On Friday 17 April our two vital aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible reached Ascension Island.
After a week of labyrinthine negotiations, I spent the weekend at Chequers. I found time to have a private lunch with friends and an artist who was going to paint a view of the house and its surroundings. However, I had to return to No. 10 briefly on Saturday evening to receive a telephone call from President Reagan – there is a direct line from Chequers to the White House, but there were technical problems that day. I was glad to have the chance to go over the issues with the President. Al Haig had found the Argentinians even more impossible than on his first visit. The White House had instructed him to tell the Junta that if they persisted in their intransigence this would lead to a breakdown of talks and the US Administration would make clear who was to blame.
On Sunday, far away in the Atlantic HMS Hermes, Invincible, Glamorgan, Broadsword, Yarmouth, Alacrity and the Royal Fleet Auxiliaries Olmeda and Resource left Ascension Island for the south.
It was on Monday that I first read the details of the proposals discussed by Al Haig and the Argentinians in Buenos Aires. They were quite unacceptable. The closer one looked the clearer it was that Argentina was still trying to keep what it had taken by force. They were intent on subverting the traditional local administration by insisting that two representatives of the Argentine Government should serve on each of the Island Councils. They wanted to flood the islands with their own people to change the nature of the population. Finally, they were not prepared to allow the islanders to choose if they wished to return to the British administration they had enjoyed before the invasion. The wording of their proposal was:
December 31st 1982 will conclude the interim period during which the signatories shall conclude negotiations on modalities for the removal of the islands from the list of non-self-governing territories under Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter and on mutually agreed conditions for their definitive status, including due regard for the rights of the inhabitants and for the principle of territorial integrity applicable to this dispute …
The innocuous sounding reference to removing the islands from the list under Chapter XI ruled out a return to the status quo ante the invasion and so effectively denied the islanders the right to choose freely the form of government under which they were to live. A great many words to shroud the simple fact that the use of force would have succeeded, dictatorship would have prevailed and the wishes of the islanders would have been overridden. We told Al Haig that we saw no need for him to come to London from Buenos Aires and promised to let him have detailed comments on the text when he returned to Washington.
On the same day I received a telegram from Buenos Aires which confirmed that there was no apparent let-up in the Junta’s determination to secure sovereignty over the islands. Every five minutes or so Argentine Radio would play the ‘Malvinas song’ which ran, ‘I am your fatherland and may need you to die for me.’ Soon that sentiment would be put to the test: it was on this day that the War Cabinet authorized the operation to repossess South Georgia – although the recovery was somewhat delayed because our ships arrived in a Force 11 gale which lasted for several days.
Al Haig asked that Francis Pym should go to Washington to discuss our views of the Argentine text and I agreed to this. Francis sent ahead our detailed comments and essential amendments to the Buenos Aires text. We agreed that he was to be guided by these counter-proposals during his visit. He was also to seek an American guarantee for the security of the islands. Unfortunately during questions on a Commons statement the following day, Francis gave the impression that force would not be used as long as negotiations were continuing. This was an impossible position for us to take up, enabling the Argentinians to string us along indefinitely, and he had to return to the House to make a short statement retracting the remark.
Also on Wednesday we notified Al Haig via Nico Henderson that a firm decision had been taken to recover South Georgia in the near future. Mr Haig expressed himself surprised and concerned. He asked whether our decision was final: I confirmed that it was. We were informing, not consulting him. Later he told our ambassador that he thought he would have to give the Argentine Junta advance notice of our intended operation. We were appalled. Nico Henderson persuaded him to think better of it.
That Thursday evening John Nott and the Chief of the Defence Staff came to Downing Street to give me urgent news. Our Special Forces had landed on the Fortuna glacier in South Georgia to carry out a reconnaissance. But the weather then rapidly worsened with a south-west wind gusting over 70 knots. Their exposed position on the glacier became intolerable and they sent a message to HMS Antrim asking for helicopters to take them off. The first helicopter came in and, blinded by the snow, crashed. A second suffered the same fate. The MoD did not know whether lives had been lost. It was a terrible and disturbing start to the campaign.
My heart was heavy as I changed for a charity dinner at the Mansion House at which I was to be the main speaker. How was I to conceal my feelings? But just as I reached the foot of the stairs at No. 10, Clive Whitmore, my principal private secretary, rushed out of his office with more news. A third helicopter had landed on the glacier and picked up all the SAS men and the other two helicopter crews. How that pilot managed it I do not know. Months later I met him – completely modest, quietly professional: his comment was that he had never seen so many people in his helicopter. As I carried on out of No. 10 and left for the dinner I walked on air. All our people had survived.
Francis Pym was now on his way back from the United States with new draft proposals.
Saturday 24 April was to be one of the most crucial days in the Falklands story and a critical one for me personally. Early that morning Francis came to my study in No. 10 to tell me the results of his efforts. I can only describe the document which he brought back as conditional surrender. I told Francis that the terms were totally unacceptable. They would rob the Falklanders of their freedom and Britain of her honour and respect. Francis disagreed. He thought that we should accept what was in the document. We were at loggerheads.
