Palmerstonian

Bernard Porter

The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: Vol. I: The Origins of the Falklands War by Lawrence Freedman
Routledge, 253 pp, £35.00, June 2005, ISBN 0 7146 5206 7
The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: Vol. II: War and Diplomacy by Lawrence Freedman
Routledge, 849 pp, £49.95, June 2005, ISBN 0 7146 5207 5

In 1982 Britain’s continued possession of the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands was ridiculous. Even at the British Empire’s height they had been one of its least important and favoured colonies. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 they were represented by a showcase containing some tufts of wool and dried grasses. Dr Johnson’s famous description of them in 1771, which Lawrence Freedman uses to open this history, has scarcely been challenged:

a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island which not even southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional; and which, if fortune smiles upon our labours, may become a nest of smugglers in peace, and in war the refuge of future buccaneers.

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Vol. 27 No. 20 · 20 October 2005 » Bernard Porter » Palmerstonian (print version)
Pages 3-6 | 3394 words

Letters

From Jasper Tomlinson

Bernard Porter’s review of the official history of the Falklands War sent me back to Tam Dalyell’s 1982 book One Man’s Falklands (LRB, 20 October). In Dalyell’s account, the path to war began when Nicholas Ridley returned from Argentina with a ‘lease-back’ deal. When he presented this to Parliament in December 1980 he was savaged by both Conservative colleagues and the Opposition. The Labour attack was led by Peter Shore, then shadow foreign secretary, who asserted that the islanders’ views should be ‘of paramount importance’ – a notion that Ridley had deliberately sidestepped. The Labour MPs, ignorant of South America in general and the Falklands in particular, followed Shore willingly because they sensed that if it came to a vote the government faced defeat (about a hundred Conservative MPs had been brought onside by the Falkland Islands Committee).

Ridley backed off, and there was no agreement with Argentina, but the episode left the impression that the UK government was not deeply committed to the preservation of the status quo in the South Atlantic. Dalyell, in 1982, reckoned this the moment when military conflict became inevitable. The 1980 debate was also crucial to Thatcher’s success in skewering Labour opposition when she came to demand support for the war in April 1982. The islanders’ ‘paramountcy’ was central to her case.

Dalyell’s book makes me wonder why Porter was so kind to those Labour MPs – he hardly mentions them – in his review. In hindsight, it seems to me that the Falklands War was almost as much Michael Foot’s war as Thatcher’s.

Jasper Tomlinson
London SE1

From Klaus Dodds

Bernard Porter underestimates the strategic and political significance of the Falkland Islands. It is worth bearing in mind, first of all, that Argentina and Britain continue to dispute ownership of the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Despite the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, Foreign Office ministers accepted arguments from officials that the loss of the Falklands would have important implications in terms of Britain’s capacity to remain in the Antarctic. The late Lord Shackleton understood this broader regional point only too well when he reported on the Falklands in 1976 and 1982. Second, the fate of the Falklands was keenly watched by supporters of Gibraltar, and Porter fails to take into account quite how important both colonies were to a cross-party constituency in Parliament in the 1960s and 1970s. Arguments pertaining to British prestige and ‘kith and kin’ were rapidly and effectively mobilised in order to prevent any profound change in their colonial status. Third, the use of the term ‘colonial’ in the context of the South Atlantic and Antarctic is only ever applied to Britain. As is well known, the Argentines colonised Patagonia in the late 19th century with dire consequences for indigenous populations. Perhaps Britain and Argentina should both be seen for what they are: colonising powers equally unwilling to give up their territories.

Klaus Dodds
Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey