I'm delighted to be joined on this one by Ollie Webb-Carter, host of The Aspects of History Podcast. In this crossover episode, we take on the hefty topic of The Falklands War.
How did Britain get drawn into a war on a small set of islands 8000 miles away? How did the conflict play domestically in Britain - both in the House of Commons, the media, and the wider public?
We chat about all this and much more, touching on the major milestones of the war whilst stitching our own reflections into the narrative as we go.
Link to Ollie's podcast: https://aspectsofhistory.com/podcasts/
I'm delighted to be joined on this one by Ollie Webb-Carter, host of The Aspects of History Podcast. In this crossover episode, we take on the hefty topic of The Falklands War.
How did Britain get drawn into a war on a small set of islands 8000 miles away? How did the conflict play domestically in Britain - both in the House of Commons, the media, and the wider public?
We chat about all this and much more, touching on the major milestones of the war whilst stitching our own reflections into the narrative as we go.
Link to Ollie's podcast: https://aspectsofhistory.com/podcasts/
Welcome to this podcast. So I'm joined by Ollie on this one, and it's a bit of a collaboration podcast, isn't it, ollie?
Speaker 2:It is Harry. The aspects of history meets the what's the political. It's a slightly longer title, it's a tongue twister mine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the Modern British Political History podcast, which is a mouthful but it very much does what it says on the tin. So if you happen to be interested in modern British political history and I take that usually in the podcast to mean anything post World War II onwards, although sometimes we might dip a bit further back than that then I really encourage people to look into it. Do you want to talk a little bit about your podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would echo that Should definitely check out. So listeners to aspects of history should definitely check out your podcast and of course I'll put a link in. But yeah, aspects of history, so it's very much aspects of history, so that gives me a huge amount of leeway. So we I have guests on who've generally written a book on a particular subject. That is, from the ancient world to the relatively recent past. So we've had all sorts of guests on, from Max Hastings to Andrew Roberts to Simon Seabag, montefiorey, talking about the Cuban missile crisis or the. We talked about the Caesars recently. So that gives it a kind of an idea of how far back and how far forward we go. And in fact we just done a film club where we get, we delve into sort of slightly more modern stuff. So we did the Iranian Revolution with the film Argo. So that kind of covers what aspects of history is. And it's a real pleasure to chat to you, harry, so thank you for arranging this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you as well for getting back to me on this. I'm really excited about this one and I would echo that for any of my listeners do check out aspects of history. It does go further back than we cover, but it does also cover some modern British political history, as Ollie said, so definitely something for for my listeners there as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what we're going to be talking about today, harry, I actually was thinking that because we I spoke to Jeremy Paxman, who wrote about the history of coal, which you might think is rather a dull subject, but you couldn't be more wrong.
Speaker 1:I'm sure Jeremy Paxman doesn't make it dull, though.
Speaker 2:No, not at all, but he did talk about, you know, the minor strike in the early 80s, which is around about the period of history we're talking about today.
Speaker 1:Yes. So we had a little bit of a think about what would work for a collaboration podcast, and we landed on the Falklands War. I think there's a lot to talk about, both on the kind of political aspects of it how did it play domestically in the UK but also we'll touch on some of the big events as well, when we all look like the Belgrano, for example. So, without further ado, shall we make a bit of a start and set a bit of the scene of the Falklands War?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's kick off. So I thought and before we started recording you gave a bit of an indication what we'd talk about, and I was thinking about this prior to Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 79, the Falkland Islands themselves, I think, had become a bit of a hot potato for the UK government, both conservative and Labour, in that they were costing a lot of money and you can probably speak to a little bit more about that domestically, and I actually I was looking at my stats, I do. I think I have or maybe a listener in the Falklands. So if you're listening to this, hello.
Speaker 1:They have to listen to this one, surely?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the Falkland Islands are around about 500 miles off the coast of Argentina and a collection of islands that I think had been transferred from the Spanish to the British. They're predominantly whaling that in South Georgia for whaling in the 19th century and then in the earlier 20th century became more sheep farming. So I don't think the British government had a kind of strong connection to the Falklands, and by the 70s it had become a little bit of a. I think the you ministers and civil servants will probably describe the Falklands as being a little bit of a burden financially, and so we're looking at ways of changing the constitutional ownership of the Falklands in a kind of lease lend, lease way with the Argentine government.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. They weren't seen as strategically significant really in any way, and not massively economically significant. There was some sheep farming, there was fishing, but there were about 2000 people living there who firmly felt that they were British and felt an attachment to the mother country. So much so, and I enjoy this fact that they donated £50,000 of their own funds to buy Spitfires during the Second World War, to give you a flavor of how British they felt.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. That's an extraordinary fact. There was a recent I don't know how recent it was, I think it was the early 2000s it was a referendum and I think only two people voted to remain with Argentina. It's at 99% 98% in favor of remaining a British. It's a British protector, isn't it?
