The Rest Is History - 170. The Falklands War: The Task Force Sails

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

In the second episode of our Falklands War mini-series, Britain is faced with an Argentine occupation and prepares to go to war. Margaret Thatcher discovers her inner Winston Churchill - but faces a titanic showdown in Parliament, which sits on a Saturday for the first time since Suez. The Task Force eventually sails - to huge public support - while the US, France and Chile all lend a hand.  Come for Tom's Iron Lady impression, stay for his Tony Benn as Dominic talks us through the second instalment in this epic four-parter. For access to all four episodes, go to www.restishistorypod.com Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Jack Davenport & Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Can we do it? Yes, we can, Prime Minister. And though it is not my business to say so, we must. If we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a totally different country

whose word will count for little. That, Dominic Sandbrook, was Mrs Thatcher and Sir Henry Leach, the first sea lord, debating what to do in the wake of the capture of the Falkland Islands by an Argentine invasion force. Tom, that was an extraordinary performance. That was, it wasn't quite on the level of your John Wayne, John Wayne as Genghis Khan that we had the other week, but it was up there. Thank you. And there will be more to come

over the course of this exciting series. Are you going to be doing General Galtieri? No, no, but there will be more Thatcher. And I'm hoping to do an Ian MacDonald as well, who was the Ministry of Defence spokesman. So, Dominic, that was a kind of sneak preview of the reaction in London. But before we get to London and how people in government and the opposition and the media responded to the humiliation

of the loss of the Falklands, we left it. On a cliffhanger. So Rex Hunt holed up in Government House and and the Argentines have arrived so what happens so there's sort of hours of of of shooting um the we left it exactly that with the governor Rex Hunt um he's holed up he's got his shotgun uh the or he's got a uh he's actually got a got a pistol because his driver has got a shotgun and the raw marines and they are surrounded they're about i don't know five ten times as many argentine soldiers who have just landed um at the beginning of um in the early hours of uh friday the 2nd of april 1982 and basically the marines are completely outnumbered they don't formally surrender they

don't want to do that but he orders them in his capacity basically the governor to lay down their weapons to avoid future bloodshed and then we have this moment so this is the early hours of friday morning and then we have this moment that we had at the in the first podcast in this series uh the argentines invade the little radio station that is broadcasting the news to all the people at the Falklands. They then argue among themselves. While they're doing that, Rex Hunt rings the radio station and he says, I'm dreadfully sorry this has happened.

Very convenient for everybody. But he sort of, he has these wonderful last lines. He says, I'm sorry it's happened this way. This is probably the last message I'll be able to give you, but I wish you all the best of luck and rest assured that the British will be be back and of course this sounds like empty bravado but i think he means it um so about 10 o'clock that morning argentine helicopters arrive outside government house and and dominic could i actually quote sir rex hunt as quoted by

you in your fabulous book who dares wins um out poured a horde of red-hatted gold-braided gentlemen who proceeded to hug kiss and embrace each other in typical latin fashion so i think you can see there why sir rex hunt was not a top diplomat no no why he had to be exiled to the but he then but he then he behaves very well rex hunts so he then goes along and he's introduced he goes to the town hall which is now completely occupied by Argentine troops and there is General Osvaldo Garcia who's the commander of the occupying force and

Garcia holds out his hand, Rex Hunt describes him as a sallow little man and Garcia holds out his hand to Hunt to shake so the Argentines who described in the first podcast as being very badly behaved in their own country sort of electrocuting people and stuff. One of the strange things is they're actually pretty chivalrous.

It's very important to them that they're perceived to be chivalrous by the British. Gentlemen. Yeah. They basically want the British to say, oh, well played. You know, this is a good sport. Because Argentina is a country where that idea of the british gentleman still has some currency it does it does play all that kind of stuff yes exactly and and there's this extraordinary thing where garcia holds out his hand rex hunt refuses to shake it and garcia says it is very ungentlemanly of you to refuse to shake my hand

and hunt says well it's very uncivilized of you to invade my country fair enough and then hunt very impressively given that he's surrounded by men with automatic weapons he says to this bloke um you have landed unlawfully on british territory and i order you to remove yourselves and your troops forthwith which they don't do and they basically put him and his wife mavis um onto a son presumably the. What about their son? Presumably the son as well. Yeah, I don't know what happened to Tony, actually. He disappears from the story. Get out of doing his O-levels. Exactly.

