Iron Britannia

by Anthony Barnett

  The Foreign Office in fact conducted a remarkably successful, long-term strategy across changing administrations to persuade the islanders to come to a modus vivendi with Argentina. Since 1968 relations with the mainland had been improved deliberately. In 1980, Ridley (Eton and Balliol, but by no means a wet) argued that the time had come precisely to be tough with the islanders. But Thatcher over-ruled him (gave him a ‘mauling’).19 It appears that she did not want to ‘lose’ the islands and, if the Economist account is correct, her intervention frustrated exactly the kind of ‘ruthless softness’ Pearce suggests would have worked. Nonetheless, the British continued to negotiate with Argentina even when it was in fact doing so in bad faith. Carrington told the Lords on 3 April that negotiations with an Argentinian representative in New York on 27 February 1982, ‘seemed to have reached agreement on a satisfactory basis for further negotiations’. A message had come from him to which Carrington was ‘preparing a reply’. Could it have been that its composition was proving difficult?

  For it transpires that at the beginning of February Thatcher personally signed a letter to a Tory activist to reassure her that the withdrawal of the Endurance from patrol off the Falklands would not place the islands at risk. Furthermore, she wrote, ‘The wishes of the Falkland Islanders are paramount. The Government has no intention of entering into a solution to the dispute with Argentina which is not acceptable to the islanders and to Parliament.’20 Had this been so bluntly put to the Argentinian negotiators in New York, it seems most unlikely that they would have felt a satisfactory basis for further talks had been achieved. There seems, then, to have been a contradiction between the UK’s actual and diplomatic positions, one due not to the wetness of the Foreign Office or to the toughness of Thatcher but to the imposition of the latter on the former. This was then multiplied by a further twist. Two weeks before the invasion, Carrington asked for a submarine to be sent to the Falklands and a Cabinet committee chaired by Thatcher rejected the proposal, at least according to a report in the Observer.21 Thatcher’s determination to cut back on expenditure meant that she was unwilling to wield the stick, even though her policy on the Falklands was intransigent. If this sequence of events is approximately accurate, it is not surprising that Thatcher fears the outcome of the Franks’ inquiry, which is now investigating the circumstances of Argentina’s invasion.

  Indeed, she attempted to displace attention away from her own administration by proposing an inquiry into the previous twenty years. An angry intervention by Heath prevented this, when he attacked Thatcher for wanting to ‘rummage’ through his government’s papers to keep the limelight away from her own.22 Heath’s outburst must also have been motivated by frustration. For he had earlier suggested that Argentina should be left ‘a way out’, only to be shouted down by Thatcherite Falkland warriors on the Conservative benches. Now that she had scored her victory, Heath’s own prospects for an influential role as elder statesman in the Party seemed definitely blighted.

  A phenomenon like Thatcherism is defined and shaped by those who oppose it in the present as much as by its relationship with the past. Thatcher seems to regard the Social Democrats under Roy Jenkins as her most dangerous opponents. It is they who seek to fulfil the task projected by Edward Heath: the SDP is that lost tribe of British politics, a bourgeois political party. The two major planks of SDP policy, a genuine attachment to Europe (which none of the others share) and a commitment to proportional representation, are both signs of this. The latter especially, should it become reality, will break the grip of the first-past-the-post system of Parliamentary election, and thereby crack the hold of the present incumbents. Nonetheless, despite its assault on the ‘old system’, the SDP is ambivalent in its basic attitudes. Although the most ‘realistic’ contender for power, it remains at one and the same time the most radical and the most conservative party.

