Authors: Claire Berlinski

There is No Alternative (26 page)

BOOK: There is No Alternative

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Prime Minister:
The House meets this Saturday to respond to a situation of great gravity. We are here because, for the first time for many years, British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power. After several days of rising tension in our relations with Argentina, that country's armed forces attacked the Falkland Islands yesterday and established military control of the islands.

Yesterday was a day of rumor and counter-rumor. Throughout the day we had no communication from the Government of the Falklands. Indeed, the last message that we received was at 21:55 hours on Thursday night, 1 April. Yesterday morning at 8:33 a.m. we sent a telegramâ

Here the House erupts in howls, followed by cries of “order.” Thatcher allows the House to spend itself, then continues.

I shall refer to that again in a moment. By late afternoon yesterday it became clear that an Argentine invasion had taken place and that the lawful British Government of the islands had been usurped.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the whole House will join me in condemning totally this unprovoked aggression by the Government of Argentina against British territory.

A loud rumbling of “hear, hear.” The mood of the house is changing swiftly as Thatcher harnesses the anger toward her and directs it toward Argentina.

It has not a shred of justification and not a scrap of legality.

She concludes her speech thus:

The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. They are few in
number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavor and, I believe, the resolve of every member of the House.

It is not only with hindsight that a listener would conclude that Thatcher meant what she said. There is no trace of posturing or womanish hysteria in her voice. Some years later, FranÃ§ois Mitterrand's psychotherapist published a scandalous memoir claiming that Mitterrand had confessed to him, on the couch, that Thatcher had threatened to use atomic weapons against Argentina if the French failed to supply Britain with the codes to deactivate Argentina's anti-ship missiles. Supposedly, Mitterrand said, “To provoke a nuclear war for small islands inhabited by three sheep who are as hairy as they are frozen! Fortunately I yielded. Otherwise, I assure you, the metallic index finger of the lady would press the button.”
¹²¹Did she really say this? Did he? I assume not: This doesn't have the ring of real speech, and I don't for a moment believe that Mitterrand discussed these things with his psychotherapist. Nonetheless, if you listen to her voice on that day, you can easily imagine her not only threatening to push the button, but pushing it.

That day, after a feverish round of lobbying, British diplomats persuaded the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 502, calling for the immediate withdrawal of Argentine troops. Thatcher and her cabinet decided to dispatch the task force. Again, this was
an obvious decision, if only to strengthen the British negotiating position, and again, the surprise is not that it was sent, but that it was used.

Over the next several days, the aircraft carriers
Hermes
and
Invincible
set sail, followed by amphibious ships, specialist vessels, and some fifty ships requisitioned from the commercial fleet, as well as two rapidly refurbished cruise ships, including the
Queen Elizabeth 2.
The luxury ocean liner famed for its crisp white linens, sparkling crystal, and impeccable but unobtrusive service was swiftly refitted with three helicopter pads. Its lounges were transformed into dormitories and its carpets covered in hardboard.

In total, 110 ships carrying 28,000 men sailed southâall in a matter of days.

Interviewer:
Mrs. Thatcher, you've stated your objective very clearly, you've staked your colors to the mast and you are determined to free the Falklands, if you fail would you feel obliged to resign?

Mrs. Thatcher:
I am not talking about failure, I am talking about my supreme confidence in the British fleet . . . superlative ships, excellent equipment, the most highly trained professional group of men, the most honorable and brave members of her Majesty's service. Failure? Do you remember what Queen Victoria once said? “Failureâthe possibilities do not exist.”
¹²²

Some of the ships were superlative and some of the equipment excellent, to be sure. But when you are obliged to commandeer the
QE2
to supplement your fleet, you are most of all talking about “supreme confidence.” A violent winter was arriving in the southern hemisphere, with sixty-foot swells and Antarctic gales.
The Argentineans were piling men and materiel into the Falklands. Many have suggested that if Thatcher had had any military experience at all, she would not have been so confident.

But she hadn't.

Her Foreign Office was seized with the vapors, warning of a backlash against British citizens in Argentina, the ire of Britain's allies, the risk of Soviet involvement, charges of colonialism. “All the considerations were fair enough,” she later wrote.

But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister.
¹²³

This passage would sound vain and boastful were she not describing precisely what transpired.

None of her other problems had meanwhile disappeared. On April 8, this interchange was recorded in the House of Commons:

Mr. Cunliffe:
What Easter message can the right hon. Lady give the three million unemployed in this country? How does she suggest that they share the joys of Easter in the unprecedented atmosphere of despair and hopelessness in which they find themselves? In addition, is it not a scandalous indictment that for thousands of Easter school leavers their first job will be to sign on at an employment exchange? Does the right hon. Lady not feel that that is a scandalous state of affairs and that she must bear some responsibility for this shameless episode? Does she still believe and insist that life is better under the Conservatives?