Speaker 1:British territory, I think, and, as you say, the British claim to it is that from 1833 to the 1980s it had been settled by people who felt that they were British settlers. But you had an Argentine claim to it which was based on an anti-colonial argument that the islands had been stolen, and that was the word used. You had pictures in Argentina often put round of Margaret Thatcher as a pirate eyepatch and everything and the idea that they had stolen these islands and, as you say, they'd been back and forth negotiations about how you resolve that. Is it, lenlis? Is it? Do you have the islands under some kind of joint commission for a period of time whilst you resolve sovereignty? But all that started to lead up to the conflict of the Falklands? Do you want to touch a bit on what were some of the kind of instigators and things that led up to the conflict?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think probably the you could probably say it started on the 19th of March Some scrap metal workers appeared on the island of South Georgia. South Georgia at the time had a former whaling station, and so these metal workers appeared at the whaling station, which I think is not far from the main settlement of leaf at South Georgia, and they rode up the Argentine flag, and so there was a little bit of disquiet and the Marines then a couple of days later appeared at South Georgia and the flag was removed. So that obviously gives an idea that there were sort of tensions going on between Britain and Argentina. And then on the second of April Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and the governor of the Falkland Islands, rex Hunt, after a brief firefight between Marines and Argentine forces, he then surrendered.
Speaker 2:Argentina took control and and actually there's a very interesting TV film starring Ian Richardson called an un-gentlemanly act which is an account of the the invasion of the Falklands. It's rather satirical, it's quite funny, but it's based on many true events. Rex Hunt, who had been a kind of a civil servant, who a diplomat, who had this is this I don't think this was the most sought after post in the foreign office, but he really did play a blinder during the invasion and it's called an un-gentlemanly act because what happened? When the Argentine general appeared at the governor's house of the Marines having surrendered and the islands being under Argentine control, the Argentine general put his hand forward to Rex Hunt to shake his hand and Rex Hunt went to shake the hand and then pulled his hand back and the Argentine general said in English that was a very un-gentlemanly thing to do. And Rex Hunt said was very un-gentlemanly of you to invade the Falklands.
Speaker 1:I love that story. It's one that's in Dominic Sandbrook's book, which I recommend people read who dares wins, which covers the Falklands. By the way, on that, I will be shamelessly using bits of Dominic Sandbrook's book, probably throughout when we're speaking. So if, in the unlikely event, dominic's listening imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so we'll be drawing on that a little bit. But yeah, that story is really great. He's very characteristically British sort of colonial administrator, isn't he? Isn't he Rex Hunt?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and it's interesting that the invasion itself there had been. It wasn't exactly the most unexpected thing and you could probably speak to a little bit more about that in back in London. It was obviously a huge shock, I think, in the Falklands, but there were some in the foreign office who weren't as surprised as perhaps one would imagine they were.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, there were some warning signals, but I think there was a belief that they wouldn't actually go through it or some element of complacency there, and there was. There was some you touched on. There were some preceding actions that that instigated the war, one of which was that series of defense cuts that that were led by Margaret Thatcher, including a guy called John Knot, the defense minister, scrapping the endurance, which was one of the ships, a very old ship that wasn't tactically that significant but was just patrolling around the islands and was enough of a deterrent to to, uh, to give some chilling effect, I suppose, to Argentina and to give a bit of reassurance to the, the Falkland Islanders. And once that had been scrapped, that gave a little bit more or gave a signal, I suppose, to Argentina that probably Britain won't be desperate to to defend these islands if we invade.
Speaker 1:And I suppose the context comes into this as well that Britain in the to lay a little bit of this context, britain in the 70s had been seen a little bit as a basket case massive economic issue, strikes, loss of kudos on the international stage, and then, if you go back to the 50s, you had Suez where there was an attempt to to intervene militarily, that that massively backfired. So I think there was a feeling, probably from the Argentines, that Britain won't really care if we do this or they will let it slide, which wasn't the case in the end. So we've talked a little bit, I guess, about the Argentines seizing the Falklands. Maybe we want to talk a bit about then what Britain did next and and what the decision, the decision making was on whether we should try and retake it.
