Argentina as part of its strategy of resisting Cuban-based communist influence in Central and South America, and the Argentinians had gained a wildly exaggerated idea of their importance to the
United States. They convinced themselves on the eve of the invasion that they need not take seriously American warnings against military action, and became more intransigent when diplomatic pressure was applied on them afterwards to withdraw.

Could they have been deterred? In order to take action to deter Argentina militarily, given the vast distance between Britain and the Falklands, we would have had to have some three weeks’ notice. Further, to send down a force of insufficient size would have been to subject it to intolerable risk. Certainly, the presence of HMS
Endurance –
the lightly armed patrol vessel which was due to be withdrawn – was a military irrelevance. It would neither deter nor repel any planned invasion. (Indeed, when the invasion occurred I was very glad that the ship was at sea and not in Port Stanley: if she had been, she would have been captured or blown out of the water.) Most important perhaps is that nothing would have more reliably precipitated a full-scale invasion, if something less had been planned, than if we had started military preparations on the scale required to send an effective deterrent. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we would always like to have acted differently. So would the Argentinians. This was the main conclusion of the Committee of Inquiry, chaired by Lord Franks, which we set up to examine the way we had handled the dispute in the run-up to the invasion. The committee had unprecedented access to government papers, including those of the intelligence services. Its report ends with the words: ‘We would not be justified in attaching any criticism or blame to the present Government for the Argentine Junta’s decision to commit its act of unprovoked aggression in the invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982.’

It all began with an incident on South Georgia. On 20 December 1981 there had been an unauthorized landing on the island by what were described as Argentine scrap metal dealers; we had given a firm but measured response. The Argentinians subsequently left and the Argentine Government claimed to know nothing about it. I was more alarmed when, after the Anglo-Argentine talks in New York, the Argentine Government broke the procedures agreed at the meeting by publishing a unilateral communiqué disclosing the details of discussion, while simultaneously the Argentine press began to speculate on possible military action before the symbolically important date of January 1983. On 3 March 1982 I minuted on a telegram from Buenos Aires: ‘we must make contingency plans’ – though, in spite of my unease, I was not expecting anything like a full-scale invasion, which indeed our most recent intelligence assessment of Argentine intentions had discounted.

On 20 March we were informed that the previous day the Argentine scrap metal dealers had made a further unauthorized landing on South Georgia. The Argentine flag had been raised and shots fired. In answer to our protests the Argentine Government claimed to have no prior knowledge. We first decided that HMS
Endurance
should be instructed to remove the Argentinians, whoever they were. But we tried to negotiate with Argentina a way of resolving what still seemed to be an awkward incident rather than a precursor of conflict, so we withdrew our instructions to
Endurance
and ordered the ship to proceed instead to the British base at Grytviken, the main settlement on the island.

As March drew to a close with the incident still unresolved we became increasingly concerned. On Sunday evening, 28 March, I rang Peter Carrington to express my anxiety at the situation. He assured me that he had already made a first approach to Al Haig, the US Secretary of State, asking him to bring pressure to bear. The following morning Peter and I met at RAF Northolt on our way to the European Council at Brussels and agreed to send a nuclear-powered submarine to reinforce HMS
Endurance
and to make preparations to send a second submarine. I was not too displeased when news of the decision leaked. The submarine would take two weeks to get to the South Atlantic, but it could begin to influence events straight away. My instinct was that the time had come to show the Argentines that we meant business.

In the late afternoon of Tuesday 30 March I returned from Brussels. By that time Peter Carrington had already left on an official visit to Israel. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence had been working to prepare up-to-date assessments and review the diplomatic and military options. The following day – Wednesday 31 March – I made my statement to the House reporting on the Brussels summit, but my mind was focused on what the Argentinians were intending and on what our response should be. The advice we received from intelligence was that the Argentine Government were exploring our reactions, but that they had not contrived the landing on South Georgia. By now I was deeply uneasy. Yet still I do not think that any of us expected an immediate invasion of the Falklands themselves.

I shall not forget that Wednesday evening. I was working in my room at the House of Commons when I was told that John Nott wanted an immediate meeting to discuss the Falklands. I called people together. Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce attended from the Foreign Office,
with FCO and MoD officials. (The Chief of Defence Staff was in New Zealand.) John was alarmed. He had just received intelligence that the Argentinian Fleet, already at sea, looked as if they were going to invade the islands on Friday 2 April. John gave the MoD’s view that the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized. This was terrible, and totally unacceptable: these were our people, our islands. I said instantly: ‘If they are invaded, we have got to get them back.’

I asked the Chief of the Naval Staff, Sir Henry Leach, what we could do. He was quiet, calm and confident: ‘I can put together a task force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft, 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.’ He believed such a force could retake the islands. All he needed was my authority to begin to assemble it. I gave it him, and he left immediately. We reserved for Cabinet the decision as to whether and when the task force should sail.

Now my outrage and determination were matched by a sense of relief and confidence. Henry Leach had shown me that if it came to a fight the courage and professionalism of Britain’s armed forces would win through. It was my job as Prime Minister to see that they got the political support they needed. But first we had to do everything possible to prevent the appalling tragedy.

Our only hope lay with the Americans – people to whom Galtieri, if he was still behaving rationally, should listen. We drafted and sent an urgent message to President Reagan asking him to press Galtieri to draw back from the brink. This the President immediately agreed to do.

