After the Marines had reoccupied Government House that night, Michael Rose found them among scenes of some disorder after they had raided the drinks store. In the chaos, he noticed the trophy given and inscribed by Galtieri to Menéndez for his original capture of the Falklands lying on the floor. He walked off with it and presented it to the Officers’ Mess, 22 SAS. Later, Argentina demanded it back, but Mrs Thatcher refused.218
Given her natural caution, Mrs Thatcher’s normal reaction would have been to wait for the formal act of surrender before making any public statement. The news that the Argentine resistance had collapsed, however, was all over the media, and the excitement was intense. Crowds were gathering in Downing Street. Punctilious, as she had usually been throughout the crisis, in informing Parliament of news before appearing on television about it, the Prime Minister went across to the House of Commons and used the rather irregular device of a point of order to address the Chamber at 10.14 p.m. ‘After successful attacks last night,’ she said, ‘General Moore decided to press forward. The Argentines retreated. Our forces reached the outskirts of Port Stanley. Large numbers of Argentine soldiers threw down their weapons. They are reported to be flying white flags over Port Stanley.’219* She explained that the surrender negotiations were in progress and promised to report to the House the next day: ‘it was important in that she used the phrase, “ … negotiate a surrender” (not a ceasefire)’, wrote Alan Clark, who was present in the Chamber. ‘Trust her. She has led from the front all the way.’220† ‘The House cheered,’ Mrs Thatcher recalled.221 In her room in the Commons afterwards, colleagues gathered, and Willie Whitelaw proposed a toast to her. ‘I don’t think anyone else but you could have done it,’ he said. Antony Acland, who was present, remembered, ‘And she wept, out of sheer relief. Denis put his arm round her, and said: “Well done. Have a drink.” ’222 At midnight, she went home, among crowds singing ‘Rule, Britannia’, with whom she mingled:
Downing Street was full of people, young people. It was their generation who had done it. Today’s heroes. Britain still breeds them … As I went to sleep very late that night I felt an enormous burden had been lifted from my shoulders and future worries would be small compared with those of life or death which had been with us constantly for 11 weeks. It was a miracle wrought by ordinary men and women with extraordinary qualities. Forever bold, forever brave, forever remembered.223
*
The following day, with the surrender signed, the Cabinet met. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, congratulated Mrs Thatcher on her ‘courage and leadership … which has added new lustre to our arms and the spirit of our people,’224 and he quoted what Henry V had said after his victory at Agincourt: ‘Non nobis, Domine, Non nobis …’ (‘Not unto us, Lord, not unto us,’ the full quotation continuing, ‘but to Thy name be the glory’). Mrs Thatcher did not quite understand the Latin and looked a little baffled.225
At Prime Minister’s Questions two days later, Enoch Powell rose to offer his answer to the question he had raised at the beginning of the crisis about the metal of which Mrs Thatcher was made: ‘Is the right hon. Lady aware that the report has now been received from the public analyst on a certain substance recently subjected to analysis and that I have obtained a copy of the report? It showed that the substance under test consisted of ferrous matter of the highest quality, that it is of exceptional tensile strength, is highly resistant to wear and tear and to stress, and may be used with advantage for all national purposes.’226 The joke was laboured, but the compliment gave Mrs Thatcher great pleasure. Ian Gow had the Hansard of Powell’s ‘before’ and ‘after’ interventions framed and hung in No. 10. Powell’s conclusion seemed to most people to fit the facts. She had indeed proved herself to be the Iron Lady.