But again, in the sort of 1950s Peter Sellers comedy sort of touch, so they say we're going to put you on a plane and fly you out. He insists on getting his ceremonial sword, his hat with ostrich feathers yeah and he has himself driven to the airport in his red london cab with the union jack fluttering and all the the street well all the streets i mean the one street is kind of lined with hundreds of um falkland islanders who are kind of clapping and crying and stuff and he and he and mavis have flown off into exile so britain to eventually to britain yes um so that meeting that you alluded to earlier that had actually happened

two days previously so in london people had known that this was coming because they'd had intelligence that the argentine fleet was steaming towards the Falkland Islands. You know, Margaret Thatcher's in the House of Commons. She's asked by John Nott, her defence secretary, to go to his room. He gives her the news. The room starts to fill with people. They're all absolutely ashen. And she says, we have to get these islands back. You know, when the Argentines arrive, we'll have to kick them out. And John Nott says, well, we can't. And actually the consensus, pretty much the political consensus is we can't and actually the consensus pretty much political consensus is we can't and it's at that moment that the door opens and in comes the first sea lord sir henry leach he's been inspecting ships he's just heard the news so he's still in his his outfit and he

says that remark let's have a crack let's have a crack at johnny yeah well he it's not quite that tom because it's more melodramatic than that it's more apocalyptic he says if we don't do it we'll be living in a different country whose word will count for little yeah and and he and he's the son of a commander in the second world war who had died on hms prince of wales okay so shot by the japanese and what was then a sort of landmark humiliation and and leach joined the Navy as a boy. And all his life, I think, has been, you know, it's that kind of thing that you-

Once redemption. Has daydreamed about. And suddenly fate has delivered him a chance to, you know, avenge his father, prove himself worthy of his father. So he's head of the Navy. Yeah. And do the rest of the defence, the chiefs of defence staff, do they agree? They're all for it.

They're all for it. Okay. And Mrs. Thatcher, I mean, we haven't really talked about her much, partly because all her interest in her first sort of two and a half years as prime minister, all her interest has been in economic reform, in her harsh economic medicine. So, you know know of course she's she's very into the cold war she's very anti-communist all this stuff but you know a war

with argentina is the last thing that has ever been on her mind and it's an extraordinary thing this sort of transformation that happens to her because suddenly she is sort of transfigured into this you know she basically can dress up as Winston Churchill. She's, as you say, she's been very, very obsessed with economic matters, the kind of the social tensions that her economic policies have generated in Britain. But she is also a kind of very patriotic admirer of Kipling. Yeah.

Talks about Winston, all that kind of stuff. Winston. Winston. So presumably her instinct is to say we should do this. She has the chiefs of defence who also say, yes, we can do this. But she's surrounded by Tory grandees who, as we mentioned in the first episode, all seem to have won the military cross. So are clearly very brave men with experience of military service. But the impression I get is that by and large, they are less enthusiastic about it.

I think they are, actually. I think a lot of people, when her cabinet meet, so that's on the Friday night, so after the news of the invasion, the invasion has definitively happened. The cabinet has agreed to go for it, but I think they go for it much more reluctantly. She is all for it. She absolutely believes from the, from the very moment the invasion breaks, she absolutely believes Britain has to do it. You know,

it's as though this was the sort of, you know, Churchill famously, when he became prime minister said, you know, all my I'd been in preparation for this trial and all this stuff. I mean, I think there's a bit of Margaret Thatcher that – Failure? Do you remember what Queen Victoria once said? Failure? The possibilities do not exist. Exactly, exactly. And as the conflict goes on, she starts to play that part much more and more sort of self-confidently. But you're right that I think if she had said in that cabinet meeting on a Friday night,

well, there are all kinds of reasons why this would be very foolish to send a task force, then I think there'd been a lot of people. Quite relieved. Yeah, I think quite a few of her ministers said, yeah, you're quite right, Prime Minister. I'm insensible. Let's not overdo this. Let's not escalate. Now, interestingly, the Foreign Office,

who she absolutely despises as a kind of nest of appeasers, they send a preliminary assessment that night, the Friday night, that says Britain will not win international backing for using force. The United States will not support us. You know, we won't be able to persuade the British public it's worth it. It's just complete.

And to Mrs. Thatcher, she's like, what was the alternative? That a commoner garden dictator should rule over the queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence not while i was prime minister so she said she's saying that before the debate that is called for the first time in many many years on a saturday since sue is well well that's a kind of telling isn't it so very great humiliation and there and the house of commons is summoned on a saturday to debate what seems to be another catastrophic british humiliation and i think and i remember it vividly i remember it vividly because we were trying to set up a cricket net in our garden and our garden wasn't really big

enough to tell your life is beyond parody i mean i know i know so uh it was kind of tricky we had to kind of work out the angle so we could just about squeeze it in with all going up a hill and things it wasn't it wasn't very effective but um i remember while we were struggling with the nets and the polls and everything listening to the debate and it was it was my first experience of listening to a debate in Parliament. And it couldn't have been more dramatic. Of course. Because when she goes, people think she could fall. She could be toast.

Because it is humiliating. Yeah, it's a humiliation. It's a total humiliation. And she's answerable for it. Yeah, absolutely. It happened on her watch. Intelligence failure happened. Now, you know, how much is she personally responsible

we're not really well the buck stops with the prime minister absolutely so in other words had she been in opposition and had it happened to james callahan or michael foot she would have been the first to lead the prosecution so it's completely reasonable that she takes the blame um she gives at first quite a tentative performance because she knows that she's going to get a lot of flack the press that morning is awful for the government says you know this is the worst humiliation in british history but there's also right away an absolute sense in the press we you know this is world war ii we have to fight i mean the express i always think the express had a front page which in a weird way i mean this probably says a lot about me that i've always found quite

moving which is that they had the whole front page was a photograph taken a few years earlier they'd for some thing some feature they'd managed to get every single falkland islander on the lawn outside government house and they're all waving union jacks and looking up and they're being photographed from above and so the express ran that picture again on its full on its front page with the um the headline our loyal subjects we must defend them and this so right so so um the foreign office had said public opinion won't be in favor of a task force and straight away public and straight away public opinion is kind of swinging behind it now the other key constituency of course is the opposition yeah and the opposition is led by

michael foot who is um very distinguished political cultural literary figure uh wonderful books on byron and jonathan swift hazlitt and swift and all kinds of things very very civilized man um he had he he's definitely on the the left of the party and so it it's it's not immediately obvious that he is going to swing behind demands for the falklands to be taken back but But he does. And he has this wonderful phrase you quote from him, I know a fascist when I see one. Because as a young man,

he had been very opposed to appeasement, hadn't he? Yeah, he'd made his name with the pamphlet Guilty Men, attacking the appeasers in the late 1930s. And he sees himself as a very anti-fascist. So Michael Foote gives this, Mrs. Thatcher gives a tentative speech. Michael Foote gives this absolutely blazing speech um you know he says the four glories have been have been faced with an

act of naked unqualified aggression carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances they have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight just as they have looked to us for the past 150 years all this kind of thing and the tour is love it i mean they're all cheering everybody's cheering some of his own but but not not everybody right no i know because there are people on that well there are two famous figures on the left who are opposed to it the first the first and it will not surprise anyone is an obscure left-wing mp from islington called jeremy corbyn no he's not mp yet he's not an mp yet he's he's about to be adopted as the as labor's candidate in islington and he he he condemns foot as a kind of errant imperialist and dismisses the whole idea of sending a task

force as a tory plot to keep their money-making friends in business. But of course, the standard bearer of the left in opposition to foot is Tony Benn. And Tony Benn comes out very much against it. Michael's an absolute warmonger. But what I learned from your book is that in 1976, when Benn himself had been in government, he wondered what would happen in the event of an Argentine invasion. And he said the total spinelessness of the foreign office and the general decay of Britain would prevent it being taken back. So that's quite a swing in perspective. It is, exactly. So what's going on there?

Why is he... Well, Tony, Ben is on this sort of conveyor belt that is moving him ever leftwards. So that is not the reflection of the fact that he's... Oh, but it is also the reflection of the fact, yeah. Okay, so there's a slight degree of hypocrisy, but it is also reflected that he's moving further to the left. I think there is a bit of a degree of hypocrisy, actually. I know some listeners may be great Tony Benn fans.

You know, Tony Benn gets a lot of stick at this point from other people, by the way, on the left of the Labour Party. So Eric Heffer, for example, who ought to be one of his allies, says basically these people say to him, what is wrong with you? Can you not see that the Argentines are, by our lights, we see them as fascists. We should be absolutely against them. And somebody says, you know, if we carry on with your, we'll be known as the Munich Party and all this kind of stuff. So, yeah, I mean, certainly what you have, and we can get into this maybe later on when we talk about the public and the press, is you have clearly a division, which was also there at Suez, actually,

going back to what you were saying about the Saturday meeting of the House of Commons, between that part of the Labour coalition that is kind of working class Labour voters. Set up NATO. Yeah. Yeah. And then on the other hand, you have the high minded, you know, people who live in leafy, you know, university towns. So horrified by the thought of the very idea of going to war with anybody.

