Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (121 page)

High color is in her cheeks, a note of rising indignation in her voice, she leans across the polished table and flatly rejects what she calls the ‘wooliness’ of our second-stage formulation, conceived in our view as a traditional face-
saving ploy for Galtieri: ‘I am pledged … to restore British administration. I did not dispatch a fleet to install some nebulous arrangement which would have no authority whatsoever. Interim authority! – to do
what
? I beg you, I beg you to remember that in 1938 Neville Chamberlain sat at this same table discussing an arrangement which sounds very much like the one you are asking me to accept; and were I to do so, I would be censured in the House of Commons – and properly so! We in Britain simply refuse to reward aggression – that is the lesson we have learned from 1938.’
¹⁵¹

Poor Haig was rather battered. His advocacy of ‘certain constructive ambiguities’ did not find favour, but he did maintain his position about the need for an interim administration. He also picked up an important impression: ‘When I got to London I learnt something that surprised me. She didn’t have a unified Cabinet. The two guys that were totally unquestionably behind her were Terry Lewin and John Nott. The rest were not behind her. Poor old Pym. Dick Walters was sitting next to me and I said: “He’s not long for this world.” ’
¹⁵²
At one point Pym urged Mrs Thatcher to hear Haig out: ‘The Good Lord did not put me on this planet so that I could allow British citizens to be placed under the heel of Argentine dictators,’ she said, glaring at Pym.
¹⁵³
But for all her bluster, Haig detected a deeper truth: ‘I then realized that Mrs Thatcher needed this. We – the US and Britain – needed it, to be perceived to be trying to get a peaceful solution.’
¹⁵⁴
Despite her irritation with Haig, Mrs Thatcher did not really dissent from this last point: ‘She knew in her heart of hearts that one had to be seen as trying to arrive at a diplomatic outcome. This was necessary for the management of our relations with other countries – including the Americans … It was necessary too for the management of the government’s position vis-à-vis the British public.’
¹⁵⁵
As was often her way, Mrs Thatcher secretly registered the need for certain concessions while arguing flat out against them in conversation. On 11 April she was presented with the draft ‘line to take’ for government spokesmen. It said, ‘There can be no negotiation about the future status of the Falkland Islands until the Argentine forces have withdrawn and British administration has been restored.’ Despite all her toughness with Haig, she took her pen to the draft and crossed out ‘and British administration has been restored’.
¹⁵⁶

On leaving London for Buenos Aires, Haig cabled to Reagan: ‘The Prime Minister has the bit in her teeth, owing to the politics of a unified nation and an angry parliament, as well as her own convictions about the principles at stake. She is clearly prepared to use force, though she admits a
preference for a diplomatic solution. She is rigid in her insistence on a return to the status quo ante, and indeed seemingly determined that any solution involve some retribution.’
¹⁵⁷
Although he stated in his memoirs that he was not trying to urge any ‘compromise of principle’ upon Mrs Thatcher,
¹⁵⁸
Haig thought somewhat differently at the time. The talking points for his meeting with Galtieri in Buenos Aires had Haig reviewing Mrs Thatcher’s insistence that Argentina withdraw its forces before any negotiations began. ‘I told her I was sure you could not accept this,’ Haig’s points continued, ‘and frankly, I don’t believe you should.’
¹⁵⁹
He told Reagan: ‘If the Argentines give me something to work with, I plan to return to London over the weekend. It may then be necessary for me to ask you to apply unusual pressure on Thatcher. If the Argentines offer very little, I would plan to return and confer with you. In this case, it may be necessary to apply even greater pressure on the British if we are to head off hostilities.’
¹⁶⁰
As was often the case with Haig, however, his line was not entirely clear.
*
In a second cable to the President on the same day, he first declared that Mrs Thatcher’s principle that aggression should not pay was vital for the US as well as for Britain: ‘it is virtually as important to us that she have that success, for the principle at stake is central to your vision of international order, in addition to being in our strategic interests.’ But he added that ‘The consequences of hostilities would be devastating. Our interests through Latin America would be damaged, and the Soviets might even establish a foothold in the southern cone.’ So Mrs Thatcher must get her way, and yet fighting must be avoided at all costs: it did not reflect reality: ‘Just as Mrs Thatcher must be able to show that Galtieri got nothing for his use of force, he must be able to show that she got nothing.’
¹⁶¹

