The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  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 sent a message to Mr Haig:

  This whole business started with an Argentine aggression. Since then our purpose together has been to ensure the early withdrawal by the Argentinians in accordance with the Security Council Resolution. We think therefore that the next step should be for you to put your latest ideas to them. I hope that you will seek the Argentine Government’s view of them tomorrow and establish urgently whether they can accept them. Knowledge of their attitude will be important to the British Cabinet’s consideration of your ideas.

  And so a great crisis passed. I could not have stayed as Prime Minister had the War Cabinet accepted Francis Pym’s proposals. I would have resigned.

  That difficult and decisive argument was followed the next day by the recapture of South Georgia. At Grytviken an Argentine submarine was spotted on the surface and was successfully attacked by our helicopters and immobilized. A certain Captain Astiz had been in charge of the Argentine garrison there. His capture was to present us with problems. He was wanted for murder by both France and Sweden. He was flown to Ascension and then brought to Britain, but refused to answer questions and, due to the provisions of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War eventually, reluctantly, we had to return him to Argentina.

  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 and intervened to stop them: 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.

  A worry for us at this point was that the press and probably some of the public began to assume that it would only be a matter of days before we retook the Falklands and that this would be as quick as the recapture of South Georgia. We knew that this was far from true. Indeed, it was only on that day that the last ships of the amphibious group necessary for the landing left Britain. Led by the assault ship HMS Intrepid, there were the ferries Norland and Europic carrying the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, and — loaded with vital stores — the container ship Atlantic Conveyor.

  WEEK FIVE

  On Monday 26 April, the War Cabinet agreed the announcement of a Total Exclusion Zone (TEZ) of a 200-nautical-mile radius and the rules of engagement which were to apply to it. The military pressure on Argentina was steadily mounting. The TEZ went beyond the earlier MEZ by excluding aircraft as well as sea-going craft: the task force would shortly be close enough to the Falklands to be able to enforce it and to be at risk from air attack itself. One priority was to close down the airfield at Port Stanley.

  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. I had to put the realities to the nation. At Prime Minister’s Questions I said:

  I must point out that time is getting extremely short as the task force approaches the islands. Three weeks have elapsed since the Resolution SCR 502. One cannot have a wide range of choice and a wide range of military options with the task force in the wild and stormy weathers of that area.

  I made the same point in a live interview that evening on Panorama:

  I have to keep in mind the interests of our boys who are on those warships and our marines. I have to watch the safety of their lives, to see that they can succeed in doing whatever it is we decide they have to do at the best possible time and with minimum risk to them.

  I also took the opportunity to say directly just what we were fighting for:

  I’m standing up for the right of self-determination. I’m standing up for our territory. I’m standing up for our people. I’m standing up for international law. I’m standing up for all those territories — those small territories and peoples the world over — who, if someone doesn’t stand up and say to an invader ‘enough, stop’ … would be at risk.

  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 as the Haig mediation manifestly stalled. 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 and I doubt whether the Mexicans would in fact have proposed the simpler and more satisfactory formula which we wanted.

  Al Haig had had his own share of diplomatic problems. His speech to a meeting of the Organization of American States justifying the United States line on the Falklands and Argentina had been greeted with stony silence. The Argentine Foreign minister, furious at the retaking of South Georgia, had publicly refused to see him, though they had been in contact privately.

  Al Haig could not under these circumstances go back to Buenos Aires, which from our point of view was probably all to the good. He had again modified the proposals discussed with Francis Pym in Washington and now transmitted these to the Argentine Government. Mr Haig 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. For its part, the Junta was now determined to play for time. Al Haig telephoned Francis Pym in the afternoon of Wednesday 28 April to say that there was still no word from Buenos Aires. Both Francis and Nico Henderson continued to press him to say publicly that the Argentinians were to blame for the failure of his mediation and that the United States was openly supporting us.

  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 choic
e 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.

  This was very satisfactory. We wanted a clear statement that the Argentinians were to blame for the failure of negotiations. But we did not want to muddy the waters by revealing every detail of proposals which were in truth fundamentally unacceptable to us, nor did we want to imply that we had accepted the Haig proposals.

  There was, though, one drawback. This was that once the Haig mediation had formally ended the pressure would sharply increase for us to go back to the UN where we would be faced by any number of difficulties. Indeed Tony Parsons advised us that once we were back in the Security Council there would be no way of avoiding an unacceptable call on us to halt military preparations and accept the good offices of the Secretary-General. This would mean that we would have to use our veto, which we wanted to avoid. In fact, although this assessment was correct it was not until the following month that all this came to a head. We were fortunate that it did not occur earlier.

