The Falklands War, 1982 - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

now the Falkland Islands are said to be British but British are somewhat unsecure about overseas territories in 1950 there was a survey can you name a single British colony 50% could not though one person replied Lincolnshire now I imagine that the majority of the audience here tonight are British and I wonder how many would be able to tell me without looking at the map where the Falkland Islands actually are on the map I went to a survey but I imagine more could answer that question than before the war in 1982 and here we can see the Falklands there are in fact two main islands West Falkland and East Falkland and around them though we can't see them on the map there are around 780 smaller and inhabited islands now the population of the Falklands in 1982 was around 1800 and they were mostly the descendants of nineteenth-century British settlers they were mainly engaged in pastoral activities sheep farming and the like although there are only 1800 inhabitants there around half a million sheep now around the time of the war the population was declining by about 30 per year and thought that when it fell below 1500 it would be unviable the Falklands are 300 miles from Argentina and 8,000 miles from Britain the Argentine supplied food to the island and medical services and indeed the Islanders relied for almost all their communications and supplies on the Argentinians who could at any time cut off the air service and cut off supplies now we can't see them on the map but if you go to the southeast 800 miles away you can find an island called south giorgia which plays an important part of the story and 1,300 miles away to the southeast you've got a series of islands called the South Sandwich Islands which also play an important part in the story now these islands are virtually uninhabitable and indeed there are no native inhabitants on them but at the time of the war they represented the headquarters of the British Antarctic Survey and they were staffed with British government officers they're working they're temporary now to whom do these islands really belong the Falkland Islands I'm talking about now the British say they belong to Britain the Argentinians who call the islands the Malvinas say they belong to the Argentine now British settlers occupy the Falklands in 1833 and the British claim rests on long occupation and the principle of self-determination so this the Argentine reply is that the British forcibly colonized the islands evicting the Argentinians and the fact that of Falkland Islands are so close to the Argentine means that they belong to the Argentine and the settlers there the British people living there are illegal and the Argentinian say the Falkland Islands are a relic of colonialism which should be dictated being so close the Argentine but you could say on the argument about territorial closeness or continuity that Channel Islands should be French but no one suggested that but I suppose the nearest analogy that someone from the Argentine might use to Britain would be how would you feel if in 1833 we the Argentinians had colonized the Shetlands and peopled them with Argentinian settles now the British claim is obviously very powerful in terms of the principle of self-determination but it's not clear that it's watertight legally in international law and it's never been tested in an International Court now in 1946 a foreign office memorandum declared that the occupation in 1833 could be interpreted as unjustified aggression and in 1966 the then British government considered asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion but decided not to in case Britain didn't win the case but the Argentinians were also not interested in pursuing that course so it was never tested two years after the war the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons said it was unable to reach a categorical conclusion on the legal validity of the claims so it's a bit uncertain in terms of international law but what is certain is that the Islanders wanted to remain British and almost unanimously had no wish to be part of the Argentine now some might say well can such a small population as 1800 really have this right of self-determination so there's an argument on both sides now in the case of the other islands I've spoken about that in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands the British claim appears to be stronger and Britain approached the International Court of Justice in 1947 and in 1955 were a ruling on who they belong to but the Argentinians refused to argue the case and it seems a British case there is stronger now in 1964 the Argentinians placed the Falklands dispute with the United Nations and the United Nations General Assembly had little sympathy with Britain and in 1965 said that the fulcrums were a relic of colonialism and one of the fundamental aims of the United Nations has always been decolonization the United Nations asked both sides if they would negotiate a solution to this dispute but of course a negotiated solution would not be easy to achieve because you had two absolutes two opposing claims to sovereignty and the desire of the Islanders to remain British and the British representative at the United Nations at the time of the war Sir Anthony Parsons said having dealt with the arab-israeli problem over the best part of 35 years become doubtful about the proposition that there necessarily are tidy solutions to all problems which i think is a fair comment all dispute now your Britain's to maintain the Falklands in the face of the Argentine claim the question arises of how the islands were to be protected and to that question there were and still are two answers the first is that the islands should be protected by so strong a deterrent force that Argentine would not dare to invade the second answer is that some kind of compromise agreement could be reached between the British government the Islanders and the Argentine which might reconcile the conflicting claims now British governments both labour and conservative pursued both aims consists in consistently and half-heartedly and when neither seemed feasible adopted a policy of playing for time stringing the Argentinians along in the hope that they would forget about the issue or perhaps that would be a change of heart among the Islanders and I fear the story is one of muddled confusion and indecision on the part of both labour and conservative governments now the Argentinian said in negotiations that if the Falklands were returned to them the interests of the Islanders would be taken into account and some people in the Foreign Office said that the interest of the Islanders were best occurred by making some sort of agreement with the Argentine now the official British position was that the islands were sovereign and there could be no negotiations on sovereignty and the wishes of the Islanders are and I quote paramount but in practice the British had negotiated about sovereignty from the mid-1960s and the British had a rather patronizing