But this is a little unfair to Franks. It is clear the committee turned over a great deal of evidence and came up with at least some of the answers. The report did, for instance, note that the FCO and the JIC should have put more reliance on the possibility of a sudden, early invasion. It was also pointed out that Lord Carrington and his colleagues on the cabinet Defence Committee should not have handed over the initiative to the Argentines after September, 1981, by virtually giving up trying to sell both the British Parliament and the Islanders the ‘solution’ of ceding sovereignty and lease back. Perhaps the most striking criticisms were that the Defence Committee should have considered the Falkland Islands question during the winter of 1981/2 instead of postponing discussion for six months, and that a nuclear submarine should have been dispatched to the South Atlantic early in March, 1982.
From my point of view I was most pleased that Franks said the announcement that HMS Endurance was to be withdrawn was a mistake. It was vindication.
But the report also led up some blind alleys. The Argentine invasion, according to Franks, was unprovoked. That is hardly relevant. What should have been addressed was the breakdown in British diplomatic manoeuvres at the end of 1981 and the equally serious failure to act on our – and other – intelligence reports in early 1982.
We knew that Argentina would have no scruples about using force to seize the Falklands. We knew that Argentine action was always going to be based on an assessment of Britain’s commitment. Not only the withdrawal of Endurance but plans to run down the surface fleet, and the willingness of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to consider lease back were pretty unambiguous signals to the Junta.
Lord Carrington could have made an issue of submarine deployment. Perhaps he should have. But he had reason to believe that Mrs Thatcher would not support this. At one point the Prime Minister did raise the matter with Defence Secretary John Nott, but nothing was done. This was the fault of the Defence Secretary rather than the Prime Minister. He should have pressed her on the subject. Five years earlier, in a similar situation, David Owen pestered Prime Minister James Callaghan. The submarine was sent and the Argentine sabre rattling subsided. The fact that this strategy was not repeated was a further signal of appeasement from Britain.
Perhaps what is unique about the developing situation is that there should be massive activity on one side and near indifference on the other. This almost became comedy hour when on 28 March the Argentines put a large fleet, complete with a carrier group, to sea. The reaction from London? Nothing.
On 30 March, US Intelligence and Endurance had independently intercepted and passed on alarming Argentine signals to Cheltenham. The reaction? Nothing. And, appropriately enough, on 1 April when an armada was approaching the Falklands Cabinet Office Staff told a frantic FCO official to ‘get your minister off our backs about the Falklands!’
John Nott should shoulder most of the blame. He spectacularly failed in his duty to protect a sovereign British territory. Lord Carrington was more perceptive but should have made more of Fortress Falklands in September, 1981, and he should also have insisted on the despatch of a submarine in March, 1982. Mrs Thatcher cannot be exonerated either, but she had at least (in her March memorandum) demanded contingency plans. Nothing was done. And she had personally supported the decision to withdraw Endurance.
Very little of this comes across in the Franks Report. This casts doubt, not on the integrity of Franks himself, or the members of his committee, but on the integrity of all Government reports of this kind. They are simply not intended to get at the truth. Few people who might conceivably tread a path outside the establishment line are invited to give evidence. I believe I was ‘invited’ to Franks only because it would have been a greater scandal if I was not. I cannot say I was asked questions that were particularly searching or relevant.
No one has ever explained how the preparations of such a large force could have been hidden, even within a military dictatorship. The Franks Report said that ‘the Military Attaché in Buenos Aires had neither the remit nor the capacity to cover Argentine preparations of this kind, although clearly he was deeply concerned’. In my view it was almost impossible not to notice the invasion build-up. If this is the case it seriously begs the question about the remit that MI6 was given and we have no one to blame but ourselves. It was recommended in 1968/9 that the primary function of British Military attachés was the sale of British weapons and military equipment. But this did not exonerate either of the Attachés. It is, after all, their duty to keep an eye on the military activities of the countries to which they are attached.
The report also states: ‘We learned from an Argentine source that newspapers within that country were carrying articles about a possible retaking of the Falklands by force from as early as January. We also learned of this through British Embassy staff in Buenos Aires who included military attachés and an MI6 man. But from none of these sources came the information that an invasion of the Falklands by the Argentines was imminent.’
There is no doubt that the resignation of Lord Carrington drew the flack away from Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials. It was a couragous and honourable resignation, as was that of Richard Luce. Putting their necks on the block saved the careers of people like Michael Palliser, Antony Acland, John Ure and Robin Fearn, a quartet who have since been showered with honours.
Mrs Thatcher achieved her aim of course and went on to become the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century. The ‘Falklands factor’ helped to sustain her personal popularity even though a long succession of ministers were to fall by the wayside all too often in pretty seedy circumstances.
Four years after the report was published I had dinner with a member of the Franks Committee. I made the point that in my opinion the whole thing had been a whitewash. I didn’t expect him to agree.
‘I remember your evidence as if it was given yesterday, Nick,’ he said.