Because of the wholeness of the victory and, as she saw it, the rightness of the cause, Mrs Thatcher now felt no need to entertain any more ideas for a new constitutional status for the Falklands. As late as the Cabinet meeting of 9 June 1982, she had been happy to discuss these, including the suggestion, then being touted by the United States, of complete self-government. But, once Stanley had fallen, she lost all interest. ‘There was no prospect of negotiating anything for the moment,’ she told Pérez de Cuéllar on 14 June, ‘nor did she think there would be for some time.’227 The Foreign Office, particularly Michael Palliser, who had been charged with looking at the long term, continued to push for some sort of settlement which would be acceptable to the Argentine government. On 21 June, he sent her a paper – ‘the last I shall inflict upon you’ – in which he suggested making proposals to Argentina and submitting the British case for sovereignty of the Falklands to the International Court. His essential case was that the islands would always be insecure if Britain could not come to terms with Argentina. On Palliser’s paper Mrs Thatcher wrote: ‘I disagree profoundly with the underlying approach to the problem – but circulate.’228 Her approach was to implement the spirit of the Shackleton report, without seeking international assistance. The Falklands garrison eventually settled down at 3,000-strong and the new runway was built. The ‘Fortress Falklands’ policy which the Foreign Office had always sought to avoid came into being. Argentina never abandoned its claims to sovereignty, but nor did it make much trouble, at least until the twenty-first century when oil exploration became a source of dispute. As a result of the Malvinas debacle, Galtieri’s government fell, and Argentina eventually returned to democratic rule.
On 6 July, Mrs Thatcher announced that the inquiry into the build-up to the Falklands invasion, which she had promised early in the crisis, would be conducted by Lord Franks, the greatest of ‘the Great and the Good’.
The consequences of Mrs Thatcher’s victory in the Falklands were many. The most obvious was the transformation of political fortune. Although she had already come through the worst of her unpopularity before Argentina invaded, only a few far-sighted supporters had imagined that she was likely to win the next general election. Economic news was still grim and unemployment was rising. A new political party, the SDP, looked as if it was indeed ‘breaking the mould’ of British politics. Within Mrs Thatcher’s own party, her opponents, though mostly pushed to the fringes of power, had continued to assume that she would not survive. Many, such as Ian Gilmour and Christopher Soames, had believed that the Falklands, like a rerun of Suez, would bring her down. The opposite happened. The Falklands War established Mrs Thatcher’s personal mastery of the political scene, and convinced people of her special gifts of leadership.* The loneliness of command in those eleven weeks made her all the more unassailable in the time to come.
It was not mere flattery to say that only she could have done it – it was widely believed, and it is probably true. Within the armed services, for instance, there had been a feeling almost from the start that, despite a catalogue of post-war affronts to declining British power, things would be diffferent this time. Julian Thompson, who had seen the whole of his military career up to that point overshadowed by politicians who had ‘been less than robust in confronting the Queen’s enemies’, had sensed ‘that she was a different kettle of fish. I therefore always thought [once Argentina had invaded] that the war would happen.’229 John Coles, who had come into her private office with the usual somewhat anti-Thatcher prejudices of the Civil Service, especially of the Foreign Office, ‘became a very great admirer because of her extraordinary courage and clarity’.230 In this, he was typical of most of those who worked with her. The cool-headed Clive Whitmore, who was never much in political sympathy with his boss, considered that she ‘behaved with balance and a clear view and the good sense to listen to advice. She led as well as could possibly be expected.’231
The Falklands War brought out Mrs Thatcher’s best qualities – not only the well-known ones of courage, conviction and resolution, but also her less advertised ones of caution and careful study. She did not allow her desire to fight all the way overwhelm the need to be pragmatic and diplomatic. She was always careful to prepare the ground and pick
the right moment. Because she knew nothing about war before the crisis broke, she approached the subject modestly. Those who worked closely with Mrs Thatcher at that time noted that she was remarkably free of the long-winded digressions and tendency to lecture which were common at other times. She felt the greatest possible respect and affection for the armed forces, both officers and men, and had the good sense to trust them to do their job. Even in the case of the Foreign Office, with whom she had much less natural sympathy, she recognized the talents of individuals such as Nicko Henderson and Anthony Parsons, and relied on them heavily. Throughout, she understood that the crisis was a matter of her own political survival, and of national pride, and that only victory could ensure both. The war also proved her to be utterly genuine. In private and in public, as her speeches, writing and private conversation reveal, she cared passionately for the cause and for the people involved. In this, her sex was important. She was the first female war leader with executive power in the British Isles since Elizabeth I, and the first ever in a democratic age. She felt a maternal, almost a romantic, identification with the men whom she was sending into battle, and they responded with a chivalrous devotion, a desire to protect her as a woman and as an embodiment of national spirit. The Falklands was a great occasion, and she rose to it.