attitude towards the Islanders tended to think of them as a nuisance hindering good relations with Latin America and in particular with the Argentine a Labour MP in 1975 not perhaps wholly representative said that the Islanders lived on an unending diet of mutton beer and rum with entertainment largely restricted to drunkenness and adultery spiced with occasional incest now from the late 1960s British governments were seeking a way out with the Argentine which in practice would mean a compromise on the issue of sovereignty and in 1975 the Labour government sent out to the islands Lord Shackleton the son of the famous explorer who was in fact buried on South Georgia which as I said as a dependency of a Falkland Island and they asked Lord Shackleton to report on conditions there and they hoped that Shackleton would say the islands were not viable and they should make what Arrangements they could with the Argentinians but Shackleton did not say that he said the islands were viable or rather they could be made more viable with more investment and in particular an expansion of the airport at Port Stanley the major town on the islands he said that 12 million pounds should be spent to renovate the islands and there should be a much more substantial commitment of British military forces to the defence of the Falklands now the trouble was that more investment would annoy the Argentinians and for whatever there was no such in extra investment nor extra troops the Shackleton report was ignored we now come to the South Sandwich Islands which I sell off the map and they're about 1,300 miles southeast of the Falklands the three southernmost islands in this group of islands are called South fool they are completely uninhabited but were annexed by Britain in 1908 now the Argentinians laid claim to South fool in 1948 and they occupied it in December 1976 the British protested in private but made no public fuss and the occupation continued until 1982 until the war now the Falkland Islands were protected by one ice patrol ship called HMS endurance but after the occupation of South fool the Labour government was worried lest that prove the prelude to an invasion of the Falklands so in 1977 the Prime Minister James Callaghan and the Foreign Secretary David Owen reinforced the endurance with a nuclear-powered submarine and frigates which they sent to the South Atlantic now after the invasion of the Falklands in 1982 Callaghan seeking to embarrass Margaret Thatcher who was there the Prime Minister told the Commons that this had been a deterrent and that Margaret Thatcher should have done the same now Callaghan insisted that the Argentinians had been told of this reinforcement but there is no evidence that they were in fact aware of it and no evidence either they were at that time intending to invade so the precautionary measures were neither known nor needed there is no evidence that they deterred now at this point officials in the Foreign Office were beginning to work out a possible solution to the problem a leaseback of the islands to the Argentine by which the Argentinians will be given sovereignty but would lease them back to the Islanders for a period of years and that Britain would then administer the islands for the duration or beliefs and that was the status for example of the new territories of Hong Kong which had been leased from China in 1898 for 99 years now the difficulty with the solution was that it required an act of parliament to transfer sovereignty to the Argentine and this transfer would be at the time not to a democratic regime but to a very unsavory and military dictatorship now that would be feasible only if the island has accepted it or at least did not kick up too much of a fuss about it otherwise you could easily imagine the protests in the House of Commons the people of British origin were being sold out to a dictatorship now the foreign office seemed to believe or perhaps hoped for the acceptance that the Islanders would be possible if the issue was raised gently there was a long educative process now the British were prepared for a long process because obviously the Falklands was a long way down the list of priorities of the British government so time was not a problem for the British but for the Argentine it was at the very top of their priorities and she would be unlikely to agree to a long term timescale now in 1980 Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government put forward a leaseback arrangement according to which the islands were to be leased back to Britain for 200 years to be reviewed every five or ten years in case the Islanders had changed their minds and were prepared for rule by the Argentine and after discussions with the Argentine the period was reduced to 99 years now policy of the Falklands was in the hands of a junior minister at the Foreign Office Nicholas Ridley and Nicholas Ridley was a right-wing conservative who was very close to Margaret Thatcher but unlike Margaret Thatcher he had a very sense of humor and he was in the habit of blurting out Inconvenient Truth Margaret Thatcher wasn't he had the unfortunate habit for a politician of saying what he thought in August 1980 he had talks with the Argentinian foreign minister in New York and he said to him we had given up a third of the world service and found it on the whole beneficial to do so the only claim Britain had which he felt strongly about was our long-standing claim to Bordeaux his motive being wine he found it hard to see the motive toward the islands where there was no wine and this understandably led the Argentinians to think Britain was not serious about the island now Ridley visited the islands in November 1980 hoping to get a compromise but he got nowhere the Islanders said they wanted not closer ties with Argentina but fewer but Britain should reform force its defense and economic commitment to the islands now Ridley it was a very clever man and like many clever people he didn't suffer fools gladly and he thought the Islanders were being foolish in not recognising the situation and when he thought that he was not prepared to be tactful about it so he told the Islanders if that was their attitude you take the consequences and I'm quoting you take the consequences not me he said if you can't get the medical services and the educational services if you can't get the oil then it's you who suffer not us the reply first from an Islander was we know that we realize that we're not knits then a second Islander asked a question to which the government really had no answer if the Argentinians invaded what is Britain going to do the answer from the hall was kick them out readily replied not perhaps totally unreasonably that's not the problem the problem is do you want the Argentinians invading you and ass-kicking them out in a state of perpetual war that's what you've got to think about I mean it's very well sitting here saying someone else must come and kick the Argentinians out of course we will but isn't that good for sheep farming for fishing for looking for oil for all of your futures for your