The Prime Minister:
The best hope for future job prospects is to continue to try to reduce inflation.
¹²⁴

Failure in the Falklands would have been the end of Thatcher, Thatcherism, and the rollback of socialism in Britain. Her confidence under these inauspicious circumstances was, surely, a miracle of Providence. Leaders who become legend almost always display this strain of preternatural confidence. In all of history, the number of women who have both possessed it and achieved the power to exercise it may be counted on one hand.

The United States initiated a frantic round of shuttle diplomacy. On April 8, Thatcher received Secretary of State Alexander Haig and his entourage at Downing Street. Thatcher opened by showing him her portraits of Nelson and Wellington, then steamrollered the nervous, chain-smoking Haig, rejecting entirely his proposal to establish an interim authority in the archipelago under multilateral supervision. It was out of the question, she told him, instantly likening the idea to the appeasement of Hitler. The scene is wonderfully described by the American diplomat James Rentschler:

La Thatcher is really quite fetching in a dark velvet two-piece ensemble with gros-grain piping and a soft hairdo that heightens her blond English coloring . . . Dinner in the cramped, wood-paneled private dining-room is a very pleasant affair of overcooked British beef and quippy conversation, at least until coffee, when the PM gets down to the nut-cutter nitty-gritty. Thatcher, you see, just ain't buying our “suggestion” for a diplomatic approach to the crisis . . .
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 “woolliness” of our second-stage formulation, conceived in our view as a traditional face-saving ploy for Galtieri: “I am pledged before the House of Commons, the Defense Minister is pledged, the Foreign Secretary is pledged to restore British administration. I did not dispatch a fleet to install some nebulous arrangement which would have no authority whatsoever. Interim authority!âto 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 Commonsâand properly so! We in Britain simply refuse to reward aggressionâthat is the lesson we have learned from 1938.”

“Tough lady,” concludes Rentschler with some understatement.
¹²⁵

The prime minister concluded the evening on an arch note. “I do hope you realize how much we appreciate and are thankful for your presence here,” she said, “and how the kind of candor we have displayed could only be possible among the closest of friends. With everyone else we're merely
nice
!”
¹²⁶

Haig and his entourage returned the next day to Argentina, where vast, chanting crowds had assembled in the Plaza de Mayo. “AR-GEN-TIN-A! AR-GEN-TIN-A! THATCHER PUTA! GUERRA! GUERRA!” Rentschler, observing this scene, despaired of Galtieri's position. “Given the pitch of jingoistic sentiment whipped up hereabouts,” he wrote, “I can't possibly see how he's going to walk this cat back.”
¹²⁷

Haig delivered the news to Galtieri: Thatcher was intransigent. Galtieri, suspecting for the first time that he had liberated a genie he could not master, played the obvious card. He threatened to turn to the Soviet Union for assistance. Haig sent a cable to President Ronald Reagan from Buenos Aires:

Galtieri, face-to-face with the prospect of war, leveled with me. He said he could not withdraw both his military and administrative presence and last a week. If the British attacked, he explained, he would have to accept the offer of full support made by the Cuban Ambassador, who just returned after more than a year's absence. The Cubans implied they were speaking for the Russians, and even insinuated that the Soviets had offered to sink the British carrier (with Prince Andrew aboard), leaving the British and the world to believe an Argentine sub had done it. I doubt that such an offer was actually made by the Soviets, but we cannot discount it altogether.
¹²⁸

Haig added that the time for Reagan to intervene personally with Thatcher was at hand. “Good luck, Al,” Rentschler remarked dubiously to his diary.

The American entourage flew back to London, where Haig relayed the Argentine hard line. Thatcher's home secretary, Willie Whitelaw, chewed his nails with anxiety. A wintry gust of air, Rentschler noted, blew through the room from an open window as Thatcher stared fixedly down the table:

“I am afraid that this news fully reinforces the correctness of the course on which we are now embarked,” sez sheâ“the fleet must steam inexorably on” . . . the Iron Maiden is really toughening up her already robust talk, especially on
the question of the fleet standing off: “Unthinkable, that is our only leverage, I cannot possibly give it up at this point, one simply doesn't trust burglars who have tried once to steal your property! No, Al, no, absolutely not, the fleet must steam on!”
¹²⁹

And the fleet steamed on.