Reagan himself was ambivalent. On the one hand, his instinctive sympathy with Mrs Thatcher was genuine. He was very anxious that her government should not fall, a concern that had been stoked by Rupert Murdoch, among others. Murdoch had earlier asked Vice-President Bush to warn Reagan that ‘anything less than Argentina’s pulling out of the Falklands will cost Mrs Thatcher her job’, adding that he was ‘very worried as to what will follow should Margaret Thatcher fall’. Bush reassured Murdoch that ‘all concerned here would not want to see the fall of the Thatcher government.’
¹⁶²
According to Judge Clark, for Reagan ‘there was no question as to where the blade would have to lie,’ and, from early on, the President authorized the trusted Weinberger ‘to give smart weapons
out the back door’ to Britain.
¹⁶³
But although he was consistent with his line of seeking a peaceful solution while in the end favouring Mrs Thatcher, Reagan was detached, almost cynical, in his approach. On 16 April the journalist Jack Anderson published the illicit tape of a call the President had made to Haig while the latter was flying to Buenos Aires. In it, Reagan asked about a possible British attack: ‘That submarine of theirs, do you think it’s apt to go ahead with retribution and sink anything within the 200 miles, and would that be enough to vindicate them?’
¹⁶⁴
This report, which Mrs Thatcher was informed by Nicko Henderson was authentic, distressed her. When she came to write her memoirs, she decided not to mention it because of the sour taste it left:
¹⁶⁵
she wanted to give a more positive account of her relations with Reagan.

Fortunately for Mrs Thatcher, the Haig party had a miserable time in Buenos Aires. Their treatment contrasted sharply with their experiences in London: ‘The Argentinians completely misjudged how to handle the US delegation,’ recalled Whitmore. ‘They did not even give them decent office accommodation nor let them put in all the communications they needed. They even failed to supply them adequately with food, drink etc… . Small things, but at a time of intense activity, it’s the type of thing that actually hits home. So they came back. It is fair to say that Haig’s attitude had softened considerably. They were pretty fed up with the Argentinians. There was a clear leaning to us, more sympathetic.’
¹⁶⁶
Haig experienced the greatest difficulty in persuading the junta that they should take the Task Force seriously and threatened to call off the negotiations. In the end, however, he cabled President Reagan that, after ‘nearly twelve hours of gruelling and emotion-filled talks’ with Galtieri and the Foreign Minister, Nicanor Costa Méndez, he had got from them ‘a formula that would involve transitional US–UK–Argentine tripartite supervision of local administration, and we have blurred the question of whether the negotiations would result in Argentine sovereignty.’
¹⁶⁷
This, he thought, was worth taking to London. As he left Buenos Aires on Easter Sunday, however, Haig was handed a paper by Costa Méndez which effectively retreated from the concessions made. He put this on one side, because Costa Méndez had described it to him as his ‘personal thoughts’, and continued to London, sending a message in advance that there were ‘tentative cracks in the Argentine stone wall’ and that the situation ‘will need the highest statesmanship of both our governments’.
¹⁶⁸

The Haig team reached London on the morning of 12 April. Although Downing Street was in some disarray because of repainting, Haig and his men were given offices there. They were perched in the room of the patronage secretary responsible for ecclesiastical appointments in the Church
of England. On the wall was a map of England divided according to its dioceses. Where Haig might have expected to see charts of the South Atlantic, with places like Southern Thule or Punta Arenas on them, he saw names like ‘Bath and Wells’ and ‘Sodor and Man’. This exerted an odd fascination on Haig, who said to Robert Wade-Gery, ‘Tell me about this C of E thing,’ and ‘went on and on about it’. As a result, the American party were late for their meeting with Mrs Thatcher. ‘Robert, why were you so long?’ asked Mrs Thatcher. ‘If I told you, Prime Minister,’ he replied, ‘you wouldn’t believe me.’
¹⁶⁹
Pushing the bewildering world of Anthony Trollope from his mind, Haig gave the Prime Minister his account of what had happened in Buenos Aires: ‘The Navy was looking for a fight. The Air Force did not want a war. The Army was somewhere in between.’ He said that Galtieri had warned him that Cuba had offered Argentina all possible help ‘with the full support of the Soviet Union’ and that the Soviets were prepared to sink British vessels. Haig warned Mrs Thatcher that, without a settlement, Argentina might become a ‘Soviet outpost’.
¹⁷⁰
He then served up what was to be the first of many versions of essentially the same dish. His seven points included mutual withdrawal of troops, the US–UK–Argentine ‘commission’ and the restoration of ‘traditional local administration’, but with Argentine representation and no return of the British Governor; a final settlement of the problem would have to be achieved by 31 December that year.