A meeting of the War Cabinet had been arranged for that evening and I spent the rest of that day comparing in detail all the different proposals which had been made up to that point. The closer I looked the clearer it was that our position was being abandoned and the Falklanders betrayed. I asked for the Attorney-General to come to No. 10 and go through them with me. But the message went astray and instead he went to the Foreign Office. Less than an hour before the War Cabinet, he at last received the message and came to see me, only to confirm all my worst fears.
It is important to understand that what might appear at first glance to the untutored eye as minor variations in language between diplomatic texts can be of vital significance, as they were in this case. There were four main texts to compare. There were the proposals which Al Haig discussed with us and took to Argentina on 12 April. Our own attitude towards these had been left deliberately vague; though he had discussed them in detail with us, we had not committed ourselves to accept them. Then there were the totally impossible proposals brought back by Mr Haig after his visit to Buenos Aires on 19 April. On 22 April we amended those proposals in ways acceptable to us and it was on this basis that Francis Pym had been instructed to negotiate. Finally, there was the later draft brought back by Francis from the United States, which now confronted me. The differences between the texts of 22 and 24 April went to the heart of why we were prepared to fight a war for the Falklands.
First, there was the question of how far and fast would our forces withdraw. Under the text Francis Pym had brought back our task force would have had to stand off even further than in the Buenos Aires proposals. Worse still, all of our forces would have to leave the defined zones within seven days, depriving us of any effective military leverage over the withdrawal process. What if the Argentinians went back on the deal? Nor was there any way of ensuring that Argentine troops kept to the provision that they
be ‘at less than 7 days’ readiness to invade again’ (whatever that meant).
Second, sanctions against Argentina were to be abandoned the moment the agreement was signed, rather than as in our counterproposals on completion of withdrawal. Thus we lost the only other means we had to ensure that Argentine withdrawal actually took place.
Third, as regards the Special Interim Authority the text reverted to the Buenos Aires proposals for two representatives of the Argentine Government on the Islands’ Councils, as well as at least one representative of the local Argentine population. Moreover, there was a return to the wording relating to Argentine residence and property which would effectively have allowed them to swamp the existing population with Argentinians.
Equally important was the wording relating to the long-term negotiations after Argentine withdrawal. Like the Buenos Aires document, Francis Pym’s ruled out the possibility of a return to the situation enjoyed by the islanders before the invasion. We would have gone against our commitment to the principle that the islanders’ wishes were paramount and would have abandoned all possibility of their staying with us. Did Francis realize how much he had signed away?
Despite my clear views expressed that morning, Francis put in a paper to the War Cabinet recommending acceptance of these terms. Shortly before 6 o’clock that evening ministers and civil servants began assembling outside the Cabinet Room. Francis was there, busy lobbying for their support. I asked Willie Whitelaw to come upstairs and told him that I could not accept these terms and gave him my reasons. As always on crucial occasions he backed my judgement.
The meeting began and Francis Pym introduced his paper, recommending that we concur in the plan. But five hours of preparation on my part had not been wasted. I went through the text clause by clause. What did each point actually mean? How come that we had now accepted what had previously been rejected? Why had we not insisted as a minimum on self-determination? Why had we accepted almost unlimited Argentine immigration and acquisition of property on an equal basis with the existing Falkland Islanders? The rest of the committee were with me.
It was John Nott who found the procedural way forward. He proposed that we should make no comment on the draft but ask Mr Haig to put it to the Argentinians first. If they accepted it we should undoubtedly be in difficulties: but we could then put the matter to Parliament in the light of their acceptance. If the Argentinians rejected it – and we thought that they would, because it is almost impossible for any military Junta to withdraw – we could then urge the Americans to come down firmly on our side, as Al Haig had indicated they would as long as we did not break off the negotiations. This is what was decided. I duly sent our message to Mr Haig.
Later that afternoon I learnt of our success in South Georgia. An audience was arranged with the Queen that evening at Windsor. I was glad to be able personally to give her the news that one of her islands had been recovered. I returned to Downing Street to await confirmation of the earlier signal and the release of the news. I wanted John Nott to have the opportunity of making the announcement and so I had him come to No. 10. Together, he, the MoD press officer and I drafted the press release and then went out to announce the good news.
A remark of mine was misinterpreted, sometimes wilfully. After John Nott had made his statement journalists tried to ask questions. ‘What happens next Mr Nott? Are we going to declare war on Argentina Mrs Thatcher?’ It seemed as if they preferred to press us on these issues rather than to report news that would raise the nation’s spirits and give the Falklanders new heart. I was irritated. ‘Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the marines … Rejoice.’ I meant that they should rejoice in the bloodless recapture of South Georgia, not in the war itself. To me war is not a matter for rejoicing. But some pretended otherwise.
At home the apparent imminence of full-scale military conflict began to shake the determination of those whose commitment to retaking the Falklands had always been weaker than it appeared. Some MPs seemed to want negotiations to continue indefinitely.