Mrs Thatcher was aware of this, though she was always very cautious about analysing herself, even in private. As Robert Armstrong put it, the Falklands crisis was ‘the single part of her time in which she lived most intensely’.232 From it, she derived the self-confidence which, in some ways, she had previously lacked. Rather as Britain standing alone in 1940 had been the sustaining myth for Winston Churchill, Mrs Thatcher’s solitary leadership in the face of the sudden disaster of the Falklands became for her the talisman of what she could do. In her mind, it helped to create the dangerous idea that she acted best when she acted alone. But it also renewed her belief that her efforts to transform her country were in accord with the underlying desires and character of the British people. ‘The public were as resolute as ever’ is a typical sentence from her private memoir of the war, and opinion polls seemed to bear her judgment out. Writing to the New Zealand Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, who had passed her an admiring letter from the Legion of Frontiersmen of the Commonwealth just before the end of the fighting, she said: ‘The response of the people of this country, and of the Commonwealth, especially in New Zealand, has convinced me that patriotism is a strong plant … and that its flowers will indeed bloom even when peace is restored.’233 When she spoke to a Conservative rally in early July about what had been achieved, she was both expressing her real beliefs about her country and, forgivably perhaps, boasting:
We have ceased to be a nation in retreat. We have instead a new-found confidence – born in the economic battles at home and tested and found true 8,000 miles away … And so today, we can rejoice at our success in the Falklands and take pride in the achievement of the men and women of our Task Force. But we do so, not as at some last flickering of a flame which must soon be dead. No, we rejoice that Britain has rekindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before. Britain found herself again in the South Atlantic and will not look back from the victory she has won.234
Mrs Thatcher’s idea of what had been achieved fitted her unusual mindset, which was both conservative and revolutionary. She saw herself as restoring an inherent British greatness which had unfortunately been lost because of imperial decline. At the same time, she saw herself as bringing about enormous change.
The Falklands set the standard by which she judged individuals. Anyone who had been ‘staunch’ in the war was in her good books for ever more. As well as the armed services, her list of heroes included – despite the wobbles – Ronald Reagan as well as Caspar Weinberger, President Mitterrand and President Pinochet, Robert Muldoon of New Zealand, King Hussein of Jordan, Rex Hunt, the Governor of the Falklands, and David Owen of the SDP. The British Antarctic Survey, who had advised her on the terrain, became such favourites that not only did she ensure they received more government money, she also listened to them when, years later, they warned of the damage to the ozone layer caused by pollution.235 Mrs Thatcher even had a soft spot for Michael Foot who, she considered, had been basically patriotic. Her villains of the war included the Irish, the United Nations (though not Pérez de Cuéllar personally), Francis Pym, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Denis Healey.
