Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (129 page)

Mrs Thatcher was as clear as Thompson could have wanted about the risk, and in agony about it. As with the recapture of South Georgia, the start of actual operations left her superfluous to requirements and extremely anxious. On the day of the landing, a Friday, she kept a series of engagements in her Finchley constituency. Twelve hundred people and a military band gathered to watch her open an extension of Gersons storage company, and a speech was expected:

What could I say but that 8,000 miles was really only a heartbeat away – And it
was
for
all
our people … It was a matter of pride, respect, conviction and
being free
that meant we must restore the Falklands … Somehow I inspected everything, rode on a forklift truck had lunch in an enormous warehouse and then fled to the office to see if there was any news –
Not yet
. Of course there was more to do than let us know what was happening.
¹³²

At her constituency office she learnt ‘in concealed language’ that ‘events had happened but no more news … Then it was given on
TV
and the emotion at a reception at Woodhouse School that night was
overwhelming
. The Union Jack was flying in San Carlos Bay. We had returned to the Falklands. My heart was full but desperately anxious about casualties. We had landed on a hostile coast on a winter’s night with a fleet of ships full of men and equipment. Was it possible we had not been detected.’
¹³³
She returned to Downing Street, where cheering crowds had gathered. There John Nott informed her that there had been no casualties on landing, but the situation had grown worse in daylight. HMS
Argonaut
and HMS
Brilliant
had been badly damaged by air attack, and the frigate HMS
Ardent
had been lost, with twenty-two men dead. At that rate of attrition, Woodward calculated, his destroyer and frigate force would have been wiped out in two more days. Fortunately, he also calculated, the Argentine air force could not stand their rate of loss either.
¹³⁴
At 2025Z hours, Nott issued a statement saying, ‘British forces have now established a firm bridgehead on the Falklands.’ Five thousand men had landed. It was, wrote Admiral Woodward, ‘one of the most successful landings in military history’.
¹³⁵

This was true, but the protracted business of unloading gave many more opportunities for Argentina to attack. Mrs Thatcher was in a fever of impotent anxiety. She had very little to do and, on Bernard Ingham’s advice, had decided not to make any media appearances until events were clearer. With Thompson’s warning in mind, she worried particularly about the fate of the
Canberra
. While the ship was being unloaded, the Prime Minister could hardly bear it: ‘You couldn’t find me some decisions to take, could you?’ she asked Wade-Gery. ‘I find all this waiting around very difficult.’
¹³⁶
On the Saturday, 22 May, she visited Northwood to see what was going on. This did not please Admiral Fieldhouse, despite his excellent relations with the Prime Minister. ‘Keep that woman away,’ he said to Wade-Gery. ‘I’ve got a war to fight.’
¹³⁷
When she was at Northwood, Mrs Thatcher was sufficiently worried by the Argentine air attacks to ask Fieldhouse, ‘Can we still win?’
¹³⁸
In writing her memoirs, she did not want such a strong expression of doubt recorded. Instead, she quoted herself as saying, ‘How long can we go on taking this sort of punishment?’
¹³⁹

Favoured by clear weather, the brave and skilful Argentine pilots began numerous daring attacks on the British forces, reaching maximum intensity on 24 and 25 May. The Rapier missiles, on which Admiral Woodward had set much store, had been shaken up in transit, and could not, for the most part, be fired. The burden of repelling Argentine air attack fell heavily on the Sea Harriers. The Harriers exploited their manoeuvrability with great skill, and enjoyed the decisive bonus of Sidewinder missiles, supplied, thanks to Weinberger, by the United States.
*
Without the Sidewinders, Mrs Thatcher wrote, ‘we could not have retaken the Falklands.’
¹⁴⁰