Speaker 2:Essentially, yeah, absolutely, um, I the well one. One immediate result was the resignation of Lord Carrington, the foreign secretary, who kind of fell on his sword. Really, I think there were many who thought that John Notch should have resigned the secretary of state for defense it's quite honorable, yeah, from what I've heard at Carrington, resigning, yes, yeah that well, he had been a guards officer during the Second World War and had won an emcee.
Speaker 2:He was in fact, if anyone's seen the film, a Bridge Too Far. There is a scene with Robert Redford playing an American soldier, major Julian Cook, who has a huge argument with a Grenadier Guards captain commanding a tank company, and that the actor is actually slightly forgettable. I don't remember his name, but he is. He is playing Lord Carrington as a young man. So so that's a little bit of trivia for you, but, um, fantastic film as well. Yeah, definitely, yeah, absolutely and.
Speaker 2:But what's interesting over that weekend, over the in on the second of April, second third, fourth of April, is that the decision was made to send a task force to the Falklands. But what's most interesting about that is that it almost didn't happen, because there were many in the senior leadership who thought it was almost impossible to do. You got to remember how far away the Falklands are from from Britain and the, the, the chief of the defense staff, terrence Lewin. He almost made a political decision rather than a military decision, so he did slightly overstep his mark because when he spoke to Margaret Thatcher on that weekend, he said to her it can be done, which was quite a bold statement, although we obviously we subsequently know it could be done, because it was done. But what was interesting was he then gave a kind of political recommendation to Margaret Thatcher by saying it should be done.
Speaker 1:I've got the quote. So yes, we can, prime Minister, and those is not my business to say. So yes, we must.
Speaker 2: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 that is a fascinating little interchange there, because I was reading a very good book by Lawrence Friedman and spoke to him about this on this very issue in an earlier podcast, and Lawrence Friedman is a very distinguished academic at Kings College London and has written a really good book about politics and war and how political leaders interact with the military leaders in a number of conflicts post-war. So actually for your listeners that would be very interesting. Talks about the Suez crisis as well as the French wars in Algeria and also into China. But it's very interesting because that particular line he's certainly overstepped his mark there.
Speaker 1:It is definitely beyond the remit, isn't it, of normal military advice, although I suspect Margaret Thatcher swooned hearing about it because it's probably exactly what she wanted to hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but absolutely but she had a number of people in her cabinet who were less keen on a military response, one of whom was, I think, francis Pym, who took over as foreign secretary after the resignation of Lord Carrington. And a lot of these cabinet ministers, like Willie Whitelaw as well, had fought in the Second World War and so knew what war was. So it wasn't as if they were cowardly and didn't want any kind of conflict. I think they really did want to explore every single possible avenue before a military response.
Speaker 1:That's right. I think they're sometimes wrongfully portrayed as wets and almost cowardly but, like you say, a lot of them did have a significant military experience. There was a question as to whether it was just worth the effort. I suppose there was one. It might have been Pym even who said it would actually be cheaper to pay each of the Falkton Islands a million pounds to emigrate, essentially, but I guess it was a case of principle over financial considerations.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I know probably editorializing slightly now, but if you do look back, the Argentines it was a fascist regime in charge of Argentina and they invaded a sovereign territory.
Speaker 1:Yes, not even going into the kind of which I won't comment on, the kind of was it worth going to war or not, I think indisputably that regime was horrific, like you say, a fascist regime who had disappeared to use the language that they used Tens of thousands of dissidents who they saw as against the regime. And there's a quite memorable bit from Dominic Sandbrick's book where he talks about the regime that they hadn't really had to fight any wars, but they're very good at applying electrodes to the genitals of left-wing poets. So a very sinister regime, without any doubt. I don't think so. We've talked about the build-up to war. It's been decided at the government level that they will try to retake the islands. Should we go into what the opinion was, both in the House of Commons, the paper, the general public kind of touch on what the thoughts were?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be really interesting.
Speaker 1:OK, so you had this debate in the House of Commons about the Falklands and there was pretty universal with some exceptions agreement that they should be retaken, and you had Michael Foote have an intervention which I think you wanted to talk about, didn't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because Michael Foote is often or rather again, michael Foote is often lumped in as Looney left with the longest suicide note in history, talking about the Labour manifesto in 83.