‘Well you didn’t publish much of it, nor did you ask many relevant questions.’
‘That’s entirely right Nick,’ he said. ‘The purpose of the enquiry was to clear the Government. That was our brief.’
‘I always thought that was the case, but it’s good to hear it from the horse’s mouth.’
It went further than that, of course. The real agenda was to create a platform for Mrs Thatcher and her ministers to win the hearts and minds of the electorate in 1983. Nothing was going to sully the image of the Iron Lady or her Government.
* * *
I remained with the ship for a month following the return to Chatham. During this time I was partly on leave in Dorset with my family and partly in Endurance for the continuing round of receptions. There were also courtesy and duty calls to be made in London.
I now had no doubt that my marriage was over but of course it is never as easy as that. There were still a great many practical matters to sort out and I was particularly keen to maintain regular contact with my children. I was now living in Winchester or London. But I also recognized this was a time bomb situation and one which I had to clarify as soon as possible.
In September Mrs Thatcher invited the Falklands Commanding Officers to dinner at Number 10. My name was not on the guest list. By coincidence, perhaps on the very same night, I was invited to speak at a Livery dinner at the Tallow Chandlers’ Hall.
Speculation about Endurance and her captain was still bubbling in the press. The mood of support was strong, particularly from Desmond Wettern of The Daily Telegraph who kept asking why Nick Barker continued to be isolated.
To set against this I recall with great gratitude a dinner for Falklands Commanding Officers given by Admiral Eberle, the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Command, in Nelson’s cabin on board the Victory. It was an excellent occasion and did much to reassure me that there were those in the Naval hierarchy who recognized the importance of the part that Endurance had played in the Conflict.
But I was also sent for by Admiral Reffell, my Flag Officer. He had written a
very polite and largely positive final report, but he also questioned my judgement. I felt that his judgement was questionable too. And even if he was right about me I could not help thinking that his errors of judgement had caused unnecessary grief and pain to a large number of families.
‘I suppose you are referring to those with whom I made friends in Argentina,’ I said, ‘and you must know that my marriage is about to break up. But can you really question my judgement in terms of our tactics during the Conflict, or even the strategic case I argued to keep Endurance in service?’
He refused to discuss the specifics that added up to my ‘errors in judgement’. I was even irritated enough to suggest that he was doing this to distance himself from the decision to axe Endurance ahead of the Franks Report and that the same view could be applied to both Admiral Staveley and Captain Kerr. I knew I’d touched the truth and would suffer for it. My biggest error of judgement was to make a point of principle.
For a few further months I was given the job of President of the Admiralty Interview Board in Portsmouth. This was for the selection of potential officers. In many ways it was a dream job and one that I hugely enjoyed. It was also an honourable sidestep which gave the still circling press vultures little more to chew on and a six-month breathing space in which my ultimate fate could be decided.
It was during this time that the Franks Report was published. Almost simultaneously a message was sent via my senior officer from Secretary of State, Michael Heseltine, instructing me not to make any comment whatsoever. The General Election was now just five months away.
One irony of this is that there is much that I could have said that the Government would heartily have approved. After the shooting started, the action taken by Admiral Lewin (Chief of Defence Staff) and Admiral Sir Henry Leach (Chief of Naval Staff) and the Prime Minister herself was commendable. Internal disagreements between organizations thrown together to do a job are par for the course; loyalty alone would have prevented me talking about these. There can be no war in history that has been fought with total concord among its commanders. In the end it is outcomes that matter and those had been generally satisfactory. And where things had gone wrong it could only be hoped that lessons would be learned.
The campaign to recapture the Falklands had in some ways been a model of what is achievable with limited resources. It had been well organized and for the most part well led. It was a monumental achievement to win a war 8,000 miles away with generally inferior numbers and certainly inferior air power. Our Harrier pilots had been faced with a Battle of Britain situation and their response had been magnificent. All this I could, and certainly would have said in public. In private I shared the concerns of those who questioned the support given to our ground troops. In part this was because Admiral Sandy Woodward was not experienced in amphibious warfare; he was essentially an extremely bright nuclear submariner.
Quite recently Simon Jenkins, later Editor of The Times, called the Franks Report a ‘very British cover up’. Like many similar reports over the years, it was merely an exercise in exonerating the Government. ‘We conclude that we could 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.’
What, in Simon Jenkins’ opinion, has ten years done to that conclusion?
It was written in the heat of victory and the authors saw no virtue in puncturing military glory. It took its evidence on Argentine motives and strategy only from the British Foreign Office. The evidence indicated ludicrously that the invasion was dreamt up by the Junta overnight, on March 30 or 31. Thus Franks was able to present it as a bolt from the blue, unpredictable and unpreventable. Seldom can such a committee have so wilfully decided to fool itself. It would not have happened without a serious breakdown in British diplomatic and military co-ordination in the latter months of 1981, followed by an equally serious failure of reactive intelligence in March, 1982. These deficiencies were aggravated by a Whitehall climate in which ministers felt unable to convey their worries frankly to Downing Street
Britain knew at the time that Argentina had no scruple about using force to seize The Falklands, and that Argentine plans to do so (dating back to the 1970s) were always based on careful assessments of Britain’s response. This assessment changed in 1981 with the withdrawal of HMS Endurance, the running down of the surface fleet, and the willingness of the Foreign Office to consider leasing the Islands from Argentina. No Argentine assessment considered that Britain would send a fleet to recapture them, nor did any British Navy plan consider such an operation in advance of the Task Force.
