Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (117 page)

That day, the Foreign Office received the first indication of Argentine ships sailing, but ‘no intelligence warning of an invasion’.
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In a statement to the Commons the following day, Luce said that Britain would defend the Falklands ‘to the best of our ability’: ‘I knew deep down how dangerously empty these words had become.’
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The government was embarrassed, in the questions on Luce’s statement, when Jim Callaghan revealed to the House that in 1977, when there had been some trouble with Argentina, he had ordered British ships to stand 400 miles off the Falklands, ready to protect them if necessary. It has subsequently emerged that Argentina did not know of this action at the time,
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so Callaghan’s revelation actually held no lessons about deterrence, but the House did not know this.

At 11 in the morning on Wednesday 31 March 1982, the Joint Intelligence Committee produced its first immediate assessment of the Falklands since the previous July. Although it hedged a bit, it did not assert that Argentina was about to invade, preferring the view that ‘the Argentine Government does not wish to be the first to adopt forcible measures.’
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An air of uncertainty prevailed in Whitehall.

Early that evening, however, everything changed. An intercept provided London with ‘the first clear indication’ that Argentina would invade the Falklands on Friday.
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This news broke with Whitehall surprisingly empty. Lord Carrington was in Israel. Sir Michael Palliser, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, was retiring that week. The Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Sir Terence Lewin,
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was in New Zealand and the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Edwin Bramall, was in Northern Ireland. The Commander-in-Chief Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse,
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was in Gibraltar. These absences may have added to the confusion of the day, but from Mrs Thatcher’s vantage point they may also have made a positive difference to the outcome of the whole drama.

The first intelligence report of the invasion was brought to Mrs Thatcher by John Nott, the only relevant Cabinet minister in London that day. They met in her room in the Commons in the early evening. Nott was accompanied by his Permanent Secretary, Sir Frank Cooper. Sir Antony Acland,
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Sir Michael Palliser’s successor, was present, as was Richard Luce. Mrs Thatcher was attended by Clive Whitmore and John Coles. Ian Gow kept coming in and out. Mrs Thatcher later described Nott’s announcement of the impending invasion as ‘the worst … moment of my life’.
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All those in the room remembered the atmosphere as gloomy and confused. The priority was drafting an urgent message to President Reagan, warning him of the impending invasion and asking him to intervene. Henderson was also told to see Haig and plead the British case. However, as was her wont when under stress, Mrs Thatcher soon hurried off down the byways of minutiae. Even worse for her than the appalling fact of invasion, however, was the attitude of those at the meeting about what could be done. Nott recalled that the
meeting was ‘heavily weighted in favour of the Foreign Office search for a diplomatic solution’,
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but Luce noted almost the opposite, recording that there was much too little focus on how to try to head off the invasion by diplomatic means.
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In fact it was Nott himself, in the absence of the other principals, who was the only person in a position to have given the Prime Minister a strong positive view of his own. This he did not do. Backed up by Cooper, he said he thought that recapture was all but impossible. According to John Coles, Mrs Thatcher was aware that doubts about the chance of recapture were also held by some of the service chiefs, notably Bramall, so the balance of expert knowledge was against her. Coles recalled the exchange between Defence Secretary and Prime Minister, which he noted: ‘Mrs Thatcher: “You’ll have to take them back.” Nott: “We can’t.” Mrs Thatcher: “You’ll have to.” ’
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She had the will, but not yet the way.