children and your grandchildren and your great grandchildren is this the way you want to live that's what you've got to think about now Ridley's position became even more difficult through the consequences of legislation which by pure chance was then going through the British Parliament the British nationality bill and this sought to limit immigration into Britain plus a charge and it made a distinction between British citizens and citizens of British dependent territories and these latter citizens had no guarantee of being able to immigrate into Britain an exception was made for Gibraltar whose citizens became British citizens because their links with the European communities and indeed citizens of Gibraltar will have a vote in the forthcoming referendum on whether we should stay in the EU but no exception was made for the Falkland Islanders the governor of the islands said it would be easier to sell leaseback if the Islanders were given British citizenship and assurance if things went wrong with Argentina they could come to Britain they needed an absolute guarantee of entry but all that the government could say was they would be given a favourable consideration now seeing the government although it's so often said the islands were British did not regard them as being as British as say people from Gibraltar in other words they were not given British citizenship now in December 1980 Nicholas Ridley presented the government proposals for lease back to the House of Commons and he was unfortunate at the time that the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington was not a member of the House of Commons he was much more senior to Ridley more respected in the party had greater weight and authority he might just have been able to persuade MPs the virtues of leaseback might just have been able to but Ridley was unable to do so question as to whether the wishes of the Islanders should be made paramount he avoided saying they were he said I confirm our long-standing commitment to their security and economic well-being and I said that in the islands he accepted the proposals needed to be endorsed by the Islanders but not with their wishes should be paramount there was a storm of critical on poor Ridley from both political parties the Labour Party was particularly hostile because they said it meant handing over people of British origin to a non-democratic military junta there were just one MP who supported Ridley a backbench Labour MP who said the interests of 1804 pond Islanders cannot take precedence over the interests of 55 million people in United Kingdom Ridley was savaged in the House of Commons and the proposals for leaseback were withdrawn now it seems to me that the MPs were being irresponsible because leaseback would have given both sides what they wanted Argentinian ownership but a guarantee of British rule in the Falklands for a long period to come I think that by insuring the rejection of leaseback MPs were exposing the Islanders to great dangers what was the alternative policy in July 1981 the Joint Intelligence Committee said if Argentina concluded at least back involving the peaceful transfer of sovereignty was no longer possible the use of force could not be ruled out it also said and I quote that the retaking of the islands after an Argentinean invasion is barely militarily viable and would present formidable problems so the logical corollary of a rejection of leaseback was to reinforce the defense of the islands but was it possible or even sensible to maintain indefinitely a large force in the South Atlantic against an indefinite possibility of invasion now if you were going to do that that would involve an increase in public spending but Margaret Thatcher's government was determined to cut public spending and that meant cutting defense spending where are you going to cut defense spending NATO commitments meant you couldn't cut defense spending in Europe so why not make an obvious economy and withdraw HMS endurance from the Falkland Islands now under the Labour government in 1977 the defence secretary had tried to do this but was stopped by the foreign secretary David Owen who said this would be and I quote a clear admission of weakness on our part and a lack of determination to defend our interests such an announcement would also have a serious effect on the morale of Islanders themselves and Owen insisted the ship should be kept in the South Atlantic until the dispute with the Argentine were resolved now in 1981 under the Conservatives the argument resurfaced and again the Foreign Office argued against removing endurance but this time the Defense Department won perhaps because the defence secretary John naught was very close to the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher while the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington was not and in June 1981 the white paper on defense announced that HMS endurance would be drawn from the Falklands in 1982 and that was bound to be taken as a signal by the Argentine but Britain was not really serious about defending the islands and might turn a blind eye to invasion it was surely contradictory to say that the wishes of the Islanders were paramount when it came to sovereignty but their wishes could be ignored when it came to investing in the islands or protecting them from invasion now during the Falklands crisis labour critics of the government were to say with some justice that cuts in defense spending which labor on the whole had welcomed meant that commitments would also be cut and the Conservatives could not cut defense spending if that's what they want to do without also cutting commitments so the policy was neither leaseback nor protecting the islands it was one of stringing the Argentinians along and playing for time it seems to me a highly irresponsible policy the islands were being exposed to great danger as Ridley had insisted but without sufficient protection from the British the Argentinian said the island has depended on them for essential services which they were supplying that they were being given nothing in return so the options with all the British government one can't deny they were all unpalatable but after all what a governments for if not to make unpalatable decisions in difficult situations if all government decisions were easy we could all be government ministers no doubt now the situation might have been contained had there not been a military coup in the Argentine in December 1981 replacing one military dictatorship with another the new Argentine leader was general Galtieri and when the Foreign Office suggested that Margaret Thatcher send the customary message congratulating him on achieving power she replied not unreasonably I do not send messages on the occasion of military takeovers the new regime faced an appalling economic situation of percent inflation and rising unemployment now with the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of British occupation as they saw it do in March 1983 it might not be surprising if they attempted a glamorous military exploit to distract