A Defence Ministry Paper on the subject, early in 1982, dismissed recapture as near inconceivable. When a seizure was imminent nobody in Downing Street suggested an ultimatum threatening recapture. It was not until the invasion was accomplished and the First Sea Lord volunteered his fleet did war become a serious option. The final analysis must be that Sir Henry Leach emerges as the star of the show.
The left often accused Margaret Thatcher of deliberately drawing Galtieri onto the punch. This is absurd, but Dr Costa Mendes can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
But that was all in the future and I had the immediate present more on my mind. There were a number of options discussed for my future. In the end, largely because of the inadvertent manoeuvres of Robin Fearn, who had been accepted for the same course at the RCDS, and of Sir John Fieldhouse, I was accepted by Churchill College, Cambridge, for a one year Defence Fellowship. I am immensely grateful to Robin for that. We had had our differences certainly but there was no rancour and I have always had immense respect for his professionalism.
In part I have no doubt that the fellowship sprang from a need to keep Barker where they could see him – in the Navy. Certainly my resignation at that time would have been regarded as a threat. But this is to some extent churlish. Sir John Fieldhouse was certainly sensitive to my difficult position and the need to find something for me to do that would be mutually acceptable. And it was certainly that. I was to write a thesis on the geo-politics of the South Atlantic which could conceivably be of use to the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office in the future. I even had a chance to fulfil my ambition as a frustrated undergraduate. Cambridge got the vote largely because of Correlli (Bill) Barnett, a hugely respected but independent-minded and provocative historian who may even have pipped me at the post in the persona non grata Stakes at the Ministry of Defence. But I knew I would learn a great deal from him.
There is nothing quite like being a student. I had missed out the first time round and had something to prove to myself. My room, once belonging to Captain Stephen Roskill, the official Naval historian, was in Churchill College Archive Section which was an Aladdin’s cave of distraction. Time and again I had to pull myself away from avenues where fascination was in inverse proportion to anything relevant to my subject. But somehow I found time to complete my thesis. This focused on a path that could lead to the peaceful exploitation of the resources of the South Atlantic. Although it was prepared with the Ministry of Defence in mind I have never deluded myself into believing that anyone was ever likely to read it.
I believed then that there was a future for the Falklands in fish licences and that has proved to be so. The next phases of economic development may be less easy to achieve. Kelp and krill may well be subjects for international discussion, but I still believe the greatest opportunity, which may also lead to independence, will be based on the exploration for, and exploitation of, oil. I have always believed that hydrocarbons will provide the islands with the economic base for independence.
The question of where economic zones – between the Falklands and Argentina – overlap has yet to be resolved. Our Government clearly has no agenda for this. I sincerely hope I am not proved right when I say this will be forced on us by events at a time when we are too militarily impotent to negotiate from a position of strength. If th
ere is a second Falklands Conflict the economic stakes will be higher and the Argentines better prepared.
But the political situation has also changed. Argentina has now sustained a democracy for 15 years. The present régime has improved things in many ways, not least of which has been the dismantling of Argentina’s Third World image. The accountability of government to an electorate may make a repeat of the Junta’s military adventure unlikely, but this is not cause for complacency. If a week in politics is a long time it would be unwise of our Government to delay meaningful discussion of unresolved matters indefinitely.
POSTSCRIPT
This book is primarily concerned with my time as Captain of Endurance but I hope in the not too distant future to find the time to write something more in the nature of a conventional autobiography. Suffice it to say here that I was retired from the Navy in 1988, but the need to supplement my pension made it necessary for me to keep working.
Life was busy but I kept sufficiently in touch with the MOD to hear some disturbing news about Endurance. A plan had been devised to bar her from any further work in ice conditions. Constructors and engineers were despatched from the MOD and more or less directed to report that the ship was unfit and, even worse, she would not be replaced.
It was 1991, almost exactly ten years after our first battle. Once again it would be necessary to bring SWAG to ‘action readiness’. It would not be possible to disagree with the MOD over the condition of the ship, although the current Captain did his best. But it would be possible to consult shipbrokers and to propose a replacement as soon as possible. Numerous letters were exchanged between senior politicians. Letters were written to The Times, questions were bluntly asked in both Houses. The battle was renewed and the MOD did not like it. Some of the same arguments were deployed, but the bottom line was to find a replacement that was cheap and could fulfil ‘all the requirements’ for the next 20 years.
Beyond Endurance: An Epic of Whitehall and the South Atlantic Page 27