  The conservative element is obvious enough, in effect it seeks a coalition of the centre. In the 1950s, the word ‘Butskellism’ stood for the social and economic policies of two successive Labour and Conservative Chancellors, Gaitskell and Butler, each of whom sought to become, and nearly became, Prime Minister. The SDP seeks to put a Butskellite Premier finally into office. The majority of the SDP MPs (almost all of them defectors from the Labour benches) come from this stable and its opportunist variations. For them, the Party’s slogan of ‘breaking the mould’ is merely a neat item of campaign rhetoric, a way of cashing in on the electorate’s desire for the new, in order to preserve their parliamentary seats, the old fix-it consensus politics and Britain itself, from the influence of ‘the extremists of left and right’. The shock of the Falklands crisis for this predominantly Parliamentary wing of the SDP was considerable. After a year of stunning by-election successes, in which at one point their support in the polls had touched 50% of the electorate, they lost two successive by-elections and their local election results were appalling: their apparently invincible record had been stymied by the mould itself breaking all records. How could a party which in alliance with the Liberals promised a new national consensus fare anything but badly when an all-party national consensus had hauled up the Union Jack?

  Another wing of the SDP really does want radical change: it seeks a genuine modernization of Britain politically, its attachment to Europe is cultural as well as commercial. This tendency within the SDP offered the best mainstream criticism of the war. In the Financial Times (6 May), Samuel Brittain, a monetarist of SDP leaning, wrote a fine piece after the sinking of the Belgrano, titled ‘Stop the Killing Straightaway’. The Guardian’s regular columnist Peter Jenkins was easily the most consistent and hard-hitting critic of the Armada and its effects on Britain’s international and domestic politics, and condemned the enterprise from the outset. Anthony Sampson expressed cautious scepticism in Newsweek (7 June). The London Review of Books (which has endorsed the SDP) published Dalyell and also Raymond Williams against the war. It was significant, however, that the London Review of Books had to turn to a Labour MP and a socialist writer, rather than to any of the SDP members in the House of Commons. There, the gung-ho Dr Owen was deemed to have had a ‘good war’ and to have emerged as a credible leader of the new party. He stood against Jenkins in the first SDP leadership ballot and with significant press support gained 40% of the vote.

  Today there is talk of a possible early election in which Thatcher could cash in her gains over the Falklands. The future of the islands themselves could then become an issue between the Prime Minister and the SDP, and if her own position proves the more popular, Britain might become the prisoner of her ‘Iron Will’ internationally. The question is whether Argentina should have anything more to do with the Falklands, as if this were a matter for the UK to decide. At the beginning of June, as British troops were poised for their by then inevitable victory, Thatcher was pressed about American desires for a show of some ‘magnanimity’. She bristled at the idea. Dismissing any future for Argentina on the islands, she declared that the islanders ‘have been loyal to us, we must be loyal to them’, and stated that anything less than this would mean ‘treachery and betrayal of our own people’. At the same time a convenient new theme came into prominence from the ‘front line’ itself. Max Hastings of the Express group wrote (2 June), ‘I think that the only outcome of the war which would cause great bitterness among those who are righting is any peace that gives Argentina a share in governing the Falklands after we have won’. Thatcher’s attitude, with its witch-hunting mentality, its innuendo, its lack of proportion and its presumption that she could define treason to her own liking, came under attack from Peter Jenkins.23 Meanwhile in The Times (4 June), Roy Jenkins had insisted that ‘a negotiated settlement is essential after victory … the fact is that we cannot guarantee both the long-term military security and economic viability of the Falklands’. One feels like saying, ‘Now he tells us!’24 Jenkins was shrewd enough to meet the key arguments against Thatcher. British blood could not determine subsequent policy or ‘British valour w
ould become the enemy of British interest’. The phrase demonstrated fine literary craftsmanship and should be inscribed in the pocketbook of every soldier. He also proceeded to assail the born-again Churchillians of the Falkland episode: to suggest that it ‘amounts to a national regeneration comparable to 1940 … shows a pathetic lack of proportion’. It was as if the debate was taking place across the globe, for Hastings filed a report four days later in which he quoted a colour-sergeant, ‘If a place is worth dying for, it’s got to be worth keeping’. His paper endorsed the attitude in an editorial: the Express (8 June) came out for a ‘Fortress Falklands’ under the UK’s perpetual sovereignty.