Speaker 2:It being two left-wing for the electorate, and he's lumped nowadays often lumped in with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and other MPs of that side. But I wanted to talk a little bit and I'd be interested to get your view about Michael Foote, because as leader of the opposition one might assume, being left-wing, he might take the view that this was British colonialism coming home to roost and plucky Argentina up against the might of the British Empire. But absolutely not. He saw it very much black and white and certainly viewed and himself having fought in the Second World War and that's what's really interesting so many of these politicians had seen service during the Second World War, which is not the case nowadays with our politicians, and one cannot imagine that, had Jeremy Corbyn being leader of the opposition in 83, that he would have taken the same view as Michael Foote. And I just wanted to. It'd be interesting to know what the view you've mentioned about opinion polls about the invasion, but it'd be interesting to know what the public thought of Michael Foote, the Labour leader at the time.
Speaker 1:So eight out of 10 Britons thought the islands had to be retaken in polling. So I imagine there was general support for Michael Foote taking that position, although Michael Foote himself, or fast-forwarding to the 83 election, wasn't very popular. I think you talked about longest suicide note in history. Part of it, I think, was Stephen Bush talks about politics being about vibes and optics as much as anything.
Speaker 1:The political commentator and I guess Michael Foote, does not give off the impression of a strong warrior-like politician regardless of you know, like you say, he actually did serve, but in a way that I think that mattered less.
Speaker 1:So that was probably the reason why it was so surprising that he actually made the intervention he did, and I've got the quote where he talked about the regime and he said the Argentine hunter. He said it's a regime in which thousands of innocent people have been tortured and abased. We cannot forget that fact when our friends and fellow citizens in the Falkland Islands are suffering as they are at this moment. It was Britain's duty to ensure that such foul and brutal aggression did not succeed. So he did take a strong stance, but there were elements on the cultural left who took a different view. So I'm thinking of Tony Ben, for example, who did see it more as a anti-colonial struggle and that he saw Britain as a colonial power. And you also had a lot on the for want of a better word the cosmopolitan intelligentsia, I guess you might say who were more against the war.
Speaker 2:So these are sort of guardian reading columnists who spend a lot of time chatting at dinner parties about how terrible it is for Britain to still have colonies like the Falklands.
Speaker 1:Some would definitely characterize in that way. I definitely think that that that is an argument that many made and Dominic Sandbrook is interesting on this because he talks about a path from the 80s and the Falklands all the way to Brexit and suggests that it's some of the similar divides between a middle class, cosmopolitan, intellectual demographic and other demographics in Britain, whether it's more working class, more conservative. If you're being more negative, you describe it as more populist, depending on your politics. But he talks about that. You can recognize in 82 and you can see the seeds of Brexit without going too much off on a tangent into Brexit.
Speaker 2:Have you done an episode on Brexit? Because that I know it's quite recent but you probably need to do like a 10-parter or something. But I mean, I think Dominic Sandbrook is absolutely fantastic. There are so many, but I think it's the birth of the sort of, or a rebirth of, the tabloid, and particularly the sun during the during the Falklands war.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. And on the tabloids you had strong tabloid support for the cause. So the mail, the express, but particularly the sun. So the sun promoted a video game that allowed players to torpedo Argentine ships. They ran a daily Argy Bargy joke column and offered £5 and a tin of non Argentinian corned beef for every successful entry. And then this was parodied in the satirical magazine Private Eye, where they did a front page parody. Front page where they said kill an Argy and win a Metro.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine social media nowadays with front pages or pages? Obviously, the private eye ones are satirical bent. But can you imagine social media going crazy nowadays?
Speaker 1:Well, I imagine Private Eye would probably be a little bit wary of putting that parody because it's hard on social media. Things get clipped up, don't they? So much that you could have interpreted. Yeah, it could be very easily misinterpreted. The last paper I was going to mention was the Guardian, where you had Peter Jenkins in. The Guardian said that the means to the ends in the war were disproportionate.
Speaker 2:And now just me just diving in and just to let listeners know where the where the task force is. Because, yes, whilst all this is happening, the task force is, in a rather a 19th century fashion, sailing south to, to, to, to the Falklands, from Britain. So it takes them around three weeks to get there. So they go. They stop off at Ascension Island in mid April, and by the end of April the task force arrives, the weather down there is awful, and so they had to. They sent some essay SPS and SAS into South Georgia and to retake South Georgia, which almost became a complete disaster with two helicopters crashing, and so members of the special forces then had to pile into a to a third helicopter because they landed on a glacier with awful weather at the time.
Speaker 2:But luckily and this is the huge thing about throughout the conflict there's a huge amount of luck involved in a number of military military maneuvers that could easily have resulted in catastrophe and obviously, therefore, problems for market threat at home. But South Georgia is then taken, retaken, the Union Jack flies again over South Georgia, and so then it's on to the Falkland Islands themselves.