Argentina’s Independence Day falls on 25 May,
^†
and the Argentine air force chose it to launch their most successful and audacious attacks of the war. The Prime Minister was working in her office in the House of Commons that evening when John Nott came to tell her that the destroyer HMS
Coventry
had been bombed by Argentine aircraft and was sinking. It later turned out that nineteen men had died. Because the details were so uncertain, it was decided not to release the name of the ship until the following day, but the fact that a ship, unnamed, had been hit, was announced that night: ‘Whether the decision was right or wrong I do not know – the effect was that
every navy
family was anxious,’ Mrs Thatcher remembered.
¹⁴¹
Later that evening, the duty clerk at No. 10 reported to Mrs Thatcher that the
Atlantic Conveyor
, which was carrying nineteen Harriers and the helicopters intended to transport troops across the Falklands terrain to Port Stanley, had been hit. There was even a false report from Argentina that
Invincible
had been struck. Denis Thatcher walked into the bedroom that
night to find his wife sitting on the end of the bed, weeping: ‘Oh no, oh no! Another ship! All my young men!’ He sat down beside her and said, ‘That’s what war’s like, love. I’ve been in one. I know.’
¹⁴²
Early the next morning, Mrs Thatcher was informed that most of the crews of both the stricken vessels had been rescued, that the Harriers – though not the helicopters, eight of which were lost – had earlier been transferred to
Hermes
and
Invincible
, and that the report about the strike against
Invincible
was false, but she went to bed that night not knowing any of these things, and worrying, too, that ‘somewhere east of the Falklands was the QEII
*
carrying
3,500
troops’: ‘Perhaps this was the worst night of all … we learned the deep sorrows of war.’
¹⁴³

In Mrs Thatcher’s mind, deep sorrow only strengthened her resolve to fight. Indeed, she was once again fired up by the idea that Britain should attack Argentine ships within their own waters – on the grounds that they were attacking British ones within theirs – and even launch raids on the Argentine mainland. Although ‘visibly uncomfortable at having to disagree with her’,
¹⁴⁴
the Attorney-General, Michael Havers, told her that this would be contrary to international law, and the idea was not pursued. ‘Our submarine commanders’, Mrs Thatcher wrote, ‘were left prowling up and down the line, very frustrated.’
¹⁴⁵

World opinion reacted adversely to the onset of the land war. From the UN in New York, Anthony Parsons reported that ‘The elastic of our support, even from our close friends (with the exception of the Old Commonwealth) is stretching very thin.’
¹⁴⁶
As soon as the British had landed on the islands, Pope John Paul II, whose visit to Britain the following week still remained in the balance, sent a message to Britain and to Argentina, beginning ‘In deep anguish’ and calling for a ceasefire and the ‘magnanimous acceptance of reasonable renunciations’.
¹⁴⁷
Mrs Thatcher replied the same day, saying that his anguish ‘finds immediate echo here in London’, but that the conflict was Argentina’s fault.
^148
†
Chancellor Schmidt of Germany started to criticize Britain publicly.
^‡
On 24 May, Al Haig called in Henderson and Robin Renwick. He was fretting about the opportunities for Soviet and Cuban influence and pushing for ‘magnanimity’. But Renwick had been briefed on Haig’s line in advance so the two Britons came
prepared. ‘Churchill was talking about magnanimity once victory had been achieved,’ Henderson told Haig; ‘… with his [Haig’s] military record he surely must understand that we couldn’t ask servicemen to risk their lives fighting their way across the islands and then tell them at the moment of victory that they had to stop.’
¹⁴⁹
Henderson also deployed a sensitive argument: ‘I reminded Haig how often he had assured me that this would not be another Suez. If the US Government now took action which would have the effect of trying to bring our forces to a halt before their mission was accomplished, the charge of another Suez would be raised. How would it be if the Cubans occupied Puerto Rico and we then said that as part of any settlement the Americans must withdraw as well as the Cubans?’
¹⁵⁰
These objections did not silence Haig, however. On 25 May, he telegraphed Pym, asking him to persuade the Cabinet to put forward terms for a just and reasonable settlement, and offered, for the first time, a US battalion-sized force (with Brazilian help) to guarantee the integrity of an interim administration on the islands.

