Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (130 page)

In the White House, though, there was dismay. Jim Rentschler of the NSC staff listened in on the call. A ‘disastrous phone exchange with the PM’, he noted in his diary. No one had checked with the NSC to make sure that the President was properly briefed and so he ‘came off sounding like even more of wimp than Jimmy Carter’.
¹⁶²
Rentschler recalled: ‘Here is the strongest US leader since Theodore Roosevelt on this telephone exchange with the British PM. And he tries to put his talking points across and she would just come back and say “Listen, Ron. They were the aggressors. They asked for this. We gave them every chance to pull back. They didn’t pull back. I’m sorry. We’re not going to stop this military campaign when we’re at the point of total victory.” Reagan would try to get in and would say, “Yes Margaret. Ah … er, er, er … yes, yes, yeah …” Thatcher was just telling him what’s for.’
¹⁶³
Haig, too, was in a great agitation about the call. Opposed to further pressure on London just days earlier, he now reverted to prior form and rang Henderson warning of ‘great difficulties ahead in our relations … you must help the Argentines to find a way out, short of total humiliation.’
¹⁶⁴
Judge Clark saw Henderson and said that Reagan had been disturbed by Mrs Thatcher’s claim that Britain had acted on its own.

Mrs Thatcher also chose to be angry about Reagan’s intervention, complaining that the White House had not given warning of the President’s concerns in advance of the call. For this reason, she wrote in her memoirs, ‘I was perhaps more forceful than friendly.’
¹⁶⁵
She rang Henderson on an open line soon after the call and said that she was ‘dismayed’ by Reagan’s attitude and ‘most upset’ and she wanted Henderson to tell the President so. ‘It is pure Haigism,’ she said. ‘This phrase’, Henderson noted, ‘was uttered in the most withering tone, the speaker no doubt aware of the openness of the line.’ ‘We’ve lost a lot of blood,’ she went on, ‘and it’s the best blood.’
¹⁶⁶
It seems likely that Mrs Thatcher was deploying her indig
nation in a calculated way. The call had not seriously altered her attitude to the President: ‘I don’t recall her being all that angry with Reagan personally over this,’ said Whitmore. ‘She understood that he was basically personally sympathetic … but that he was straddling still an administration that was pulling in different directions.’
¹⁶⁷
In an interview with the
Washington Post
which appeared three days after her telephone conversation with Reagan, she declared that the President had been ‘absolutely marvellous’ in his view that aggression should not pay.
¹⁶⁸
In private she drew confidence from her belief that, so long as she held her ground, ‘the administration was very largely behind the British position and she could count on their support in the final analysis.’
¹⁶⁹
In a sense she was right, but the Americans did not give up their quest for some last-minute saving of Argentine face. The diplomatic stage now moved to the UN and to Versailles, where the G7 leaders were due to gather on 4 June.

Given the course of the fighting in the ten days after the Task Force landed, it was scarcely surprising that Mrs Thatcher hardened her attitude to any deal with Argentina. The combination of painful losses and military success fired up her passions. She worked in the spirit of Sir Francis Drake’s prayer that it is the pursuing of ‘any great matter’ until it be ‘thoroughly finished’ which ‘yieldeth the true glory’. She felt ‘an element of guilt’
¹⁷⁰
about the entire Falklands operation, both because of her ultimate responsibility for the policy failure which had made the Argentine invasion possible and because of the direct danger to the men. ‘At No. 10,’ she wrote in her private memoir, ‘one was protected and safe – one felt so guilty at the comfort.’
¹⁷¹
Mrs Thatcher believed ever more strongly that would-be peacemakers must be made to understand that nothing should prejudice the success of the Task Force or unnecessarily endanger servicemen’s lives. She applied this not only to diplomats and foreign leaders, but also to the media. As the landing at San Carlos approached, there was outrage among the Task Force that the BBC External Services had broadcast that the Battle Group and the Amphibious Group had joined up. And when, later, British troops were preparing to attack the Argentine forces at Goose Green, the BBC broadcast the fact that the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment were within 5 miles of Darwin near by. Lieutenant Colonel ‘H’ Jones, the officer commanding the attack on Goose Green, told comrades that he wanted to sue the BBC for this. ‘There was talk among the men that the Director-General of the BBC should be charged with treason.’
¹⁷²
All Mrs Thatcher’s sympathies were with the Task Force and against the media. ‘Many of the public (including us)’, she wrote, ‘did not like the attitude [of the media] particularly of the BBC … My concern was always
the safety of
our
forces. Theirs was
news
.’
¹⁷³
The BBC, in particular, seemed neutral between Britain and Argentina, and this she more than once criticized in the House of Commons. Of the Darwin report, she wrote, ‘Can there ever have been an army which had to fight its battles against media reporting like that?’
¹⁷⁴
Although Mrs Thatcher always had a good understanding of how to use the press and television to project herself in the Falklands crisis, her dislike of the media’s behaviour probably made the task of running information during the war harder for the government. Bernard Ingham complained that the role of PR was being neglected.
¹⁷⁵
There were times when the understandable desire to withhold information which might be of use to the enemy led to the withholding of information which the public needed to know, and created unnecessary anxiety about potential losses. Luckily for Mrs Thatcher, most of Fleet Street, though not the broadcast media, was extremely sympathetic to her cause.