Speaker 1:I completely agree on the, on the luck, just before we go on to the Falklands, how South Georgia was received back home. The retaking you had Mrs Thatcher telling the press to rejoice at the news, admonishingly, as was her style, handbagging them when they weren't quite as glowing about it as she wanted them to be. And you had in the sun. You had the headline victory, single word. And then you had Britain Seizes South Georgia. Now Britain is striking back from the express and the Tories went up in the polls following the taking of South Georgia.
Speaker 2:And that was on the 26th of April. So we're now at the business end of the Falklands, because the hard nut of the Falkland Islands themselves needs to be, needs to be taken by the task force. What's interesting now actually, harry, is we should talk about the exclusion zone, because round about the time that South Georgia was taken, the Britain declared a 200 mile exclusion zone. So any warship found, or any any aircraft or any warship found inside a 200 mile exclusion zone around the Falkland Islands would to be viewed as a threat and therefore could be fired upon. So anything outside the exclusion zone theoretically would not be fired upon, and that proves to be probably the most vital factor, really, and probably the most controversial incident of the war.
Speaker 1:Although it wasn't quite that being outside of the exclusion zone meant you were completely. It was impossible for you to be fired on, and I think that was the if you were in the exclusion zone, there was that definite possibility. But the whole of that South Atlantic area was seen as a combat zone and I think that's something where people slightly get the wrong end of the sticker on it. And we're about to talk about the Belgrano, which is which was very controversial or was seen by some as controversial the sinking of it. Do you want to just outline what happened with the Belgrano?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the Belgrano, which was a cruiser, actually a Second World War cruiser. It took part in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War in the US Navy At the time it was sailing Okay, it was sunk outside the exclusion zone. So we should say that start start off with and the sinking of the Belgrano, which was hugely controversial because it took place outside the exclusion zone, which was sunk by a British submarine and the controversy really comes about. But it actually, when you look into the detail, it's not really that controversial. The ship itself had turned and was sailing and viewed by the Royal Navy as sailing into the exclusion zone and, I think, was viewed as a threat to the task force itself which was heading south. And they were using ships like the Canberra which are basically a pleasure cruiser giant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, requisitioned different ships. Yeah, that was part of the whole Dunkirk spirit that people associated with the task force that it was an array of different ships. But anyway, sorry, you were talking about the Belgrano.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so the Belgrano itself, which was sunk by the submarine conqueror on the 2nd of May. So the exclusion zone had only been in force for a week or so when the when the Belgrano was sunk and it was heading in a direction towards the British task force, but outside the exclusion zone, the conqueror, the captain of the conqueror, communicated with headquarters back in London to gain permission and it went up to the cabinet level and Margaret Thatcher approved the sinking.
Speaker 1:And you're a big fan of films, aren't you, ollie, like me? Have you seen the Iron Lady scene of the decision to whether to sink the Belgrano, where she's getting different political advice and then pauses for a moment and then she just says two words. She says sink it to the generals, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:That's very good. I actually one other program which is really good, and I think it's on Amazon Prime at the moment, which is the Falklands play. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yes, I've seen a bit of it. It's excellent, but it's going off in a slight tangent here.
Speaker 2:The Falklands play, which was written I forget the writer, but the play itself was very controversial. It was written in within, I think, five years of the war and it was bouncing around the BBC. Bbc was paranoid, thinking that if we broadcast this play it'll be viewed as too pro conservative, and so it was shelved until around 2000. I think it was then eventually broadcast and it was viewed as quite a pro Margaret Thatcher play. But if you watch it, actually it is interesting. You'd have to say she was very effective during the Falklands war. She was decisive. She didn't prevaricate in any way. Whether you agree with her or you don't agree with her, you couldn't say that she was indecisive we should mention. What I haven't mentioned is that it sank with a loss of 323 men, 321 members of the crew. I think it was two civilians on board as well.
Speaker 1:So you had the Sun headline, which was gotcha, which was frequently seen as a step too far Because, as you talked about, it was tragic I mean the loss of life, regardless of kind of the rights and wrongs of it as a military action, and I think even Kelvin McKenzie, the editor of the Sun, suggested that he regretted it. So, yeah, the Sun headline was gotcha and it was then our lads, sink gunboats and whole cruiser the Navy had the Argyz on their knees last night after a devastating double punch.
Speaker 2:To give you a flavour of how the tabloids reported it and the Argentine fleet, after the sinking of Belgrano, returned to Port and never came out to sea again.
Speaker 1:So militarily it was certainly successful, putting aside what it is on it.
Speaker 2:Morally, the argument will go on forever. It's worth noting that the captain of the Belgrano I think it was Hector Bonzo, who's now sadly died he stated that it was not a war crime. It was an act of war lamentably legal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a very interesting kind of different perspective on it from the Argentines themselves you had. Then after the Belgrano there was some loss and damage of British ships as well. Most notably was the Sheffield was lost, and it was the first significant losses of British life. And what was quite an interesting bit I want to talk about briefly was about public reaction was less critical of the war perhaps than you might think, and part of the reason, one of the reasons for that was that the government only allowed a handful of reporters to go with the task force, and the reason for that was they remembered Vietnam and how you had huge amounts of reporters going to Vietnam taking pictures of horrific scenes and they were quite keen to stop that in the Falklands war. So there were very few pictures of dead bodies that were broadcast back to the UK and it was reported in quite a bloodless way, which I think is part of the reason why there was less criticism of the conflict.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned the Sheffield, which I think was sunk just over a week after the Belgrano sank on the 10th of May, and that was a huge moment really, when the Sheffield and then later the Coventry sank to quite large loss of life. The Argentines had these air to surface missiles the Exocet French made, which was very effective in this kind of warfare.
Speaker 1:A lot of them didn't go off, which plays to your point about luck. Comes into this a lot, although you could say it's not luck because their military was less well trained and their equipment was less good. But anyway, you were saying.
Speaker 2:On the 25th of May, when the Coventry and another ship called the Atlantic conveyor were both hit by Exocet and sank, the Atlantic conveyor held all the helicopters for shipping sending the troops over to Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands on the east side. Now, with the loss of those helicopters, what it meant was that the troops who landed on the west side would now have to walk, or yomp as they like to call it in the army, all the way across East Falkland to Port Stanley and in the South Atlantic in April, and crossing crossing terrain. That is pretty tough. I mean, if you picture the Breckin Beacons in winter, it's probably like that. It's miserable conditions.
Speaker 1:And that's an interesting thing about the relationship that the British, when they saw the Falkland Islands on the TV, it looked quite similar to areas of Britain and the weather was quite similar. So there was I think that led to some of them that more affinity that the UK had. That it looked a bit familiar as well and, like you say, there was also the idea of yomping, so going across difficult terrain in full kit. I think that I think a lot of Britons could relate to that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it seemed a very British image. I mean, this way you get that image of the soldier with the Union Jack on his backpack. I don't know if any listeners are familiar with the secret diary of Adrian Moll, which is actually very interesting for a perspective on Britain during this time, because I was six years old during the Falklands and so I don't think I really remember it. But I remember reading Adrian Moll a few years after and that's my memory of the Falklands through Adrian Moll and it was almost. You talked about the sun and the newspapers will all follow the invasion, follow the advance. You would track it on the paper at least Adrian Moll did and there was this kind of connection between the population and the soldiers, like you say. It is interesting that, but just on the personal connection.
Speaker 1:by the way, I think it's great to talk a bit about that, because my first connection or first understanding of the Falklands comes from a film and I say this because you're interested in film Olly, which is a film called this is England.
Speaker 2:Shay.
Speaker 1:Meadows, that's exactly right. Yeah, and you have a boy who's growing up in the north of England in a very poor background and his dad died in the Falklands and you have some images, montage images, during the film of the Falklands. So the task force going, I think, and then coming back some yomping, is definitely included, and before that I had no understanding of the Falklands. So it's interesting often your connection to these things starts culturally, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Another good film to watch starring Colin Firth, made a few years after, called Tumble Down and that talks about the impact of war on one particular officer who was wounded, severely wounded, shot in the head, and his actual battle with the army to get proper treatment. And it was very controversial at the time. The army, I think, tried to ban it, but it was. It didn't show the army in a particularly good light and not looking after their soldiers, their troops and actually more people more veterans of the Falklands killed themselves than were actually killed in the conflict.
Speaker 1:That brings us, I think, then, to some of the actual fighting. So you have the recapture of San Carlos and then you have the battle for Gruis. Green was one of the most famous battles, and this was linking to your point around the trauma associated with it. This was vicious, brutal night fighting to often retake hills, close, combat, bayonets fixed, and there are stories of pretty gruesome what we'd now call atrocities, although these tend to happen in any war and actually, you could argue, happen less in the Falklands than most wars but stories of war trophies being taken. There's one particularly gruesome one where a soldier picks up a head of another soldier and says that this will be a great one to take back to the wife. So some pretty intense fighting there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gruis Green was interesting, actually because this had a political element to it and it's quite controversial now in that there had been no After the loss of the Sheffield and the Coventry, there hadn't been any military successes since the Belgrano, which in itself was quite controversial, and so there was almost a desire from the government for the army, to all the Royal Marines and the Task Force itself, to come up with a good new story, a win. And militarily, gruis Green, one could argue, could have been sidestepped and they could have continued on to Port Stanley, but instead the Parachute Regiment I think it was the second battalion under the command of Colonel H Jones were sent to Gruis Green to capture it in order to give a good new story back home.
Speaker 1:And the same was for South Georgia. So the initial taking of South Georgia wasn't militarily my understanding as necessary, but it was seen as good to have an early win. So it shows you, I guess, how politics influences war as much as military tactics.
Speaker 2:And one wonders nowadays, where we're so connected to each other through social media in other ways, how that would be viewed now, because the idea that you would have a cabinet dictating military objectives is quite a strange one. And H Jones, who was the commanding officer of this second battalion, I think, was killed in this attack. One of Victoria Cross. He was charged a machine gun post because his troops were pinned down by the. The Argentines had a really good, strong defensive position and the parrots were pinned down and Jones took the bull by the horns and charged himself, which inspired the rest of his lads to follow him, but he was killed.
Speaker 1:And there was debate, wasn't there? Was that necessary? Was it a full, hardy, heroic charge?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1:Or was it heroic?
Speaker 2:And I guess there's always the managing as well of you've got family members that are involved as well and that you have to think about with these kind of tragedies Particularly, and it's very easy for us to sit in our nice comfy chairs talking about how something should or shouldn't have happened when they've got men pinned down by a machine gun in a foxhole. I always think it's odd to judge from afar, particularly 40 years later as well, but I think it is something that was talked about at the time absolutely.
Speaker 1:But, it did result in a victory and the Goose Green was taken, and then you have Goose Green taken, and then the final battle for Stanley, which is the capital of the Falklands, which we won't spend too long on, I think, beyond saying that Stanley was retaken, more vicious fighting, as you say, though, on Mount Tumbledown, for one, which you've mentioned, and Wireless Ridge as well, you had the Gurkhas, scotsguards and Parachute Regiment fighting, as you say, vicious hand-to-hand fighting.
Speaker 2:It's a really horrible part of that war and it is interesting we've seen the loss of soldiers through PTSD since, and part of that is down to the kind of fighting that they had to go through.
Speaker 1:One story I'll talk about with Stanley briefly is quite unbelievable, which is Max Hastings, the historian, which probably a lot of listeners will know. He was a journalist following the task force very closely and there's a moment where he walks into Stanley before it's been fully retaken. He sees it below him and goes actually I could just walk in and walks all the way through the town, has a few different Argentine troops looking up and down, maybe talked to him briefly, but he can just keep walking all the way through. And then he walks into a pub I think it is in Stanley and then announces to the pubgoers the British are here, it's been retaken, and then they offer him a drink in characteristic British fashion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the 14th of June I think, the Argentine surrender. I just wanted to go back briefly. We mentioned the fortune when the task force itself, the land forces, landed at a location called it's near San Carlos Water. This is an area called Bombing Alley, which is where a whole load of troopships were unloading and, talking about the luck element, had the Argentines and they were very brave pilots flying low through this sort of heavily defended body of water where the ships were lining up to drop off troops, but had and they were unlucky not to have sunk more ships there containing troops landing on the Falklands. Had any even one of those ships been sunk, I wonder what the impact that would have had on the government back home.
Speaker 1:It does show you this point around luck and, being me, I'll make a point about luck and link it to domestic UK politics. So you could argue Margaret Thatcher was very lucky in her enemies in general throughout her whole career. So you have Gautieri, you have a military junta that was weak in various ways, militarily and morally, obviously was incredibly on the wrong side of history. And then you had different enemies that she had Arthur Scargill was one you had the Soviet Union, all of which had some fundamental weakness in their position. There's a question as to how much was it Margaret Thatcher's strength versus her enemies weakness throughout all of this, and how much does luck play a role, as you're saying? Should we get into the aftermath and the question of do you think this war mattered, ollie? And if it did matter, in what ways do you think it mattered?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was a principled stand and it's interesting that the reaction of the UK's closest ally, the US, which was actually not as supportive as one would imagine, there were, I think links and this is interesting speaks to Operation Condor, which was a US government, US government backed initiative to support and promote rather questionable regimes across South and Central America, and Argentina was one, Chile, another under Pinochet, who assisted the British government during the Falklands as a interlocutor between Britain and Argentina and also provided some kind of, I think, logistical support. But the US therefore had a kind of interest in a lot of these rather distasteful regimes Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, plus a number of others, Noriega as well in Panama.