  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 announcements constituted a substantial moral boost to our position.

  It was on this day that the TEZ came into force. And although diplomatic and military affairs remained inextricably intertwined, 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. We were well aware that the Exocet threat should 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.*

  That evening I had to speak at a large rally in Stephen Hastings’s constituency at Milton Hall in Bedfordshire. Stephen and his predecessor Alan Lennox-Boyd spoke magnificently. I was given a wonderful reception. No one present had any doubt of the justice of our cause, nor that we would eventually win through. I felt proud and exhilarated: but I felt too an almost crushing burden of responsibility. I knew that the task force would enter the waters around the Falkland Islands the following day.

  * Later, when the war was won, Enoch Powell returned to the subject in a Parliamentary Question: ‘Is the Rt. 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 shows that the substance under test consisted of ferrous matter of the highest quality, and that it is of exceptional tensile strength, is highly resistant to wear and tear and to stress, and may be used to advantage for all national purposes.’ Ian Gow had the two quotes printed and framed for me as a Christmas present in 1982; they hang still on my office wall.

  * The MEZ was a circle with a 200-nautical-mile radius drawn around a point approximately at the centre of the Falkland Islands. From the time of its coming into effect any Argentine warships and naval auxiliaries found in the zone would be treated as hostile and would be liable to be attacked by British forces.

  * See p. 205.

  CHAPTER VIII

  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. At such a time almost everything and everyone seems to combine to deflect you from what you know has to be done.

  Yet I could never afford to ignore the diplomatic effort because on its successful conduct rested our hard-won position of UN Security Council support for Resolution 502 and, still more important, the degree of support we might receive from our allies, above all the United States. 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 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. I was told that 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. The refuelling seemed a stupendous feat at the time, although such is the way of things that later performances of this kind came almost to be taken for granted.

  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. But we had no illusions about the significance of the heavy attack and the vital question it raised about the sufficiency of our air cover.

  The next day, Sunday, which I spent at Chequers, was one of great — though often misunderstood — significance for the outcome of the Falklands War. As often on Sundays during the crisis, the members of the War Cabinet, Chiefs of Staff and officials came to Chequers for lunch and discussions. On this occasion there was a special matter on which I needed an urgent decision.

  I called together Willie Whitelaw, John Nott, Cecil Parkinson, Michael Havers, Terry Lewin, Admiral Fieldhouse and Sir Antony Acland, the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office. (Francis Pym was in America.) Admiral Fieldhouse told us that one of our submarines, HMS Conqueror, had been shadowing the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano. The Belgrano was escorted by two destroyers. The cruiser itself had substantial fire power provided by 6 guns with a range of 13 miles and anti-aircraft missiles. We were advised that she might have been fitted with Exocet anti-ship missiles, and her two destroyer escorts were known to be carrying them. The whole group was sailing on the edge of the Exclusion Zone. We had received intelligence about the aggressive intentions of the Argentine fleet. There had been extensive air attacks on our ships the previous day and Admiral Woodward, in command of the task force, had every reason to believe that a full-scale attack was developing. The Argentine aircraft carrier, the 25 de Mayo, had been sighted some time e
arlier and we had agreed to change the rules of engagement to deal with the threat she posed. However, our submarine had lost contact with the carrier, which had slipped past it to the north. There was a strong possibility that Conqueror might also lose contact with the Belgrano group. Admiral Woodward had to come to a judgement about what to do with the Belgrano in the light of these circumstances. From all the information available, he concluded that the carrier and the Belgrano group were engaged in a classic pincer movement against the task force. It was clear to me what must be done to protect our forces, in the light of Admiral Woodward’s concern and Admiral Fieldhouse’s advice. We therefore decided that British forces should be able to attack any Argentine naval vessel on the same basis as agreed previously for the carrier.

  Later we approved reinforcements for the Falklands which would be taken there in the QE2. It surprised me a little that the need for reinforcements had not been clear sooner. I asked whether it was really necessary or advisable to use this great ship and to put so many people in it, but as soon as I was told that it was necessary to get them there in time I gave my agreement. I was always concerned that we would not have sufficient men and equipment when the time came for the final battle and I was repeatedly struck by the fact that even such highly qualified professionals as advised us often underestimated the requirements. We broke up still desperately worried that the aircraft carrier which could have done such damage to our vulnerable task force had not been found.