Right. And so they're not just in the Labour Party, are they? They're also, so we've got, um the sdp and the liberals so they are um they've they've come together in an alliance they they seem to be knocking huge chunks out of both the tories and labor and they're led by roy jenkins yeah who um have you got a nice quote about roy jenkins i do i do i do which i have lifted again from your book and this is by um parliamentary sketch writer called frank johnson brilliant writer every parliamentary sketch writer i know kind of i think tim stanley who telegraph telegraph

currently the telegraph sketch writer described him as the mozart of parliamentary sketch writers and he he um he he describes roy roy jenkins as um a one-man Switzerland, as prosperous, comfortable, civilized, and almost entirely landlocked. His only previous contact with the high seas had been in various good fish restaurants. And obviously, he, you know, in a slightly different way to Tony Benn, but he also is, you know, he's not suited to Nelsonian exploits and the waving of Union Jacks and things no absolutely not and I think so what you have there is a Jenkins Roy Jenkins who was a colossal figure in the imagination of the 1970s and 19

early 1980s because he's the absolute incarnation of kind of metropolitan um liberalism and uh civilized not not not not sort of capital l left wing but kind of mildly center left good chaps fine wines restaurants in brussels kind of kind of um remainers civilized metropolitan remainers absolutely absolutely he thinks this is backward you know it's atavist it as primitive atavism to be fighting a war over faraway islands to be waving the flag to be sending fleets utterly it's vulgar he's completely uncomfortable with it and there are people within his own party the sdp so british listeners some of them will know david owen for example um former foreign secretary yeah who is all for the falklands War.

He thinks, you know, go for it, embrace it. David Owen was kind of blue Labour, wasn't he? I mean, that's the division. So suddenly, Mrs Thatcher, I mean, Michael Foote has let her off the hook in the House of Commons, by the way, on the Saturday. By attacking the Argentines, really, rather than the government's intelligence failure, he's given her a bit of an opportunity. But it's clear that people i mean this is not a top-down thing at all the public are not brainwashed they're not led they're pushing for it the public i mean instantly you see it on the ground that um in in diaries in in in actually

the turnout of the docs when the task force leave um so that that weekend the task force already mobilizing for war they're already you know trucks piling into kind of portsmouth and southampton with equipment people being recalled all the ships being requisitioned and when they leave the the the key sides are packed with wives and girlfriends kissing and yeah. Ordinary people, though, waving flags and crying and singing patriotic songs and all this sort of stuff. So the task force does go and there are enough ships. You know, this has happened before the cuts have bitten. So we do, the British, we, I'm turning to the BBC, the British, the British do have enough ships to send a credible naval force yes uh so so these these are destroyers and aircraft carriers but also requisitioned uh ferries that are carrying the

troops well cruise ships so basically the two biggest so you've got two aircraft carriers that go which are hermes and invincible the two aircraft carriers that john knott had wanted to scrap and then they requisition the canberra, which is I think a P&O liner. And they're going to put on, the Canberra is going to have the Vanguard, which is called three commando brigade, which has got three Royal Marine battalions, two paratrooper battalions.

So that's about three to 4,000 men. And they're going to be taken on the Canberra. So you have, but you've also got all these support ships. So, you know, it's a sort of fleet it's a d-day style fleet because the logistics obviously are the Falklands are in the middle of nowhere you have to take everything with you yeah so there's this huge armada well there is there's Ascension Island isn't there in the middle of yeah the Atlantic is in the middle of the Atlantic that's British but it has an American base on it we've leased a base yeah so the amount we need the Americans on side right so the task force sets off um there's there's a kind

of growing sense of uh patriotism and i guess that um some people would say jingoism and that sense of the of a division i mean it's not as strong as you get, say, with the Brexit vote, but there are certain kind of parallels there, I guess, that are expressed through a wonderful collection of essays by Britain's writers. So Polly Toynbee, the Guardian columnist, and Margaret Drabble, the Hampstead novelist, and Salman Rushdie, of course. It's called Authors Take Sides on the Falklands. It was done in imitation of one from the Spanish Civil War. So they're all against the task force. Oh, it's brilliant, actually. But my favourite one that you quote is Jilly Cooper,

author of Bonkbuster novels. She clearly sends her contribution in late because the war looks like it's already happened. I have to confess, some of these Argentinian officers are so frightfully good looking, one might almost enjoy being taken prisoner by them. Yeah, of course. So that's her take on it. But all the others that you mentioned, like Rushdie, Polly Toynbee, Margaret Preble.

They're all against it. I mean, it's not just that they're against it, Tom. And this is how it does preview the Brexit argument. It is that they think they find it utterly unthinkable it's and it's embarrassing and vulgar but it's also turns on their head on its on on on its head everything they had thought about what britain was and they had thought that britain had turned its back on this sort of stuff you've got this fabulous quote again in your book from jonathan rabban fabulous travel writer. I'd heard Britain talking in a dream, he says, after watching the task

floors set sail, and what it was saying scared me stiff. Although part of the reason I think why he's scared stiff is that he actually finds himself moved by it, doesn't he? I think that's what's so brilliant. So do you know the brilliant thing about the Falklands from a historian's point of view is that that spring, two different brilliant travel writers that had the same idea. Paul Theroux was one and Jonathan Rabin was the other. And they both had the idea of sailing around the coast of the island of Great Britain and dropping in at kind of seaside towns and writing about, I guess, largely for an American audience, about what they found. And I think they both thought of this idea independently as Britain is a declining nation.