At 9.30 on Thursday morning, 1 April, I held a Cabinet, earlier than usual so that a meeting of the Overseas and Defence Committee of the Cabinet (OD) could follow it before lunch. The latest assessment was that an Argentine assault could be expected about midday our time on Friday. We thought that President Reagan might yet succeed. However, Galtieri refused altogether at first to take the President’s call. I was told of this outcome in the early hours of Friday morning and I knew then that our last hope had now gone.

At 9.45 on Friday morning Cabinet met again. I reported that an Argentine invasion was now imminent. We would meet later in the day to consider once more the question of sending a task force – though to my mind the issue by this stage was not so much whether we should act, but how.

Communications with the Falklands were often interrupted due to atmospheric conditions. On Friday morning the Governor of the Falklands – Rex
Hunt – sent a message telling us that the invasion had begun, but it never got through. (Indeed, the first contact I had with him after the invasion was when he reached Montevideo in Uruguay, where the Argentinians flew him and a number of other senior people, on Saturday morning.) It was, in fact, the captain of a British Antarctic Survey vessel who intercepted a local Falkland Islands ham radio broadcast and passed on the news to the Foreign Office. My private secretary brought me final confirmation while I was at an official lunch.

By now discussion was taking place all over Whitehall about every aspect of the campaign and feverish military preparations were under way. The army was preparing its contribution. A naval task force was being formed, partly from ships currently at Gibraltar and partly from those in British ports. The Queen had already made it clear that Prince Andrew, who was serving with HMS
Invincible
, would be joining the task force: there could be no question of a member of the royal family being treated differently from other servicemen.

Cabinet met for the second time at 7.30 in the evening when the decision was made to send the task force. What concerned us most at this point was the time it would take to arrive. We believed, rightly, that the Argentinians would pile in men and materiel to make it as difficult as possible for us to dislodge them. And all the time the weather in the South Atlantic would be worsening as the violent storms of the southern winter approached.

More immediate and more manageable was the problem of how to deal with public opinion at home. Support for the dispatch of the task force was likely to be strong, but would it fall away as time went on? In fact, we need not have worried. Our policy was one which people understood and endorsed. Public interest and commitment remained strong throughout.

One particular aspect of this problem, though, does rate a mention. We decided to allow defence correspondents on the ships who reported back during the long journey. This produced vivid coverage of events. But there was always a risk of disclosing information which might be useful to the enemy. I also became very unhappy at the attempted ‘even-handedness’ of some of the comment, and the chilling use of the third-person – talk of ‘the British’ and ‘the Argentinians’ on our news programmes.

It was also on Friday 2 April that I received advice from the Foreign Office which summed up the flexibility of principle characteristic of that department. I was presented with the dangers of a backlash against the
British expatriates in Argentina, problems about getting support in the UN Security Council, the lack of reliance we could place on the European Community or the United States, the risk of the Soviets becoming involved, the disadvantage of being looked at as a colonial power. All these considerations were fair enough. But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen’s subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister.

In the short term, we needed to win our case against Argentina in the UN Security Council and to secure a resolution denouncing their aggression and demanding withdrawal. On the basis of such a resolution we would find it far easier to win the support of other nations for practical measures to pressurize Argentina. But in the longer term we knew that we had to try to keep our affairs out of the UN as much as possible. With the Cold War still under way, there was a real danger that the Security Council might attempt to force unsatisfactory terms upon us. If necessary we could veto such a resolution, but to do so would diminish international support for our position. The second long-term goal was to ensure maximum support from our allies, principally the US, but also members of the EC, the Commonwealth and other important western nations. This was a task undertaken at head of government level, but an enormous burden fell on the FCO and no country was ever better served than Britain by our two key diplomats at this time: Sir Anthony Parsons, Britain’s UN Ambassador and Sir Nicholas (Nico) Henderson, our ambassador in Washington.

At the UN Tony Parsons, on the eve of the invasion, was busy outmanoeuvring the Argentinians. The UN Secretary-General had called on both sides to exercise restraint: we responded positively, but the Argentinians remained silent. On Saturday 3 April, Tony Parsons managed a diplomatic triumph in persuading the Security Council to pass what became Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 502, demanding an immediate and unconditional withdrawal by the Argentinians from the Falklands. It had not been easy. The debate was bitter and complex. We knew that the old anti-colonialist bias of the UN would incline some Security Council members against us, were it not for the fact that there had been a flagrant act of aggression by the Argentinians. I was particularly grateful to President Mitterrand who was among the staunchest of our friends and who telephoned me personally to pledge support on
Saturday. (I was to have many disputes with President Mitterrand in later years, but I never forget the debt we owed him for his personal support throughout the Falklands crisis.) France used her influence in the UN to swing others in our favour. I myself made a last-minute telephone call to King Hussein of Jordan, who also came down on our side. He is an old friend of Britain’s and I did not have to go into lengthy explanations to persuade him to cast Jordan’s vote on our side. He began the conversation by asking simply: ‘What can I do for you, Prime Minister?’ In the end we were delighted to have the votes we needed for the Resolution and to avoid a veto from the Soviet Union. But we had no illusions as to who would be left to remove the aggressor when all the talking was done: it would be us.

The debate in the House of Commons that Saturday is another very powerful memory.

The House was rightly angry that British territory had been invaded and occupied, and many Members were inclined to blame the Government for its alleged failure to foresee and forestall what had happened. My first task was to defend us against the charge of unpreparedness.