Another man who had received the intelligence report was Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord. He had just got back to his office from a day of naval inspections near Portsmouth. On his desk, as well as the intelligence report of the impending invasion, was the navy’s brief on the situation, saying, in effect, ‘Don’t touch it.’
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He was struck by the incompatibility of the two documents. If the invasion was happening, he reasoned, the navy should be doing everything possible to respond. Still wearing his admiral’s day uniform,
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Leach went straight to Nott’s office in the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Being told that he was already with the Prime Minister in Parliament, Leach hurried to the Commons. Despite his uniform, the ushers in the Central Lobby were reluctant to let him through and made him wait for a quarter of an hour, until he was rescued, fuming, by a whip who gave him whisky. When at last he reached the Prime Minister’s office, he found ‘an aura of complete gloom. No one was talking. They were patently floundering.’ For Leach, it was ‘a stroke of luck’ that Mrs Thatcher was present, because if, as he had first expected, his meeting had been with Nott alone, ‘Nott wouldn’t have moved.’
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Leach thoroughly despised Nott for what he believed – unfairly – was his attempt to break the navy. Inspired by the importance and drama of the situation, the presence of the Prime Minister and possibly by the urge to get his own back, he was fired up. ‘I seriously believed that there was no point in having a navy if you couldn’t use it.’
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Both Leach and Mrs Thatcher, who was always impressed by a uniform, were conscious that he was the only serviceman in the room. It was the admiral, not the Prime Minister, who took the initiative in the conversation.
Leach asked for her political clearance to assemble a task force. As Leach remembered it, ‘No one uttered a word.’ ‘What does that mean?’ she asked eventually.
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He explained, and she asked further questions about naval capacity, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters. Leach pointed out that everything was in short supply, but not impossibly so. According to Coles, there was no direct reference to the defence cuts which she and Nott had been pushing through, but the consciousness of these was palpable.
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This gave Leach the moral advantage. ‘How long will it take to assemble the Task Force?’ asked Mrs Thatcher. ‘Three days,’ said Leach.
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‘How long to get there?’ ‘Three weeks.’ ‘Three weeks!’ exclaimed the Prime Minister, innocent of geography and of the sea. ‘Surely you mean three days.’ ‘No, I don’t.’
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‘Can we do it?’ asked Mrs Thatcher with piercing urgency. ‘We can, Prime Minister,’ said Leach, ‘and, though it is not my place to say this, we must.’ ‘Why do you say that?’ ‘Because if we don’t do it, if we pussyfoot … we’ll be living in a totally different country whose word will count for little.’ At this, Leach remembered, Mrs Thatcher gave a sort of half-smile, as if this was what she had wanted to hear.
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By the time he left the meeting several hours later, Leach had full authority to assemble the Task Force, though not to sail.

The meeting of 31 March has acquired mythical status in the history of the Falklands War, rightly so. For the rest of her life, Mrs Thatcher would often revert to this meeting in conversation, always making Leach the hero of the drama. He gave her ‘tremendous heart’, according to Clive Whitmore,
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and it was heart, at that moment, that she needed most of all. Diplomacy was in ruins; defeat, in the imminent invasion, was certain. Her country’s honour, her government and her career might all be lost in a matter of days. Her instincts told her to fight, but she could not do so in defiance of all expert advice. Leach gave her the necessary countervailing expertise. Nott, more generous to Leach than vice versa, admitted in later years that he had not been briefed about how the Task Force could be put together.
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He was pushed to one side. His private secretary, David Omand, who was at the meeting, noted that Mrs Thatcher’s very inexperience emboldened her; ‘She was placing the entire trust of the government in the navy.’
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The next morning, Thursday, April Fools’ Day, the Cabinet met, and wrung its hands. Humphrey Atkins, Carrington’s number two at the Foreign
Office, told colleagues that ‘we are trying to solve the problem by diplomatic means.’
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Mrs Thatcher added that ‘The US [is] the most powerful thing available to us.’
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Disappointed by Haig’s ‘very flabby reply’
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to Carrington’s earlier request for help, Mrs Thatcher now awaited the results of her own appeal to Reagan. Difficulties with America were soon to become a recurring theme. They caused neuralgia in Whitehall because of the collective memory of the disaster in 1956 when the United States had decided not to support the Anglo-French occupation of the Suez Canal. The result had been the fall of Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister, and the end of Britain’s standing as an imperial power. On this day, however, President Reagan did his best. Because he was in hospital undergoing tests on his urinary tract, he was not able to ring President Galtieri until 6.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. To the amazement of White House staff, Galtieri refused to take the call. Dennis Blair of the National Security Council (NSC) staff, quickly realized why: ‘I said “No, wait a minute. They’re invading, but he hasn’t worked out yet what to tell our President.” ’ Blair then rang Robin Renwick at the British Embassy to tell him that the invasion must be going ahead.
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About two hours later, Galtieri agreed to speak to Reagan. ‘Galtieri had obviously been drinking,’ recalled William Clark, the National Security Advisor, ‘and this habit may have influenced his actions.’
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The conversation lasted a tortured fifty minutes, with Galtieri dancing around Reagan’s questions before rejecting the President’s good offices for finding an agreement. When Reagan asked for his assurance that there would be no landing the next day, ‘Galtieri responded with a portentous silence.’
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According to Jim Rentschler, Blair’s colleague on the NSC staff, Reagan warned Galtieri that ‘if armed force is involved we will not be able to side with you … you will be the guilty party.’
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He also warned the General that Mrs Thatcher would retake the islands by force and that, if she did so, the US would back her.
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Nicko Henderson, the British Ambassador in Washington, was swiftly informed of this unsuccessful conversation. According to Renwick, Henderson then telephoned the Prime Minister direct to tell her the news. Waking her up at four in the morning
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he found her ‘not at all in a bellicose mood, but in a very sombre one, understanding full well the dangers that lay ahead.’ Renwick, meanwhile, ‘asked the Ministry of Defence to warn the Governor that he was going to have Argentine marines on his doorstep next morning’.
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In fact, Henderson told Mrs Thatcher little she did not already know. Not long before midnight, she had received Carrington at No. 10. He had come straight off the plane from Israel, and was exhausted. Also present
were Leach, Nott, Luce and various private secretaries. Luce was surprised, as he had been the previous day at the long meeting in Mrs Thatcher’s room in Parliament, that ‘no proper notes were taken by the private secretaries’.
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The meeting was frequently interrupted by calls from Haig to Carrington. Haig eventually reported that the President’s conversation with Galtieri had been ‘to no avail’.
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It was decided to put British troops on immediate notice of deployment to the South Atlantic. Early the next day, Leach issued the directive: ‘The task force is to be made ready and sailed.’