You know, it'll be old pensioners moaning about inflation and stuff and the empire having gone. And they both set off on sort of different routes. And the war breaks out while they're doing it. So, and the most amazing, Jonathan Rabin's book is called Sailing. And there's this, as you, I'm so glad you mentioned this because it's an amazing section

where he talks about watching, he's on his boat and he's watching the task force sailing on a little sort of black and white telly or something. And he thinks, his brain thinks it's ridiculous. We shouldn't be doing this. But his heart is going. Yeah. And then he notices that he's crying, his brain thinks it's ridiculous we shouldn't be doing this but his heart is going yeah and then

he notices that that he's crying you know with with emotion at the sort of the the anthem singing and all that sort of stuff um yeah and i think uh you're absolutely right that there's there's a very much a kind of brexit ish yeah divide although it's different because in this case it's about 80 percent of the public are all for it. And the polls suggest that, I think the most amazing polls say that four out of 10 people wanted Britain to just start bombing Argentina straight away. And two out of 10 people thought Britain should invade Argentina itself. Yeah. So, you know, the public...

So that's the Eric Banks equivalent of... Exactly. Okay. We should, I think, take a break at this point. And when we come back as as the task force steams its way across the atlantic let's look at the international context uh because that becomes very important okay i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of show

biz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in the heart of the Falklands War now.

The task force has set sail. And of course, this is very much an international conflict. I mean, I think people around the world, governments around the world, are looking in a certain degree of perplexity as Britain launches what seems, well, I mean, it is basically a colonial war. And within Britain, Dominic, the context for this is that John Lott has stayed in position, but Lord Carrington has resigned. Is that right? That's right. John Lott wanted to resign, but Mrs. Thatcher wouldn't let him. And he really resented that because he thought it made him dishonorable. So John Lott's the defence secretary.

But the foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, who ironically was the one person who had foreseen the invasion and said, we have to be, you know, we have to watch out for this. He nevertheless, because he's out of this sort of sense of honour, he falls on his sword. So it is a very honourable thing. So he gets replaced by Francis Pym. Who Mrs Thatcher hates. Who's another war hero, right? Who is, indeed, yes.

But he looks, he's a kind of, he's one of those slimy-looking Tory-Etonians. Well, they're all pretty slimy-looking. He looks particularly slimy. He's got shares in Brylcreem, clearly. Yeah. And he is, I mean, he's the likeliest to succeed Thatcher if she falls. Yes, probably, yeah. So she's a bit twitchy about having him on board.

Absolutely, yeah. And also he's a little bit wetter than Thacher or not. Although, Tom, her reputation in this regard is massively caricatured. You see, the common image we can get later into the, and probably a subsequent episode about the electoral impact of all this but the image of mrs thatcher that she herself colluded in the iron lady image um unbending determined bent on war you know we we will not talk we will fight all this sort of idea is utterly at variance with the documentary record, with the archival reality.

Well, it's very clear that from the beginning, she was open to compromise, that the British government was open to compromise, and was actually very keen on the idea of compromise. Now, they didn't want to omit this later on, because particularly when the war was won, all mention of this was basically banished. So right away, it's that britain cannot succeed without international support so the first thing they do which is really smart is straight away the first weekend that britain's ambassador to the united nations sir anthony parsons gets the security council to

approve a resolution i think it's 502 um that they want the argentines to withdraw from the islands and that passes and that passes because doesn't the the soviet ambassador says to antifascists you deserve the garter for that yeah exactly that's very very good um uh nice thing for the soviet so the soviet union abstain because they hate argentina and britain equally as do china so the resolution passes now the amazing thing about this is the Argentine regime, the Galtieri regime, which we talked about in the last episode, is so incompetent. They haven't really planned for the aftermath at all.

I think because they just think Britain will accept it as a fait accompli. So they've lined up no diplomatic support. They have nothing. They have no real case. They are just utterly passive. So the British get this UN resolution. So the British have the um right but and there are three key countries three key countries in this drama the first we mentioned

in the first episode which is argentina's bitterest enemy chile yeah and so chile chile's kind of readiness to help britain is that on the basis of, you know... Hatred of Argentina. My enemy's enemy is my friend. Exactly, yeah. So the Chileans... So there were sort of economic links between the Thatcher government and the Pinochet government because they're obviously both embarked on monetarist experiments.