  On its own terms this argument will have a bearing on future relations with the United States, as Washington seeks to mend relations with Argentina that were damaged by its support for Thatcher in the Falklands. The domestic repercussions may be greater, however. In politics, especially in British politics today, nothing is certain. But Thatcher’s unilateral arbitration of British destiny in the South Atlantic for her own political ends threatens to bring a new melody into the UK. Foreign issues have long played a crucial role in domestic affairs, since the battle over Irish Home Rule a century ago. Often these issues crystalize existing divisions and rebound onto the electorate at second hand. A good example of this was when Gaitskell imposed teeth and spectacle charges in April 1951 in a budget designed to meet expenditures entailed by British participation in the Korean war. Bevan resigned in protest and the Labour Party was split, which contributed to its electoral defeat later in the year. However, despite the role that such disputes over international relations have played, in electoral terms there has been a bi-partisan consensus on foreign policy since 1940, with the sole exception of Suez. From the American alliance to the Common Market, the nature of inter-party debate could be summed up by Eden’s phrase about his attitude towards Bevin’s conduct as Minister for Foreign Affairs after 1945: ‘I would publically have agreed with him more, if I had not been anxious to embarrass him less.’25

  What if Thatcher challenges the other parties on their attitude towards the Falklands, as an election issue? For the Financial Times (16 June), a permanent garrison on the islands is a foolish ‘grandiose, imperial gesture’. Likewise for Jenkins and the SDP. Neither the Social Democrats nor Labour will feel comfortable if Thatcher attempts to garner the imperial sentiments excited by her victory in the Falklands war. Not only has her resolution in the South Atlantic apparently confirmed her domination over the Conservative ‘wets’, it now threatens to polarize electoral politics through 1983. ‘Little Englandism’ was successfully stifled by the political operators at Westminster when such sentiments threatened to block entry into the Common Market. But now, ‘Great Britishness’ might be released by the Falklands in such a way that it cannot be rebottled. The subjects of the Crown have never yet been allowed to decide the geopolitical destiny of the British Isles, but Thatcherism may be poised to break this ordinance, just as it appealed successfully over the heads of the ‘grandees’ to the ranks of Tory opinion.

  The left will be especially tested if Parliamentary nationalism comes to the fore electorally. There is no need to stress the distinctiveness of Tony Benn. Himself a modernizing socialist radicalized by high Cabinet office, he has become the spokesman for a Labour rank and file who have also rejected the miseries of Labour policies in office. They desire a socialist programme at once committed and accountable. Although this has yet to gain any popular approval, Bennism originally had a different source of attraction. It spoke against the EEC. After 1970, Benn’s resistance to British affiiliation helped Labour to appear, during the Heath years, as the more ‘national’ of the two parties. Subsequently, the Bennite programme of economic nationalism, protective tariffs, exit from the EEC, made it a dangerous if still improbable national alternative. Now Thatcher has trumped the left on the national question, as she has run up the Union Jack over monetarism, unemployment and the free export of capital. Those who warned that should Labour ever take the UK out of the EEC, it would lead to a triumph for the Right, seem to be vindicated.26 The Tories have demonstrated that they can build a nationalist alliance across class, region and party, with virtuoso speed and panache. Just as Foot found his endorsement of the Task Force taken from him by Thatcher with a gusto he could never match, so Benn, or just as likely a Labour rightist like Peter Shore, would find themselves trumped by Powellism, should they begin to sever London’s relations with Brussels.

  The scenario may be implausible, but the argument is crucial. In a recent issue of Tribune (11 June) towards the end of the Falklands campaign, its editor explained why all socialists should join the Labour Party: ‘The truth is that Labour has everything to gain from adopting a radical programme. For months every opinion poll has been telling us that public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile to the Common Market and the American bomb.’ Note well, not the British bomb. The public’s attitude is veritably isolationist. Thatcher has drawn on these same sentiments to garner support for her Falklands War. Indeed much of the Left lined up behind her, and if this company did not include the editor of Tribune who denounced the ‘Falklands madness’, nonetheless he has still not seen quite how large is the writing on the wall. Benn’s opposition to the Armada however, has given him a new profile. By discarding his greatest apparent asset—nationalism—the opportunism of much of his public image has been transformed into courage. By saying that the fleet should be turned back, without any argument as to the ‘rightfulness’ of its objectives, Benn seems to have come across as practical and understandable and no more unpopular. At last the Left may now have broken from its Churchillist impress and if this can be made good it could well mark not a ‘historic compromise’ but a historic breakthrough.