The world, in turn, revised its estimation of her. For all their often justified anxieties about how the Falklands conflict would affect their own standing in Latin America, the Americans were deeply impressed by Mrs Thatcher’s achievement. ‘When the Argentines surrendered in Port Stanley the NSC staff and others were in the situation room in the White House and they all started cheering.’236 In the middle of the Cold War, her Falklands rhetoric about free people standing up to aggression resonated with the American people. Her achievement in successfully projecting force halfway across the world also caused the Soviet Union to revise its estimation of the will and capacity of the West.237
In the attitude of the US administration, there was a mixture of irritation and admiration. When Mrs Thatcher went to Washington on 23 June 1982, fresh from her victory, Reagan was urged by his staff to press for some sort of compromise with Argentina over the long-term future of the islands. Mrs Thatcher, however, had got wind of this plan before arriving in Washington and was ready to thwart it. ‘He wants me to be magnanimous in victory,’ she told one of her officials, ‘and I’m not going to be.’238 The draft of Reagan’s remarks to be delivered after his meeting with her said: ‘I expressed my view that a just war requires a just peace and that we should bend our efforts toward a settlement in the South Atlantic that will bring lasting reconciliation and stability.’239 But it was not to be. ‘Thatcher blasted this position to smithereens on 2 networks this am,’ a frantic staffer scribbled on this draft just hours before the meeting.* Sure enough, when Reagan and Thatcher sat down together the Prime Minister had no intention of allowing the discussion to verge towards talk of compromise. ‘The President had just started to say something about the Falklands when Mrs T interrupted him to say that she wanted to give him an account of the present position,’ Nicko Henderson recorded in his diary. ‘She described the state of the Argentinian prisoners: malnutrition, trench-foot, diarrhoea. We were spared nothing.’ Mrs Thatcher also appealed for Reagan’s help in clearing the thousands of mines left behind by Argentina. Reagan noted that, in the past, mules had been let loose in minefields, but had usually proved too ‘canny’ to detonate the mines. ‘Mrs Thatcher laughingly suggested that she would use the Falkland sheep for that purpose.’240 As Mrs Thatcher raised issue after issue, Reagan had little chance to insert the serious words of warning pressed on him by his staff. ‘As a result, when, at the subsequent press conference, Mrs T was asked whether the President had urged her to adopt a more flexible attitude on sovereignty for the Falkland Islands, she was able to answer, No, with complete honesty.’241
All over the world, Margaret Thatcher now became a figure of legend, the embodiment of strong leadership, more famous, perhaps, than any other political leader of the time.
On the day of victory, Alan Clark bumped into Ian Gow in the Commons, ‘looking like the cat that has swallowed all the cream’: ‘ “the Prime Minister has complete freedom of action now,” I said, “no other Leader has enjoyed such freedom since Churchill, and even with him it did not last very long.” I suppose he may have thought that I was referring to freedom of choice in making appointments, but I was not, really, I meant freedom in imposing domestic, foreign and defence policies.’242 Clark was right. No transformation in modern British history had been swifter, or more complete. She now had command of the whole field.
It fitted Mrs Thatcher’s deep gratitude to the armed services and also her sense of reverence and romance that there should be a service of thanksgiving for victory, and other forms of public celebratio
n. In this she faced two difficulties. The first was that some, particularly the Church authorities, were opposed on political/religious grounds to giving thanks for victory in a war which they believed should never have been fought. The second was that Mrs Thatcher feared she might be accused of triumphalism or hubris.
On the latter point, she was extremely sensitive and – despite her pride in her own achievements – genuinely reluctant to push herself forward. She was quite happy to lord it over political rivals, but hated the idea of upstaging the military or the monarchy. When, for example, it was debated who should read the lesson at the proposed service, Mrs Thatcher wrote to John Coles: ‘It would be much more appropriate for CDS or CinC Fleet to read the lesson. If I did, it would be misinterpreted and leave a bad taste. No politician in my view!’243 It was also suggested that, when the Queen left St Paul’s cathedral at the end of the service, Mrs Thatcher should say a formal farewell to her at the west door. Mrs Thatcher queried this: ‘Am I the right person to do it? I shouldn’t like to intrude any political element into this service.’244*
The discussion of the service itself was fraught. As Mrs Thatcher recorded: ‘This [the service] had its difficulties because of its ecumenical nature. No parade was allowed to the cathedral, no colours to the Altar and it was as much as we could do to persuade the Church authorities to allow anyone who had taken part in the Falklands campaign to take part in the service …’245
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