Once the Task Force was landed, Mrs Thatcher felt she could return to the public sphere and strengthen her broad moral and political arguments for what it was doing. Speaking to the Conservative Women’s Conference on the day after the Argentine Independence Day attacks, she deployed the phrase of Harry Truman which she was later repeatedly to apply to the conflicts of the Cold War – that she wanted not mere peace, but ‘peace with freedom and justice’.
¹⁷⁶
She emphasized the old imperial ties by quoting the New Zealand Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, ‘With the Falkland Islanders, it is family,’ and she invoked Shakespeare (
King John
): ‘Nought shall make us rue, If England to herself do rest but true.’
*
In her
Washington Post
interview a few days later, she took from the Falklands experience a renewed idea of the British character: ‘If you ask a person here what he would associate with Britain, it’s not this talk about the welfare state or any sort of benefits or jargon … he would say “We are a free country.” ’
¹⁷⁷

In her address to the Conservative Women’s Conference, Mrs Thatcher also used a phrase which betrayed the problem on her mind. There was, she said, ‘no question of pressing the Force Commander to move forward prematurely’.
¹⁷⁸
But, in a sense, there was just such pressure. Two things had happened. The first was that the requirements of politics now diverged from immediate military needs. The greatest fear for the British government was no longer a negotiated settlement but irresistible international pressure for a ceasefire. It would have been intolerable for Britain to have had to stop fighting with only a toehold on the islands. Because of this, it was
vital for the Task Force to recapture so much ground so quickly that all talk of a ceasefire would be superseded by the restoration of British administration in Port Stanley. Unfortunately, while the planning of the landing had been so careful and intense, the plan for moving on to repossess Port Stanley was surprisingly vague. The second consideration was the home front. The War Cabinet believed that any sense that the British forces were hanging around at San Carlos or unable to break out would dismay domestic opinion. It therefore urgently wanted a move forward, and if it was not possible immediately to close on Stanley, it wanted a visible victory. An attack on the Argentine garrison at Goose Green seemed to fit the bill.

On Wednesday 26 May, the day of Mrs Thatcher’s speech to the Women’s Conference, Fieldhouse sent Brigadier Thompson a signal making the political dimension of the risk of a ceasefire explicit and ordering that ‘With this in mind you should do all you can to bring the Darwin/Goose Green operation to a successful conclusion with Union Jack seen to be flying in Darwin.’
¹⁷⁹
In a radio telephone conversation with Thompson, Fieldhouse made it pretty clear that, if Thompson would not attack Goose Green, he would put in a commander who would.
¹⁸⁰
On the ground, though, Thompson naturally did not want to do anything premature. Because of the loss of the helicopters in the
Atlantic Conveyor
, British troops would have to advance towards Port Stanley on foot. Thompson wanted to be in a position to do this properly: ‘I didn’t want to charge forward with just a packet of sandwiches in my pocket.’
¹⁸¹
He worried about moving outside the air defence umbrella now established at the beachhead and felt his logistical difficulties were not understood at Northwood. Thompson had always to bear in mind that the Task Force had only ‘one shot’. It was not like Normandy in 1944, where reinforcements could correct a big setback. If his troops took a terrible hammering, that would be that.