attention from the domestic situation and the government was aware of this possibility that had no policy to forestall it now it seems that the Argentinians were preparing for an invasion in late 1982 following the debate on the Falklands scheduled for the UN General Assembly by that time endurance would have gone and the chance of success would have been greater than at the time of the actual invasion at the time of the invasion on the 2nd of April 1982 endurance have not yet been withdrawn but the invasion was brought forward following an unplanned instant which has some of the ingredients of comic opera I mean if the consequences weren't so tragic on 19th of March 1982 there was an unauthorized landing on the island of South Georgia which is about 800 miles southeast of Falklands and I said that was inhabited only by British officers working on the Atlantic survey and that also had been cut back in spending cuts so by the time of the landing there was no permanent British presence on the island and the landing was made by an Argentinean scrap merchant called davydov who had a contract to buy the unused equipment on the island for himself and he had the agreement of the British Embassy in Buenos Aires to land and obtain the equipment but he refused to comply on South Georgia with the necessary formalities saying that this meant recognizing British sovereignty he set up the Argentinian flag on the island in retaliation in the Falklands itself the islands has broken to the Argentinean air forth offices and they replace the Argentine flag with a British flag and on it marked on a desk with toothpaste the message tit for tat you buggers the force of their protest was weakened since the Argentinians didn't understand what it meant and needed a dictionary to translate it now Davi Davi activities in South Georgia had probably not been authorized by the Argentinian government is not clear probably not but the government certainly took advantage of them the Argentine junta set an ice patrol to South Georgia to reinforce davydov and to give you an idea of the nature of the Jones er the commander of the ice Patrol was a left tenant asti's who was wanted by Sweden and France for the murder of a girl and three nuns Britain reacted by sending two submarines to the South Atlantic the government didn't want to announce this publicly so as not to provoke Argentina Argentine or cause loss of faith but unfortunately the plans became known to the maverick right-wing MP and famous diarist Allan Clarke who made them public but there were also as one of the submarines they were contradictory signals because the junior defense minister told the Commons that the operation in South Georgia had occurred outside the NATO area the government hoped the problem could be solved by diplomacy Margaret Thatcher said that Britain should go to the International Court of Justice the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington said I think wrongly actually but he said we might get the wrong answer but I think Britain had a strong leading case but Margaret Thatcher then said there's no earthly point in sweating blood over it if it's not ours it wasn't fear now the presence of the scrap merchant and his assistance on this virtually uninhabited island was to lead to war because the junta had come to the view that the British would not fight if the Falklands were invaded and they had a number of reasons to believe that the first was a failure to act on the Shackleton report second was the unopposed occupation of South fool in the late seventies the third was leaseback proposals and the long discussions about sovereignty the fourth was withdrawal of endurance the fifth was the British Nationality Act and the sixth was a muted response to the unauthorized landing on South Georgia now on the 26th of March the junta ordered an invasion for 2nd of April and that would force a discussion so they believed on the transfer of sovereignty so that Argentina would be strung along no longer and a small force on the Falklands obviously rapidly overwhelmed and Argentina declared the incorporation of the Malvinas as they called it into the Argentine now as you can imagine there was a political outcry in Britain as a result British territory had been seized without warning and British subjects were now under occupation in effect under the rule of a foreign dictator the government was blamed in the opinion poll carried shortly afterwards he said only 12% Oh 12% said the government that no blame was attached the government 58 percent said a lot 22% said a little 36% said the Prime Minister was to blame and 34 percent said she should resign but at the same time the British attitude were more muted and often thought to be and little while later on the second of May before the fighting had really begun 60% of those questions said they were unwilling to see the lives of servicemen lost in the Falklands and 66% said they were unwilling to see civilian lives lost in the Falklands just 24 percent said that policy should be decided by the wishes of the Islanders 72 percent said they should be decided in the interests of Britain as a whole now the government was exposed as I said to tremendous criticism and I think good bit of it was unfair since the junta did not decide on the invasion until the week before spurred on by events in South Georgia and a fear that Britain might reinforce the Falklands if they didn't decide until a week before how was the British government to be aware that this invasion was to take place as later the 19th of March the ambassador in Buenos Aires wrote to the Foreign Office we know the current team to be much too intelligent to do anything so city but the time of Foreign Office received the message someone wrote on the letter overtaken by events the government understandably assumed that invasion would be preceded by diplomatic activity at the United Nations and by a process of economic pressure on the Falklands a year after the invasion there was an inquiry into the war led by Lord Franks a former civil servant and he concluded the government could not have predicted the invasion and I think that is correct it couldn't but I think in another sense the Conservative government was as culpable as previous the previous Labour government had been in having no coherent policy on the Falklands neither negotiate nor strengthened simply string Argentine along or policy likely to fail I remind you that Joint Intelligence Committee had said in July 1981 if no peaceful transfer of sovereignty a full-scale invasion cannot be discounted and the real criticism of British governments both conservative and Labour is they did not recognize that threat and did not take sufficient measure to deter it Michael foot the leader of the Opposition said the Conservative government had betrayed the Falklands in my view all of parties had betrayed them now when the defense secretary John not brought Margaret Thatcher the news of the invasion she said it was the worst moment of my life and the government was clearly in danger could not survive without a