In 1982 Margaret Thatcher was under heavy attack from all sides: one of her best allies, Norman Tebbit, had it right when he said that he bore the scars of many wounds, mainly in his back. Then came an extraordinary episode, bringing modern themes together, including that of military dictatorship in Latin America. There was one such, a junta, in Argentina, the modern history of which had been one of squandered opportunities. Far from copying Pinochet, the military in Buenos Aires regarded him as a poor cousin, and cast about for ways to gain cheap popularity. A national cause of sorts existed, in a remaining British colony, the Falkland Islands, a few hundred miles from their coast. Take it over by force; the British would simply be grateful that some forlorn colonial outpost, which cost the taxpayer money, would be taken off the expense list. Relations between Argentinians and British were good; casual conversations showed that no-one in London cared about the Falklands one way or the other. Besides, British defence policy was a mess. In the later 1970s naval pay was so low that sailors had to moonlight. In 1980 there was a moratorium on defence contracts; there was absolute resistance to aircraft carriers and no-one would pay for the Falklands. On the other hand, Argentinian regimes were generally so awful that the Falklands lobbyists did not have any trouble in convincing the Left of their cause. However, the Argentinians misunderstood. They assumed that they would have American support or at least understanding. After all, the USA had become heavily involved in Central America, where Argentina’s support was needed: there was semi-clandestine military co-operation, the Americans supplying training and weaponry. In this atmosphere, taking the Falklands seemed to make sense. The American ambassadress at the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, was assumed to be influential, and she had written what was thought to be an important article — saying that the USA should tolerate lesser, banana republic authoritarian regimes.
In December 1981 a General Leopoldo Galtieri seized the dominant role in the Buenos Aires military junta, and he appeared as the ultimate in comic, circus-uniformed rulers, an ‘El Supremo’ out of Hornblower. In March 1982 he tested the waters: his troops landed on South Georgia, a remote, frozen place from which the British had conducted surveys of the Antarctic. Then, on 2 April, he invaded the Falklands. In London there was disbelief: a senior Foreign Office man caught the mood when he gasped, they cannot treat a major power in this way. Parliament was specially recalled, and was in boiling mood, a mood that even affected the left-wing Labour leader, Michael Foot. The navy was full of fight, and of course anxious to show that surface ships were still needed. Sir Henry Leach, First Sea Lord, had the qualities to persuade Margaret Thatcher that a naval force could and should be sent; he called the reductions in naval spending ‘the greatest con-trick of the century’. He also much admired Margaret Thatcher’s decisiveness and remarked, accurately, that if nothing had been done ‘we would have woken up in a different country’. She herself liked military men, whereas she tended to dismiss diplomats; she now took a great gamble. She would fight, guessing that she would have American support where needed. This was correct, and state-of-the-art Sidewinder missiles forced the Argentinian aircraft to fly low, such that many of their bombs did not explode, because the fuses had been mistimed. A British expeditionary force was put together with speed and efficiency, and embarked for a campaign, 8,000 miles away.
The fact was that British opinion had now divided, with, on the whole, educated people questioning the whole venture and, on the whole, uneducated people cheering on what the popular press called ‘our boys’. On the face of things, this was, as a German book’s title ran, ‘the absurd war’ — the last of the Royal Navy, embarking on a voyage of 8,000 miles for a nearly valueless set of islands, the inhabitants of which could, with a fraction of the cost, and greatly to their advantage, be resettled on one of the not dissimilar Scottish Hebrides. However, the Argentinian junta behaved with grotesque obstinacy, refusing American mediation, and waving aside even Latin American efforts. A proposal was made for the British ships to stop a thousand miles from the Falklands, and that was ignored (it was, in any event, unreal). An elderly battleship, the Belgrano, was first directed towards the islands, and then away from them; it was sunk on 2 May; 368 sailors drowned. Later, a great fuss was made, to the effect that it had been sunk so that Margaret Thatcher could simply ignore further attempts at mediation. Not many people believed these assertions at the time, and no-one does now. It is clear that the junta were in no mood to offer any concessions, even to common sense. War was war, and developed its own momentum, beyond the helicopter accidents hitherto seen. Two days later Sheffield was struck by an Exocet, twenty-one lives being lost. It was an old ship, with too much aluminium, and chaff, to distract the missile, was not used because the ship was broadcasting, and there were other near disasters, but, with both patience and determination, the Prime Minister was showing the generals and admirals, says Hugo Young, ‘every quality they least expected in a politician’. She also needed luck: there were large and vulnerable ships at stake, including, with some symbolism, the Queen Elizabeth II, which had been constructed in a conscious recall of the great days of Atlantic shipping. But morale was high, and the operation was professionally conducted.
On 25 April the British retook South Georgia, along with a particularly vicious Argentinian officer. The Chileans gave considerable help as well, in radar intelligence and efforts to divert Argentinian strength. The Argentinians’ chief weapon, the French-made Exocets, proved to be less deadly and accurate than expected — on three occasions they did not explode, and the Argentinian pilots were operating at the extreme end of their fuel range, so that they could not manoeuvre easily. In any case the French gave covert help to the British. On 21 May came the landings, and the shivering Argentinian conscripts were no match for professional soldiers; after three weeks, on 14 June, they surrendered, as a celebrated British journalist, Max Hastings, spear-headed the advance into Port Stanley by marching into the local pub and ordering a beer. Margaret Thatcher’s gamble had succeeded, and as her biographer writes, ‘it was an event of stunning political impact all over the world’. Quite accurately, she said, ‘we have ceased to be a nation in retreat’. The junta in Buenos Aires fell, its victims liberated in great numbers. After Margaret Thatcher’s loss of office, there was a gathering of representatives of peoples in whose liberation she had had a hand — central Europeans, Slavs, for the greater part, who each sang a national song. She was very touched and grateful when a representative also came from Argentina. She herself of course shot up in popularity at all measure: why was ‘that woman’ getting away with successes that had escaped her supposed betters? In Scotland the Secretary of State thought that it was all like a ‘Nuremberg rally’ of vulgar triumphant nationalism, and a particularly lugubrious Foreign Secretary remarked that instead of having a cavalry officer, they had ‘a corporal’. Visits by Pope John Paul II and Reagan, within weeks, became part of the picture. As she told an interviewer, rightly, ‘there was a feeling of colossal pride, of relief that we could still do the things for which we were renowned’. But in some ways it marked the high point of the Thatcher period: a courageous budget was associated with economic recovery, and the Falklands campaign with a great sea-change in international affairs.