Unfortunately, the cracks now appearing in the Labour Party were likely to be widened by what was happening at the United Nations. The Secretary-General of the UN started to become more involved. A low-key appeal from Sr Perez de Cuellar to both sides – which appeared to imply that we, like Argentina, had failed to comply with UNSCR 502 – was seized upon by Denis Healey and Michael Foot. I had a serious clash with Mr Foot during Prime Minister’s Questions on Tuesday 27 April on the question of our returning to the United Nations. In fact, the Secretary-General very quickly took the point, but the damage was done. We ourselves had been exploring whether an offer from President López-Portillo of Mexico to provide a venue for negotiations might be productive. But Al Haig did not wish us to pursue this.
Al Haig had had his own share of diplomatic problems. The Argentine Foreign minister, furious at the retaking of South Georgia, had publicly refused to see him, though they had been in contact privately.
Mr Haig had again modified the proposals discussed with Francis Pym in Washington and now transmitted these to the Argentine Government. He told the Junta that no amendments were permissible and imposed a strict time limit for their reply, though he was subsequently unwilling to stick to this.
At Cabinet on Thursday 29 April we discussed the continuing uncertainty. The deadline given to the Argentinians for their answer had passed, but now Mr Haig was talking of the possibility of the Argentinians amending his proposals. Where would all this end?
After Cabinet I sent a message to President Reagan saying that in our view the Argentinians must now be regarded as having rejected the American proposals. In fact, later that day the Argentinians did formally reject the American text. President Reagan now replied to my message in these terms:
I am sure you agree that it is essential now to make clear to the world that every effort was made to achieve a fair and peaceful solution, and that the Argentine Government was offered a choice between such a solution and further hostilities. We will therefore make public a general account of the efforts we have made. While we will describe the US proposal in broad terms, we will not release it because of the difficulty that might cause you. I recognize that while you see fundamental difficulties in the proposal, you have not rejected it. We will leave no doubt that Her Majesty’s Government worked with us in good faith and was left with no choice but to proceed with military action based on the right of self-defence.
Friday 30 April effectively marked the end of the beginning of our diplomatic and military campaign to regain the Falklands. The United States now came down clearly on our side. President Reagan told television correspondents that the Argentinians had resorted to armed aggression and that such aggression must not be allowed to succeed. Most important, the President also directed that the United States would respond positively to requests for military materiel. Unfortunately, they were not prepared to agree to place an embargo on imports from Argentina. However, the President’s announcement constituted a substantial moral boost to our position.
It was on this day the TEZ came into force. And it is fair to say that from now on it was the military rather than the diplomatic which increasingly commanded our attention. At that morning’s War Cabinet it was the Argentine aircraft carrier, the 25 de Mayo, which concerned us. She could cover 500 miles a day and her aircraft a further 500. Her escorts carried Exocet missiles, supplied by France in the 1970s. The Exocet threat had to be taken seriously. It increased the danger which the Argentine carrier group posed to our ships and their supply lines. We therefore authorized an attack on the carrier, wherever she was, provided it was south of latitude 35 degrees and east of longitude 48, and outside the 12-mile limit of Argentine territorial waters. Such an attack would be based upon the right of self-defence and be within Article 51 of the UN Charter; in accordance with the notification which had been given on 23 April no further warning was required.
* The MEZ was a circle with a 200-nautical-mile radius drawn aro
und a point approximately at the centre of the Falkland Islands. From the time of its coming into effect Argentine warships and naval auxiliaries found in the zone would be treated as hostile and would be liable to be attacked by British forces.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Falklands: Victory
The battle for the Falklands in May and June 1982
FROM THE BEGINNING OF MAY through to the recapture of the Falklands in mid-June military considerations loomed ever larger in my mind. But this did not mean that the pressure for negotiations eased – far from it. I was under an almost intolerable pressure to negotiate for the sake of negotiation and because so many politicians were desperately anxious to avoid the use of force – as if the Argentinians had not already used force by invading in the first place. And all this time there was constant, nagging fear of the unknown. Would we have sufficient air cover? Where were the Argentine submarines? Would we be able to reach the military and diplomatic position required for a successful landing within that narrow time-frame set by the onset of intolerable winter weather in the South Atlantic?
Over breakfast at Milton Hall in Stephen Hastings’s constituency I received a telephone call to say that our Vulcans had bombed the runway of Port Stanley airport. Our naval task force was also bombarding Argentine positions elsewhere on the Falklands. There had so far been no British casualties but it would still be many hours before the Vulcans – after their marathon flight involving five mid-air refuellings – would be back at Ascension Island. In fact they all returned safely.
That day the Argentine Air Force mounted a major attack on our ships. The Argentinians were in a position to send photographs to the outside world, which we were not. They claimed that many of our aeroplanes had been shot down but in that famous broadcast Brian Hanrahan, the excellent BBC correspondent, put the record straight when he reported: ‘I counted them all out and I counted them all back.’ It was a great relief.
Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography Page 48