response the government decided to send a task force to the South Atlantic some was skeptical about it and Geoffrey Howe the Chancellor said that sending a task force would give the impression we are in a position to reverse or reconquer we ought to convey the opposite impression but I think the government had no alternative I think Nigel Lawson who was then the energy secretary probably summed up opinion better when he said public opinion won't regard this as a faraway Island now when a Margaret Thatcher asked the First Sea Lord how long the task force would take to get the South Atlantic 8,000 miles he said three weeks and Margaret Thatcher said you mean three days is no no I mean three weeks now sending the task force did not Nestle mean a war indeed the government hoped it would not the purpose of sending the task force was to increase British diplomatic leverage to get the Argentine off the islands and Margaret Thatcher shared the hope of the government that war could be avoided and at a later stage in the negotiations she personally telephoned the United Nations Secretary General and I quote from his memoirs she appealed to me to keep her boys from being killed I sense this was the woman and the mother who was speaking to me a very different picture from the firmest seemingly belligerent leader of the British government from this call I was certain that Margaret Thatcher was not as so much of the press was reporting hell-bent on war now Parliament met on the day after the invasion was a Saturday the first time Palme had met on a Saturday Suey's recently as you know it's metanor Saturday to consider David Cameron's negotiations with the European Union the opposition leader Michel thought was as angry as Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives he said there is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of that sort it is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and will built their whole lives on the basis of association with country they have been betrayed the responsibility for that betrayal rests with the government the government must now prove by deeds they will never be able to do it by words but they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge the only party which voted against the task force was plied cumbria the Welsh national party but the position of near unanimity was misleading because as the task force came nearer to the South Atlantic and it became clear there might be fighting some in the labour party were to urge further negotiations and on an adjournment debate and the 20th of May before serious fighting had begun 33 backbenchers led by Tony Benn and Tam DL voted against the government and there was certainly a view amongst many MPs that the task force would fail and the islands could not been recaptured but the main dissent came curiously enough at the beginning at least from conservative MPs though it was expressed in private and the Conservatives were certainly not as united as they appeared part of the reason for that was that Margaret Thatcher had many opponents enemies almost in the Conservative Party the so-called wets who were opposed to her economic policy in particular and her parliamentary private secretary reported to Margaret Thatcher on a party meeting that the in Gilmer had been sacked from the government the year before said we are making a big mistake it will make Suez look like common sense Stephen doral future health secretary was apparently a very wobbly with only support the fleet is negotiating ploy if they will not negotiate we should withdraw kenneth baker's diaries show that Norman Lamont who would junior minister at the Department of Energy at the time said we have gone out of our collective mind and Nicholas Ridley said she is mad and will have to go in his Diaries Alan Clark comments the following he said it is only on occasions such as this but the implacable hatred in which certain established figures hold a prime minister can be detected they oppose government policy whatever it is they would oppose free Campari sodas for the middle classes if they thought the lady was in favor they are within an ace they think of bringing her government down if by some miracle the expedition succeeds they know and dread that she will be established forever as a national hero which is roughly what happened so regardless of the country's interest they are determined the expedition will not succeed the greater the humiliation of its failure the more certain will be the downfall of the ladies government now Margaret Thatcher significantly said about the aim of the government it is the government's objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and our return to British administration at the earliest possible moment she did not use the word sovereignty she was already beginning to make concessions now on the Monday after the House of Commons debate Lord Carrington and the other Foreign Office ministers resigned from the government the other Foreign Office minister involved with Latin American affairs the defense secretary John naught also offered his resignation in some ways he was more culpable that was refused because that would implicate Margaret Thatcher who had pressed for the removal of endurance against the wishes of the Foreign Office the new Foreign Secretary was Francis Pym he'd won a Military Cross in the war and perhaps for that very reason was very disinclined to go to war he knew what wars like he was a former chief whip and their thought was thought he would understand the House of Commons but he was a wet in economic terms opposed to market Thatcher's economic policy and the chemistry between him and Margaret Thatcher was poor he'd been removed from the Department of Defence in January 1981 and replaced with John not precisely because he'd resisted the cuts in defense spending which Margaret Thatcher was determined to make and his task was to utilize the force of diplomacy to try and prevent war and at first diplomacy seemed to promise success the United Nations condemned Argentine Security Council resolution condemned the resort to force and required Argentina immediately to withdraw her troops and in go she ate a settlement but did not require a return to the status quo ante there was no chance of getting UN support for that because the UN regarded the Falklands as an element of colonialism still this was a start now the Americans were cross pressured most South American countries supported Argentina precisely because they saw the Falklands as an example of colonialism and America didn't want to lose the friendship of the South American countries in their battle against the Soviet Union and communism but after a short period of hesitation America back Britain and the American Secretary of State Alexander Haig said we will never do another Suez on you and neither record shows the Americans had told the Argentine foreign minister that they would back Britain if Argentina invaded but the Foreign Minister told the Argentine dictator that the Americans would remain neutral whether he had not heard and