Haig’s latest ideas included an international peacekeeping force and a contact group of Britain, the United States, Brazil and Argentina. For Francis Pym and the Foreign Office, who still clung to the idea that there could not be ‘simply a return to the
status quo ante
’,
¹⁵¹
the Haig ideas contained some merit: they also assumed, as Haig did, that Argentina, once thrown off the islands, would go on fighting, or seek some form of revenge. Mrs Thatcher felt compelled to look at the American ideas politely, but, with British troops landed, she was no longer willing to concede anything substantial. According to Robert Armstrong, she was ‘absolutely determined to see it through. She was not going to give in to pressure from Washington or anywhere else which implied any dilution or diminution of British sovereignty in the Falklands.’
¹⁵²
Henderson was worried by her reaction, lest it provoke the Americans, and rang round private secretaries frequently to keep abreast of her mood.
¹⁵³
On the various pieces of paper which, via Henderson, put forward Haig’s proposals, Mrs Thatcher repeatedly scribbled ‘No.’ He wrote in his diary: ‘Mrs T has not yet consigned me to the Tower; but I am told that her voice drops two dangerous decibels when she goes through my telegrams during inner Cabinet meetings. How much lower would it sink in patient but intolerant wrath if I included in my messages all Haig’s pleas that she should … even before we have overcome the Argentinian garrison, show magnanimity.’
¹⁵⁴

On 26 May, Pym informed Haig that with troops on the ground there had been a ‘major change in parliamentary and public opinion’ in Britain. The ideas he and Haig had discussed previously, of an interim administration or mutual withdrawal, were no longer realistic: ‘They were just not
political starters now.’
¹⁵⁵
Bowing to reality, Haig began to back away from his efforts to force a deal. He realized that Britain was not going to agree to negotiations while hostilities were under way, and that same day he reported as much to the President. ‘It would be a major error for us to pressure the British at all at this point,’ he wrote to Reagan. ‘Given the mood in London, American pressure would be in vain; we should conserve our leverage with Mrs. Thatcher until it can be used to produce results, i.e., when the islands are effectively in British hands.’
¹⁵⁶
But not everyone in the US administration was ready to accept an Argentine defeat as a
fait accompli
. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who dismissed the British determination to deliver victory on the battlefield as ‘part of the temperament of Mrs Thatcher’,
¹⁵⁷
kept up her pressure at the UN and with the White House.
*
Those around President Reagan were also anxious about the effect of the fighting on his forthcoming visit to Britain. The American press started to raise this concern, and Mike Deaver, Reagan’s Deputy Chief of Staff, told Henderson that if there was still serious fighting during the visit, ‘the banquet might not be televised and the President’s ride [on horseback] with the Queen might have to be cancelled.’
¹⁵⁸
It would look bad if the President were touring Britain and Europe during a bloodbath: ‘The mid-term Congressional elections were coming up. One of the things that Deaver’s crowd had been interested in was in showing Ronald Reagan the peacemaker.’
¹⁵⁹
Kirkpatrick, with support from Clark and Reagan’s staff, urged that the President should call Mrs Thatcher in the name of peace. He did so at 11 p.m. UK time on Monday 31 May.

The President began with flattery to make his point: ‘Your impressive military advance could maybe change the diplomatic options …’,
¹⁶⁰
but Mrs Thatcher did not give him much of a chance. She said that British troops were only ‘a third of the way’ to reconquest. She would not countenance Reagan’s Brazilian-based peace plan, or any idea of a premature settlement: ‘This is democracy and our island, and the very worst thing for democracy would be if we failed now … I didn’t lose some of my finest ships and some of my finest lives to leave quietly under a ceasefire.’ Reagan was interrupted repeatedly by Mrs Thatcher’s flow and found himself reduced to the occasional ‘yes’, ‘Well …’ or ‘Margaret, I …’. How would the President feel, she asked, ‘supposing Alaska were invaded’? Reagan
suggested that such a situation might not be entirely analogous. ‘More or less so’, she snapped. ‘Ron, I am not handing over … I’m not handing over the island now … I can’t lose the lives and blood of our soldiers to hand over the islands to a contact [group] … after we’ve lost some of our finest young men, your [sic] surely not saying, that after the Argentinian withdrawal that our forces and our administration become immediately idle? I had to go immense distances and mobilise half my country.’ Mrs Thatcher insisted that Britain had fought unaided, and therefore had full rights about what happened next. Given the scale of American material and intelligence assistance, Reagan might well have jibbed at this 1940 notion of Britain standing alone, but he did not. ‘Well, Margaret, I know that I’ve intruded,’ he said, ‘and I know how …’ Mrs Thatcher cut him short yet again: ‘You haven’t intruded at all, and I’m glad you telephoned,’ she said.
¹⁶¹