There was also a confusion of communication and command. Thompson, though respected, was, as a brigadier, relatively junior. His senior, General Jeremy Moore, had been with Fieldhouse at Northwood, contributing the ‘joint’ element in an operation which was heavily balanced in favour of the navy. Late in the day, Moore moved down to the Falklands to take over from Thompson; for much of the time he was on the
QEII
, proper, secure communications proved impossible to maintain. Moore was therefore not in a position to take full control of the land battle until 1 June, and by the time he had done so, the top brass back home, worried by this delay, did not have great confidence in him. Nor did Northwood feel wholly happy about Sandy Woodward, who was regarded as holding such a heavily naval view of his job that he did not take the land war seriously. There was no overall in-theatre commander. Poor Thompson had
a great deal to bear. ‘He was left alone there, and he really felt rather bitter,’ Mrs Thatcher remembered.
¹⁸²
This was not a classic row between politicians demanding a propaganda victory and generals sticking to military priorities. Cecil Parkinson recalled that ‘There was a feeling that Julian Thompson “had better get a bloody move on”, but it wasn’t the politicians who said this, it was the Chiefs.’
¹⁸³
Thompson, receiving the difficult orders from Northwood, confirmed this, never feeling that Mrs Thatcher was trying to give the Chiefs military direction.
¹⁸⁴
It was more to do with the difference between being on the spot and being in London. Mrs Thatcher did not get involved in the growing asperities between the generals and admirals, but she was desperate to push on, and she put her faith in Lewin and Fieldhouse. David Goodall, by this time taking the minutes of the War Cabinet, watched her: ‘I greatly admired the way she contained herself. There were delays, and Lewin explained them to us each morning. She was obviously itching to get on, but she never forced him to do so … I never saw any evidence of political reasons for her military actions.’
¹⁸⁵
When later pressed, on American television, about why the British were not yet attacking Port Stanley, Mrs Thatcher replied: ‘You can’t fight a battle around a Cabinet table.’
¹⁸⁶
Perhaps her ignorance of war gave her the necessary humility. The War Cabinet minutes of 27 May 1982 record Mrs Thatcher expressing the general proposition that ‘it was most important to make the earliest possible progress with the operations on land.’
¹⁸⁷
It was the top brass, translating her inclination into specific action, who decided upon Goose Green.

Colonel ‘H’ Jones, commanding 2 Para, discovered on approach that the task was more formidable than expected, but decided to attack all the same. The battle of Goose Green, which went through the night of 27 May, was fierce, requiring the capture of a narrow isthmus under heavy fire. Jones had requested from Thompson, but been refused, four of the eight light-armoured tanks available, which would have speeded the battle up. As dawn, which would give advantage to the Argentines, approached, Jones decided to try to break through by leading the assault in person. He was killed. After fighting for much longer than the British had expected, the Argentines surrendered. They had lost forty-five dead, to the British loss, including Jones, of sixteen. The British took 961 prisoners, and released 112 Falklanders who had been locked up in the local community hall for nearly a month. In later analyses, the battle of Goose Green could never escape the question of whether it had been necessary. Denis Thatcher, for example, believed that ‘ “H” Jones should never have been killed.’
¹⁸⁸
Mrs Thatcher was deeply troubled by the death of Jones, more so, thought Robert Armstrong, than by any other disaster of the war except the loss
of
Sheffield
.
¹⁸⁹
She comforted herself by thinking, though Freedman’s account suggests that this is not strictly correct, that ‘His life was lost but his bravery was the turning point in the battle.’
¹⁹⁰
In fact, Goose Green was not a battle on which the defeat of Argentina directly depended. On the other hand, it produced a victory with which no one could quarrel, and an example of astonishing heroism in ‘H’ Jones, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. In his message of congratulation to Major Chris Keeble, Jones’s replacement as the commanding officer, Fieldhouse said: ‘you have kindled a flame in land operations which will lead to the raising of the Union Jack in Port Stanley.’
¹⁹¹
This was correct. There was now no real doubt that Britain would win the war.