‘The next day [2 April] was a nightmare,’ Luce wrote later. ‘I knew the invasion was coming and there was nothing we could do.’
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The Cabinet met at 9.45 a.m., and was told that the invasion was imminent and was bound to succeed. Mrs Thatcher explained the plans for the Task Force, and said that the government could announce in public that ‘we have put people on immediate notice to sail for operations.’ Francis Pym was more robust: ‘Why not instruct to sail?’ ‘I don’t wish to close options,’ Mrs Thatcher replied.
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Geoffrey Howe thought even this announcement was a bad idea because it would ‘give impression that we are in a position to reverse or reconquer. We ought to convey the opposite impression.’ Nigel Lawson, however, thought that people would be passionately engaged: ‘Public opinion won’t regard this as a faraway island.’
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Mrs Thatcher wanted to avoid a parliamentary debate, preferring a simple statement to the House. She also announced that the situation would be handled by a small group of ministers – Whitelaw, Carrington, Nott and Pym. This, rather than the full membership of the Cabinet’s OD Committee, was the germ of what later became known as the War Cabinet. ‘If your four main ministers get together quickly,’ she explained later, ‘you can carry OD or anything else with you.’
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At 11 a.m., Humphrey Atkins made a statement to the Commons on the latest situation. He was not able to confirm the invasion but reported, inaccurately, that the Governor had been able to communicate with the Foreign Office. Just as ministers were leaving the Commons, John Nott went to Mrs Thatcher’s room there to tell her, on the strength of a message from the Marines, that the invasion had taken place; this was not fully confirmed till 6 p.m. Luce gave himself some grim amusement by reading the very last intelligence report which said there was ‘no incontrovertible evidence of invasion’. Mrs Thatcher was deeply disturbed by the performance of the intelligence community. Patrick Wright,
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newly appointed chairman of the
JIC, was summoned to Chequers following the invasion to be dressed down at considerable length for failing to predict the attack. Wright had only been in the job for a couple of weeks, but this made no difference to Mrs Thatcher. The encounter ended with Clive Whitmore coming into the room and Mrs Thatcher saying, ‘Clive, I think Mr Wright needs a very strong drink.’
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