When it discussed these proposals that afternoon, the War Cabinet was not disposed to reject them out of hand. In the early evening, Mrs Thatcher, Haig and their respective teams met to go over the draft from Buenos Aires more carefully. ‘It soon became clear’, wrote Mrs Thatcher in her private account, ‘that we had
not
got the full story. Galtieri wanted the Task Force to
turn back
the moment an agreement was signed.’
¹⁷¹
She explained that she ‘would not survive in the House of Commons if the Task Force stopped before the Argentine withdrawal had been completed’, but she offered a bit more than she mentioned in her later accounts: it might be possible for the Task Force to move more slowly, she conceded.
¹⁷²
Mrs Thatcher even agreed to drop the word ‘interim’ when referring to the proposed joint administration, seeing the point of some of the vagueness to which she was constitutionally averse. She accepted that ‘it might be worth making big concessions if Argentine withdrawal could be guaranteed.’
¹⁷³

That morning’s
New York Times
, however, had carried an article based on the ‘personal thoughts’ that Costa Méndez had pressed into Haig’s hand, showing them to be the official Argentine position. In the evening, Haig, who had not previously mentioned these points to Mrs Thatcher, rang her to say that he had now spoken to Costa Méndez and this was
indeed the case: his demands were ‘absolute’. ‘What a sad thing!’ she exclaimed.
¹⁷⁴
He telephoned her again at 1.20 in the morning after further talk with Costa Méndez. He said that Argentina still insisted absolutely on sovereignty, an unacceptable ultimatum. As she later recalled: ‘It seemed as if our previous day [by which she meant earlier the same day] had been wasted – and yet – wasn’t this really what we expected of a junta.
*
The condition for withdrawal was that they keep the spoils of
invasion.’
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She told him that the Argentine back-tracking meant that he could not now return to Buenos Aires, and that he should say so publicly, explaining why.
¹⁷⁶

Al Haig was, Mrs Thatcher said, ‘very depressed’.
¹⁷⁷
In the Foreign Office too, there was ‘a terrible sinking feeling’ as the advance towards hostilities began to feel to some like ‘an unstoppable process’.
¹⁷⁸
As Jim Rentschler noted in his diary, the next morning, 13 April, was perhaps ‘the lowest point of the whole project’: ‘The first part of the day is mired in extreme pessimism; Haig’s phone discussion with his Argentine opposite number late last night left very little room for maneuver.’
¹⁷⁹
It was at this point that Mrs Thatcher could have pressed home her case that there was nothing left to talk about, and all negotiations should therefore end. She did not do so. Haig told her that he ‘could say publicly that he was suspending his own efforts, making it clear that this was due to Argentine intransigence. But if he did so other less helpful people might try to intervene,’ Mrs Thatcher later wrote. ‘I was keenly aware of that and I also felt that public opinion here required us not to give up on negotiations yet.’
¹⁸⁰
Haig agreed to continue his efforts and promptly returned to Washington before taking his latest proposals to Buenos Aires. At Chequers the previous weekend Anthony Parsons had impressed upon Mrs Thatcher how important it was to fill any diplomatic vacuum at the UN which might otherwise be occupied by a growing ‘anti-colonial’ coalition against Britain, spinning matters out so that the position adopted by Resolution 502 was maintained.
^†

Mrs Thatcher was also impressed by the level of international support that had accumulated since the Argentine invasion. First, covertly, had come Chile, whose own dispute with Argentina over the Beagle Channel had made it hypersensitive to Argentine aggression. Even before the invasion was complete, Chile had offered Britain the use of its ports. From then on, intelligence and logistical co-operation was constant. By 6 April, it had offered the services of its air force and navy, authorized by the dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.
*
Most Commonwealth countries, notably the countries of the Old Commonwealth, also fell in quickly behind Britain. New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, had offered his enthusiastic support on the first Saturday, as had Malcolm Fraser of Australia. Then, after the call from Mitterrand, had come real, though rather more cautious support from Helmut Schmidt and, to Mrs Thatcher’s pleased surprise, an EEC vote, on 10 April, to impose a total ban on Argentine imports for four weeks from 17 April. She was conscious that this goodwill should not be presumed upon. At home, she came to understand that continuing the diplomatic process until the Task Force reached its destination was essential. Even though this process was very unlikely to produce a result she could accept, it would serve to placate the ‘wetter’ members of her party, and disable the Opposition, without enraging her natural supporters. John Nott summed up the role of Haig as it was emerging: he was ‘polite, charming, a frightful nuisance, but he filled this great long vacuum’.
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