  In the wake of her Falklands triumph and her stirring speeches in celebration of the ‘spirit of the South Atlantic’, Thatcher’s politics have taken on a clearer and more definable outline. Her monetarism was always a bit of a puzzle because the Conservative party dislikes ideologists of any kind. How did she manage to appear unideological herself and avoid the Party’s hostility in this regard, while remaining so attached to her ‘principles’? The answer, we can now see, is that Thatcher is not an ideologist in the proper sense. She is not deeply wedded to new ideas or even old ones; her ideal has been to remain ‘true’ to the past and to its supposedly simple values. By firming up traditional Tory suspicion of theory, she has made an ‘ideology’ of the prejudice against ideology itself, in particular against the ideas of the wartime consensus. Thatcher’s rejoicing in military victory as the beginning of the Great British renaissance reveals, then, an almost uncontrolled nostalgia. She doesn’t display a realistic commitment to ‘cut the country’s cloth to fit’, to use the language she reserves for the working class. Rather, she is cutting the country to fit her costume.

  The feebleness of her actual programme of renewal as it appears today is matched by the ruthlessness of her dedication to the destruction of many of the gains that have been made in Britain since the war, both economically and in the quality of life. Yet the double irrationality of Thatcherism should not lead us to presume that it will lack continued popularity. The failure of Churchillism to provide either a right-wing, a left-wing or a centrist formation capable of directing a sustained modernization, has led to the rise of Thatcher. Her standpoint is the past’s vision of the past. From it she has delivered her terrible rebuke to the failures of the present. Nonetheless, her strident judgements have addressed ‘real problems, real and lived experiences, real contradictions’.27 Her ‘authoritarian populism’ strikes a chord, while Foot’s Labour patriotism is ill-dressed and unconvincing. Although Thatcher’s domestic policies have ensured a degree of social and economic fear amongst the working classes unequalled since 1945, she has also managed to address directly some of the aspirations and beliefs which the electorate hold. The Labour Party leaders, by contrast, seem so bowed down by their years of ‘responsible’ government, that while th
ey may speak more ‘sense’, they give the impression that they address only the managers, civil servants and owners while having abandoned any attempt to win popular assent to their own programme. It does not follow that Labour cannot win an election in the future. Its leaders appear to be banking on a reprieve that comes from mass repugnance at the costs of Thatcher’s policies. But whether or not this proves a successful calculation, it has been motivated in good part by the Labour leadership’s inability and unwillingness to generate positive support—starting within its own party—for the policies and solutions it offers.

  This brings us to the question of the ‘rationality’ of Thatcherism. To what extent are her policies intelligent ones for the British state, and to what degree is she really the prisoner of its decline rather than the inspirer of its liberation? Alan Freeman, for example, has criticised Benn’s rhetoric that the UK is becoming like a Third World country, a semi-developed colony of multi-national capitalism. On the contrary, Freeman asserts that Britain holds overseas assets of $84 billion. It remains the second greatest power in terms of global investment and has the West’s second largest overseas military as well. The cost of these two commitments are the key cause of the British decline, in his view.28 Yet they are also, it seems, the expression of its strength. Presumably the combination is a vicious one. As the decline continues, the relative influence of the military, the City and multinational interests grows vis à vis the domestic economy and society. Thatcherism could be seen as the expression of this tendency to reduce the British Isles themselves into a Task Force: its non-redundant population conscripted and its working industry requisitioned for the overseas adventures of its masters.