misinterpreted and misunderstood or deceived is not clear but the American said if they would support Britain in order to convince Congress and public opinion they must use diplomatic channels before resorting to force and there are a number of compromise solutions proposed the first was that the Organization of American States would get the Argentine out of the Falklands and they're then being in remixed administration on the islands while a settlement was negotiated Margaret Thatcher was hostile to that but Francis Pym appeared sympathetic and Margaret Thatcher asked her to listen to what Alexander Haig was saying Margaret Thatcher said the good Lord did not put me on this planet so that I could allow British citizens to be placed under the heel of Argentine dictators and Hague noted - a colleague poor old Pym he's not long for this world and and indeed Pym must be sacked immediately after general election 1983 but all this is I think misleading Margaret Thatcher was far more flexible and cautious than she appeared she appreciated that to win over the Americans she had to appear flexible she was prepared to make substantial concessions she prepared a statement to the Americans saying there can be no negotiation about the future status of the Falkland Islands and to the Argentine forces have withdrawn and British administration has been restored but after reflection she cropped out the words and British administration has been restored Haig the American Secretary of State said the Argentine wanted the British task force to turn back immediately an agreement was signed Margaret Thatcher said that was not possible until the Argentine withdrawal was completed but she said the task force can move more slowly and she told the Americans it might be worth making big concessions if Argentine withdrawal could be guaranteed she was very lucky that the Argentine threw out were thoroughly inflexible and said there must be recognition of Argentinian sovereignty before we draw and they told the Americans they should press for the decolonization of the islands on the grounds of the United Nations declaration Margaret Thatcher nevertheless continued to negotiate and contrary to myth I don't think there was as great difference between her her foreign secretary has seen the case she was not as rigid as painted the Argentinians could have had a settlement faithful to them which I think would in practice have rewarded them for using force at one point Francis him brought proposal from the Americans which the American Secretary of State later admitted involved a camouflage transfer of sovereignty Pym recommended acceptance and Pym said if you want to avoid a war that's the price he would have to pay Margaret Thatcher said this was conditional surrender Denis Thatcher put it more dramatically he said let him off the hook and it's going to happen again Margaret Thatcher said she would resign if the War Cabinet agreed the problem was resolved by saying the proposal should be put to the Argentine which predictably rejected them on the 25th of April South Georgia was recaptured and this was announced by the Defense Secretary John not and Margaret Thatcher made her famous remarks which are often misquoted as rejoice rejoice accompanied by the defense secretary mister not ladies and gentlemen the Secretary of State for Defence has just come over to give me some very good news and I think you'd like to have it at once the message we've got is that British troops landed on South Georgia this afternoon shortly after 4:00 p.m. London time they have now successfully taken control of grid vika at about 6:00 p.m. London time the white flag was hoisted in Griffin beside the Argentine flag and shortly afterwards the Argentine forces they are surrendered to British forces the Argentine forces offered only limited resistance to the British troops our forces were landed by helicopter and were supported by a number of warships together with a Royal Fleet Auxiliary during the first phase of this operation our own helicopters engaged the Argentine submarine SantaFe off South Georgia this submarine was detected at first light and was engaged because it posed a threat to our men and to the British warships launching the landing so far no British casualties have been reported at present we have no information on the Argentine casualty position the commander of the operation has sent the following message be pleased to inform her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia god save the queen what happens that was another thank you very much you're really cert that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines are we good night beautiful fecha Margaret Thatcher said just rejoiced at the news and congratulate our forces and the Marines and later she said rejoice she was quoted as saying rejoice rejoice in a tram police manner and in the 1983 election Denis Healey accused the basis of those comments of glorying in slaughter in fact South Georgia was recaptured without any loss of life on either side and that Margaret Thatcher believed was worth rejoicing about now at that point she said if the Argentinians agreed to cease hostilities and withdraw the troops negotiations could take place but again the Argentinians rejected that and if had they accepted I think the government would have split because the proposals were unacceptable to some in the government but there was now no alternative so it seemed to Force and the US was coming more and more on the British side on the 2nd of May the British commander noticed an Argentine Cruiser HMS Belgrano which was accompanied by destroyers carry Exocet missiles it was outside the exclusion zone which Britain had laid down and was cruising away from it nevertheless the commander on the spot thought it was a threat to British aircraft carriers and then under Article 51 of the UN Charter which gave a country the right self-defense it would be legal to attack it and when he told the Chiefs of Staff in London they agreed to that and the War Cabinet agreed the Belgrano was bombed and sank and it was assumed that destroyers accompanying the cruiser pick up the survivors but the destroyers fled from the scene and left the sailors to drown and 300 were drowned the commander on the spot also wanted to attack the Destroyers accompanying Belgrano because they had missiles but the government was told this would not be legal under Article 51 and therefore the War Cabinet said that those destroyers could not be attacked the commander of the task force was very annoyed at that he said that it put British troops in danger but nevertheless the British government accepted that legal advice now militarily the Belgrano was a success its effect was 240 Argentine Navy back into port for fear of further attack diplomatically it was not a success there was a hugely unfavorable international reaction and people demanded that negotiations be resumed and domestic critics of the government said the Belgrano had been sunk deliberately to scupper a new peace proposal which had come from the Peruvian government trouble is