So their particular style of kind of economic reform. But the Pinochet government is also into the whole kind of attaching electrodes to absolutely singers and very yeah they're very they're very keen yes they they're very keen on them on on domestic repression but you know the british government has no problem with that because they're our cold war allies that's how they perceive it and um the chileans basically say we'll give you our intelligence we'll allow you to base you know the r the rF can have a sort of informal use of a Chilean base I think they just use that for surveillance and stuff

so you know everything that we know you can have any kind of logistical support it can't be done publicly because it breaks the kind of code of South American solidarity but you know we'll give you and so looking very very far ahead that's why when Pinochet gets exiled and comes to Britain,

Mrs. Thatcher goes for tea with him. Yeah, when he's put under- exactly. Okay, so that's the context for that. The general was very staunch, Tom. Right, so even though it's a crucial part of the British propaganda effort to point out that Argentina is a repressive, fascistic, military yonta. When it comes to Chile, they're our repressive, fascistic, military yonta. I mean, to be fair, just on the Argentines. So the Argentines, another one of the things that they're completely inept at public relations.

So the guy they've got commanding their troops in South Georgia is a is a man called i think his name is alfredo astiz a lieutenant and his his nickname is the blonde angel of death yeah that's not good because of his record of murdering nuns so i think um he's probably not the person that the argentines from a pr point of view should have had no charge of that that part of the operation anyway sorry tom okay so so that's ch Chile. And then there's another country led by the man who Mrs. Thatcher described as the staunchest of our friends. And nobody would expect this. And regular listeners who have heard your opinion on the country that this man led may be surprised to learn the identity of this man,

and it was none other than President François Mitterrand. The French were very staunch, Tom. so good to hear that mitterrand mitterrand mitterrand rang mrs that she was the first foreign leader to ring her and he basically said to her france is with you we will give you everything you need you will have our unstinting support and he meant it and do you think why is that oh it's because france can't have regimes nicking islands nicking islands yeah nicking colonial life they've got loads of them is that basically the reason then i think pretty much the reason it's also yes i think it is pretty much they might lose guadeloupe or right i think um so so what has happened is that uh the french

are one of the biggest military providers to Argentina. So they provide them- Exocet. Exocet missiles and Super Etendard planes. So battle standard planes, I suppose you would call, super battle standard planes. And Mitterrand says, basically, we'll give you all the specs on all the stuff we've sold to Argentina, so you'll know exactly how they work and all that stuff.

And we will not sell any more obviously not to Argentina but we also won't we've got a deal lined up with Peru and we will suspend that because the Peruvians might give some to Argentina so that's an unusual case actually of you know a sort of European competitor basically saying we will put our friendship with you above our own commercial self-interest um it's very striking mrs satchel was always incredibly even though she still kind of gave meter on a handbagging at european summits she was incredibly grateful to meet her on for this but again the weird thing is it wasn't massively publicized and the british public just didn't want to believe it

so it didn't enter into the imagination at all but she Mitterrand was quite keen on her, wasn't she? The eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, he was. And she was very keen on him. She liked Mitterrand. She didn't mind, you know, people's politics was irrelevant in some ways. The more lounge lizard-like they were, the more Michelle Stasher liked them. So, you know, Mitterrand loves him.

Reagan loves him. Helmut Kohl, who's probably- Sausage eater. Absolutely not. Yeah. Okay. So, well, you mentioned Reagan. So Reagan is obviously, the United States is obviously probably the most important.

Yeah, it is the most important. And the United States, in its response to the Falklands War, is split. It is. Britain is America's closest ally in NATO but Argentina is a kind of key bulwark of democracy as it's seen even though it's a fascistic dictatorship um and the the figure who is the American figure who is keenest on backing Argentina over Britain is Jean Fitzpatrick Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick sorry who is the ambassador to the UN.

Yes, exactly. So she's a kind of neoconservative. Jean Kirkpatrick was famous because she's a very strong anti-communist and she had written a big sort of thesis about the difference between totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships. And she said, authoritarian dictatorships are absolutely splendid. Totalitarian dictatorships are terrible. And we should back Argentina in this dispute. South America is very important to us.

The British are kind of yesterday's men. Who cares about them? And she is basically shouted down by the rest of the Reagan administration. His Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, very pro-British, basically says this stuff. He ends up getting a knighthood, right? He does. And he basically says to the people at the Pentagon, give the Brits whatever they want. Reagan is sort of on the fence because he's having to sort of referee these competing factions within the administration.

But Reagan's heart is very pro-British. He wants to back the British. And when he finally does get off the fence he's actually pretty pretty but but he's sitting he's sitting on the fence while um his uh secretary of state al haig yeah is jetting from washington to london to buenos aires this way and that's trying to patch up uh some kind of compromise and this is the context for what you were saying about mrs thatcher not being as dogmatically set on war as i guess because i guess subsequently every side has an interest in portraying her like that yeah she does because it casts her as the iron lady her enemies her opponents can because it casts her as kind of uncaring and inflexible but actually

she is more open to negotiation than the myth would suggest yeah that's absolutely right i mean al haig is a man with an ego the size of the moon, and he basically says, I will personally ensure there is no war. And he does this subtle diplomacy, like his old boss, Henry Kissinger, had done in the 70s. And he comes to Britain, and he basically can get a deal with the British. And the deal is that both sides will withdraw,

so the British will agree not to send their fleet too close to the Falklands. The Argentines will withdraw their troops. And then the islands, there are various iterations of this deal, but basically the islands will be administered for the time being by a kind of international condominium,

different powers, maybe Britain and Argentina, two of them. And for the next two years and in that time, they'll come to a deal on the sovereignty of the islands. Almost certainly, I think, Tom, that deal would have involved Argentina getting the sovereignty. Because I can't see there's any other compromise that they could possibly have accepted. And the really remarkable thing is that, for example, 14th of April, Mrs. Thatcher tells her cabinet, we have to accept haig's deal you know we can't we have to compromise and this is not the first time she does this by the way

um and and it's you know again this is as you said it's not well known mrs thatcher herself doesn't trumpet this later on so it gets forgotten she talked about it in her memoirs she does but she talks about it in a very evasive, shadowy way. Haig takes the deal. He goes off to Buenos Aires and the Argentines say no. And this is the interesting thing. Because Britain can be seen to compromise. It's very embarrassing for Mrs. Thatcher.

It would have robbed her of that sort of romantic, patriotic role that she was playing. Elizabeth I at Tilbury. Elizabeth I at Tilbury, exactly, or sort of Boudicca. But she could have done it. She could have said, we compromised and we avoided a war. It's absolutely impossible for the Argentines to compromise because all they have is nationalism in their locker. They've sent their troops and then

have to withdraw their troops after they've had crowds on the streets of buenos aires cheering and waving argentine flags would be humiliating for them and um they're completely intransigent haig says to them i mean haig says to them at one point if you'll forgive my language he says to his aides the whole thing is a charade a fucking charade these guys are diddling me this is about argentina and then he basically says to galtieri we know exactly what he says he says in the final meeting within a matter of days the british fleet will be upon you those forces are capable of inflicting severe damage on yours i don't for one moment question argentine courage but it cannot prevent your systematic defeat by sophisticated british surface subsurface

and air power blah blah blah the british will not bear the onus because you were the first to use force and they made a reasonable effort to reach a peaceful settlement there is no escaping the historical responsibility for what now seems inevitable he says this to galtieri galtieri still says no because the argentines also just have it in mind that the british will crumble because of the weather that they'll lose some ships that they'll be able to and all the time do you think what's their take on mrs thatcher do they feel because she's a woman therefore i'm sure do they feel kind of threatened by her but well they don't want to or do they think you know she'll burst into tears and run away?

I suspect Argentina is not a country in the 70s, 80s. No, it's not a feminist stronghold. It's not renowned for its progressive gender politics, particularly in the army. And I think undoubtedly they would despise her because she's a woman. They despise Britain for having a woman leader, and they see that as part of a sort of enfeeblement. But also, in the Argentine press, they present it always as, have you ever seen these covers of these magazines, Tom?

They're amazing. They always portray her with an eye patch as a pirate. And there's a brilliant, I can't remember what the periodical is, but we reproduced it in my book, Who Dares Wins, in color. It has a picture of Mrsrs thatcher and it says um pirata brouhaha assassina yeah pirate yeah guilty yeah pirate witch and assassin and they well i'm looking at them now um so that yeah there's one where it's a photo of her and they photoshopped on um an eyepatch but there's one as a fabulous a photo of her and they photoshopped on an eyepatch.

But there's one as a fabulous drawing of her looking very, very kind of haggard and crone-like almost with a pirate's kind of hat on. She's fingering a sword. Yeah, she's got a pirate's hat with a skull and crossbones. That's brilliant. Well, I must try and put that on the tweak advertising this. That's excellent. But Dominic, something that you say in the book, the fact that Mrs. Thatcher was not a man proved an enormous asset. So what do you mean by that? So that's in the context of the British cabinet, is it?

So the way she normally handles her business is she's incredibly interfering and bossy. I basically think she knows everybody else's business better than theirs. But this is the one thing that she knows nothing at all about. And nobody expects her to know about it. So she doesn't have a chip on her shoulder about it. No one could possibly expect her to know about tanks and planes and submarines. But she gets rather keen on military men. She loves military men.

She loves listening to them. She doesn't feel she has to compete with them as she does with economists or with her own, particularly her own ministers, who she loves to bully. So for once, I think, in her entire career in government, everybody says she listens. She takes advice. She's very sensible. She doesn't ever interfere. She just lets us get on with it.