the War Cabinet were not aware of this proposal when the decision to sink the Belgrano was made so I think that is implausible in any case the effect of El Belgrano in Britain was not to scoop up peace plans but to push the government into further concessions to meet a hostile international opinion and Francis Pym told the Commons that in the end there must be a negotiated settlement the sooner it comes the better it will be the next day the cabinet discussed the peace plan from Peru that involved an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of forces with an interim administration to be involved in the administration of the islands that would include Britain but also a representative of the Argentine it would supervise Argentine withdrawal and negotiate a definitive agreement on the state of the islands taking into account the wishes of the Islanders but there was no mention of paramountcy and Francis Pym said that the British had an open mind on the question of sovereignty the government and this included Margaret Thatcher accepted the Peruvian peace plan involved compromising principles but she was prepared to accept it she said I fear we can't get wishes of people and self-determination but still worth it so she was willing to accept it and she said it was wrong to say the cabinet was divided and therefore I think far from being the Iron Lady of legend she was prepared to make very significant compromises she was saved again by the argentinian rejection and alexander haig the american secretary of state said in despair they were a gang of bandits down there they were rejecting what seemed to him very reasonable proposal the Argentinians used a sinking of the Belgrano as the reason for the rejection and the John take issued a statement saying the Argentine government will not in the face of this military pressure that said any negotiations relating to peace in the South Atlantic in these circumstances we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees so you may argue that Britain seeking the Belgrano was not intended to scupper the Peruvian peace plan but it had that effect by persuading the Argentinians to reject them we will never know whether that was a reason or the excuse my view is it was the excuse because the Argentinians had been so inflexible before it was unlikely they would suddenly become flexible but it may be that they would have done but what they decided to do was to take their case to the United Nations where they thought they had stronger support on the grounds of colonialism and on the 16th of May Britain made her final offer to the United Nations on a take-it-or-leave-it basis which the Argentinian saw as an ultimatum but this final offer involved great concessions ceasefire an interim administration in the Falklands to supervise mutual withdraw and the UN to govern the island with the representative the Islanders while talks took place there was no reference to self-determination of the Islanders and future talks on sovereignty were to occur without preconditions and these negotiations to be conducted by the United Nations now before she agreed to this the British ambassador to the United Nations Anthony Parsons said to her do you realize what the whole thing amounts to in terms of concessions which take us a long way from our original negotiating position you are content with what I'm taking back and she said yes I am content I understand the full implications of it you go ahead and do your stuff and I think if the Argentine had accepted it it would have been very difficult to defend it in the House of Commons because it would have taken away in effect the right of the Islanders to self-determination and they all have been ruled for some of the time at least by someone other than the governor appointed by Britain the substance of sovereignty that is the right to have troops on one's territory and control its administration was being abandoned by the government and a un administrator was to be sent instead now the UN Authority in the Falklands offered Argentina a good chance of gaining sovereignty and certainly there was a reality of a non British administration in the islands for foreseeable period had these proposals been available to Argentine before the invasion it almost certainly would not have taken place so a critic would say and this is what Tony Benn did say you were now fighting a war for islands which Britain had neglected and at times had sought to abandon and was now in effect prepared to abandon been said Britain should hand over the Falklands to the United Nations and then step up sanctions on Argentina so as to bring the dictatorship down but again Britain was saved by the Argentine which rejected the UN proposals as well this was a seventh set of peace proposals the Argentine had rejected from all and let's point on Margaret Thatcher was indeed intransigent not prepared to make any further compromises troops for now landing in the Falklands interim administration or mutual withdraw were no longer realistic and Britain understandably wanted a military victory the achievement of the task force a great logistical achievement so far away from Britain and on June the 15th the Argentine surrendered Margaret Thatcher celebrated her deputy will in white cloth said I don't think anyone else but you could have done it then his Thatcher said more prosaically well done have a drink the junta in the Argentine fell shortly afterwards and was replaced by a democratic government but did the war really resolve the problem the Falklands indeed from one point of view it made it rather more difficult resolved when Jeremy Corbyn recently became leader of the Labour Party the Argentine ambassador to Britain told her government that he was and I quote one of ours and Jeremy Corbyn called for reasonable accommodation with Argentine he said it seems to me ridiculous that in the 21st century we will be getting into some enormous conflict with Argentine about some islands just off it now what might have been realistic before the invasion was clearly not realistic after it whereas before the invasion Britain had been prepared in practices to discuss sovereignty it couldn't do so anymore you couldn't now negotiate with Argentina on leaseback or any other arrangement and the Islanders were strengthened in their determination not to surrender sovereignty referendum was held in 2013 on a 92 percent turnout 99.8% decided the Falklands should remain a British overseas territory just three Islanders were in favor of joining Argentine and after the war the airfield was built extended rather at a cost of 319 million pounds and a small naval and military garrison was sent there roughly between twenty and thirty thousand pounds a year is spent on every Islander by Britain every year now during the conflict one he columnist close to Margaret Thatcher Allen Walters who will hear a lot over the next lecture about the Exchange Rate Mechanism where Margaret Thatcher agreed with him on this she didn't agree with him because he said you should offer the Islanders 50,000 pounds ahead