She gives us clear answers. I mean, all the people who worked with her, all the the military men who often many of them had previously absolutely despised her um they say oh she was a dream to work with you know very decisive and let us get on with it now had she been a the other thing is i suppose you could say had she been a man with experience of war like so many of they all knew i mean they said we know what can go wrong she didn't and that meant that she was ready to go for it and so ready to trust men in braid oh she loved men yeah she loved them when they say yes we can do this and dominic to be fair um it it does go well so the task force does reach the south atlantic after what nine weeks is it no it's three weeks oh three

weeks that long well well they're shorter time well no it's um henry leach had said to her she said how long will it take to get ready the the task force he said it'll take three days and she said how long to get to the falklands and he said three weeks she said you mean three days and he said no no no i mean three weeks like it takes ages to get to the falklands um so they sail at the beginning of april they get to ascension island on the 19th of april um they don't land until towards the end of may so is it so actually tom you were right actually it's a very very long protract i mean they they sort of they have to allow time for the diplomatic process to play out and for everybody to catch up in the fleet so it's weeks so for weeks actually nothing really is happening the task force is just it's a 10-week

campaign all in all but for most of that time the task force is just kind of plowing through the waves so it's a bit like a test match it's kind of long periods and then sudden explosive action well except there's no action at all to start with because basically all that's happening is these blokes are on the ships sunbathing and they're just sort of limbering up but it all doesn't at that point it doesn't really seem real so a lot of the soldiers are saying well you know it'll be actually going to be fighting will we get back in time for the world cup which is happening in spain that summer but dominic one thing that does happen is we mentioned south georgia in the first episode the scrap metal behaved disgracefully by barbecuing a reindeer um and this is this is the first episode. Scrap metal. The scrap metal behaved disgracefully by barbecuing a reindeer.

And this is the first clash between British and Argentine forces. And it's a total British victory, right? Well, although it's a bit more dramatic than that, Tom. A few helicopters go blown up and things. So I think I said before, the 16th of April, the first aircraft carriers got to Ascension Island. And at that point, there were 127 ships in the fleet.

So it's a bloody big fleet. And there's about 10,000 men. And when they get to Ascension Island, they divide off 150 Royal Marines and 70 men from the SAS. And they're basically going to go off to South Georgia, which is, as we said before, hundreds of miles away from the Falkland Islands. It's really important that the government gets an early victory. But South Georgia, it's practically, you're virtually in Antarctica or you're getting on the way to Antarctica. So when the first helicopters go, 21st of April,

they drop these blokes. They're on a glacier. The tents blow away. It's kind of Shackleton, the terror style kind of freezing. Monsters lurching up out of freezing conditions. Basically, most of the tents are blown away. There's got about a couple of tents left

and they're all, some of the men are in the tents. The other men are trying to shovel snow away and it's just awful. And they basically have to radio and say, come and get us. This isn't going to work at all. The helicopters then crash.

Mrs. Thatcher gets the news the helicopters have crashed, and she thinks the men are dead. So she starts crying. It's the first moment of casualty. It's the first operation, really, of the war, and it's all gone wrong. And then she gets the news that a third helicopter has got there and got them out and she's absolutely on cloud nine and i think that that's a real psychological turning point for her because that really emboldens her um in future she's going to be much less keen on peace and she starts to

identify with the men and they're slightly our boys yeah our boys our brave boys our lads all that sort of stuff from that point onwards then on the 25th which is a sunday mrs touches at checkers and she gets the news that um they're going to start try the operation again this time it all goes absolutely splendidly they they attack an argentine submarine which is at south georgia called the santa fe and they cripple it um the the brit British commandos kind of arrive. The Argentines don't even fire a shot. They just basically give up completely straight away. The scrap metal-

So are they conscripts? Yeah, they are. I mean, almost all the Argentine- I mean, there are obviously some professional troops, but a large proportion of their troops in the Argentine army are conscripts. Because if you're a conscript, you wouldn't want to take on the SAS, would you?

No, I mean, these are very young guys. I mean, boys, boys basically from Buenos Aires who are in this freezing place they've no idea where they are bloody awful there's a lot of scrap metal dealers and suddenly the SAS pitch up so they're fun yeah so they surrender and um so that night there is this incredibly dramatic moment are you going to give us a rendition of that tom or is that no i'm not i think we're going to stop at this point oh no that is a cliffhanger so that's a cliffhanger so a lot of people won't be able to sleep they won't be able to sleep with excitement well in that case they'll have to join the the members

club won't they very good the rest is historypod.com we will kick off with my sensational impression of mrs satchel's response to the triumph at South Georgia. And then we will look at the task force moving in the Falklands, the sinking of the Belgrano, the sinking of HMS Sheffield, the press reaction in Britain, which is extraordinary. And then how Britain ends up taking the Falklands back. Hasta luego. Bye bye. how Britain ends up taking the Falklands back. Hasta luego. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest

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