to return or go away and nothing for continued British rules a Margaret Thatcher said that was the rat's way out she wasn't having that and the populations now increased to over 3,000 partners result of the war but the irony is if Gina had not invaded the population might have fallen below the 1500 which would have made it unviable and the governor had predicted in 1976 that they would then have been euthanasia through generous compensation now Argentina still maintains her claim and it strengthens it's now believed there may be oil around the islands and in 2012 but then president of the Argentine Cristina Kirchner persuaded her neighbors in Latin America to ban shipping bearing the Falklands flag from entering the ports she also threatened to ban aircraft bound for the Falklands from entering Argentinian national airspace it's not clear to me that the British military presence is strong enough to deter a future invasion nor that we could be fortunate enough to recover the islands if there were to be a future invasion now I found lots of the domestic political consequences in a sense the war was irrelevant to Britain's domestic problems tickly economic problems and also the main elements of her foreign policy particularly relationship with Europe but from another point of view it seemed to show that strong leadership could reverse what had seemed since Suez an irreversible path of decline indeed it was the first major foreign policy success in Suez and perhaps the Falklands spirit could be used to transform the economy as well at least that's what Margaret Thatcher thought thought in the House of Commons in the middle of the war she told Parliament quoting from Shakespeare's King John naught shall make us rule in England to herself to rest but truth the Scottish Nationalist MP objected to the reference to England Margaret Thatcher replied rather tartly I am sorry if by quoting Shakespeare I have caused offense at a Conservative Party rally on the 3rd of July out of the victory she attacked the fact what she called the faint hearts and she linked the Falklands with economic troubles at home she said 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 8,000 miles away the lesson of the functions is that Britain has not changed and this nation still has those sterling qualities which shines throughout our history by chance shortly afterwards a rail strike was called off in London and one observer said it was an astonishing thing to witness the fortunes of a whole country transformed in the space of a few days by a single decisive intervention which does oversimplify now played in the fate of the country was not at stake in the Falklands but the fate of the government and the Conservative Party was and there's an argument about whether it helped Margaret Thatcher win the 1983 general election the Conservatives were already beginning to improve in the polls before the Falkland war began because inflation was falling and on the 2nd of April the very day of the invasion the Conservatives took the lead in the polls for the first time in a year their economic policy was popular despite the rise in unemployment because the unemployed tended not to vote and tended to live in safe labour constituencies so they weren't electorally significant befallen inflation was more important electorally and the right to buy policy was also popular and the fall in income tax and the weakening in the power of the trade unions and it seems to me that something fundamental had happened in British politics and this was best summed up by a guru of the left the Marxist Eric Hobsbawm who said this the war had mobilized a public sentiment which could actually be felt and he said in any one of the left who was not aware of this grassroots feeling or seriously to reconsider his or her capacity to assess politics and I end with the two paradoxes the first the one with which I began the lecture for the serious diplomatic failure and a national humiliation led to a great political and military success my final paradox is a sad one success did little to resolve the basic problem of Falklands indeed it may have made it more difficult to resolve shortly after the invasion of foreign office produced a memorandum in which it said that our objective is to ensure that not only the immediate problem is resolved but that the position of the Falkland Islands is not left in a manner which requires either a costly and permanent defence commitment and which does not leave the Falklands as a source of future instability and crisis now I think it can't be said this aim has been achieved and you may argue that we are now the prisoners of our victory in the Falklands and perhaps looking at the dispute in the Falklands if you forget for a moment about the oil some of you might be tempted to agree with the great Argentinian novelist Holger Luis Borgess who said the dispute was like one between two bald men fighting over a comb you

Channel: Gresham College

Views: 115,077

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Keywords: Falkland Islands, Falkland War, Falklands War, Falkland Islanders, Falkland Islander, British Falklands, 1982, Kelpers, Falklands Conflict, Falklands Crisis, thatcher, vernon bogdanor, gresham college, british political history, margaret thatcher, bogdanor, Bogdanor lecture, Bogdanor talk, gresham lecture, political history, political history lecture, political history talk, british history, uk history, Political History Professor, gresham

Id: a9bWwF7OqLg

Length: 66min 35sec (3995 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Pytheastic]

Finally online, thanks!

[u/[deleted]]

I thought he was arguing Thatcher was indeed quite flexible. Having read a few books on the Falklands war I was surprised how far, according to Bogdanor, Thatcher felt she needed to compromise. That she had many in her government who were opposed to military action it's interesting to me thatcher appeared almost galvanised by the relatively easy success of South Georgia's "liberation." Thatcher did attempt to interrupt her enemy while they were making mistakes, yet got away with it.

Compare that to how China has taken over several disputed islands in the South China sea and the USA looks far more wary/frightened than the UK ever did. The failure of the West and its allies, and Vietnam, to stand up to China allowed China to have the dominant upper hand. And how they have used it.

Whether the Falklands war is useful as a comparison over the South China sea issues is evidently debatable but I have the uneasy feeling a coalition of the affected parties could really have dented China's ambitions here.

Discussing the nature of path determinism regards diplomatic norms, behavioural norms, dealing with the international community, the role of the USA and Latin America makes for compelling instruction on how much variability and where that variability lies - and it still may make no difference whatsoever to perceived goals.

Do you people think the actions of Thatcher and the nature of diplomacy are too particular to draw generalisations therefrom?