Speaker 1:And was that because of the fear of communism that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? That's right.
Speaker 2:The US viewed these, viewed Central, certainly Central America, but also South America, as a kind of backdoor and in their backyard rather. And so they. It was in their interest to promote and support governments that would fight up against what they viewed as communist forces, and it was a real paranoia in those days. It's something that probably not appreciated so much now, although we're getting a little bit more into a kind of mini Cold War with Russia. But at the time the Soviet Union would support and fund and arm rebel forces. Often these rebel forces were in, certainly in the case of Salvador.
Speaker 2:Basically, the US government did view a lot of these rebel forces as communists. The truth is probably a little bit more complicated, but what that meant was there were certain elements in the US Reagan administration, jean Kirkpatrick in particular, who was a senior member of the foreign of the State Department and was actually quite supportive of the Argentines and didn't think and I think also perhaps her Irish background might have influenced her view that British Britain was behaving like a colonial power, and so was not and was certain. She was a prominent voice in the Reagan administration and so therefore the support from the US was not quite as strong as Margaret Thatcher had expected, but by the I think the success of the military operation almost negated it, if that makes sense, because they were able to win quite categorically. It was a clear victory and Argentina was that surrendered relatively quickly.
Speaker 1:Is the impact, then? Is what you're saying that the Falklands War did it reveal the sort of dodginess of America siding with these regimes?
Speaker 2:I don't know how it's interesting. I don't know how much that actually came out eventually. I think we know about that now a lot more, and Margaret Thatcher, though, was very clear that she was a close ally of Agostin Pinotchet, thought that the British owed a great debt to Chile for its support during the Falklands war. However, that Pinochet military junta was fascist, and they disappeared people. So the very people she's Margaret Thatcher was lambasting in Argentina were the same people who were supporting her, and many saw that as a mark against Thatcher's record, didn't they?
Speaker 1:Turning to the domestic context of the domestic impacts of the Falklands, so I think you could split it into three. You could talk about the impacts on Britain, the government itself and Thatcher, and maybe even the impacts a bit on the Labour parties as well. So, thinking about Britain and our tests against you, let me see what you think. I think materially it made little impact on Britain and strategically, but psychologically it did seem to have a big effect where you had this idea that that famous quote, Britain has lost an empire but not found a role yet, that there was a feeling that now Britain has reclaimed some kind of role. And I think Thatcher said I believe Britain has now found a role. It is in upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live. So that kind of resurgence of British confidence I think was one impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2:As a child growing up in the early to mid-80s, I think it definitely boosted the country and made everyone feel a little bit more. I always find pride a really difficult, strange thing to talk about, because it's a weird concept to me, but I think it wouldn't be too strong to say I think it did make people feel prouder because it was, even though what we've just been talking about with some of Britain's alliances during that war, it was Britain standing up against a fascist regime, and so I think that did mean that internationally it had increased its reputation, which, as you say, in the 70s have been a bit of a basket case. And it's also so interesting because, particularly nowadays, we talk about colonialism all the time, and I had a very interesting chat with Nigel Bigger talking about colonialism, and colonialism now is very much a dirty word, but this was a colonial war, but not in the traditional sense, in that this was not an indigenous, that the islanders had been there a very long time, longer, I think, than Argentina had been a country formally.
Speaker 1:So there's, a question as to whether it was seen as a colonial war, and I think that the Argentine presented it, but there's definitely a question as to whether it really was or it wasn't.
Speaker 2:But there are so many nuances to it, because you could argue that Argentina was behaving like a colonial power, demanding an island that didn't want to be part of Argentina, and yet it seems like the larger power in that region discarded those views and wanted to possess islands because of the demands going back hundreds of years.
Speaker 1:And segueing that into thatcher a little bit, in the government there's an irony. I think that the military hunter thought a quick war will be good for us because their position was still a bit tenuous. We'll have a short conflict, we'll take the islands, it'll be great for national confidence. And actually the irony is the reverse happened. You had a quick war, the British won that war and you had a government that was against the ropes a bit, so to speak. That in the UK that then they had a resurgence, margaret Thatcher became more popular, the government's polling went up and then the 83 election that they won that election. I guess the question is how much? Do you have a view on how much the war actually resulted in, directly resulted in that victory, or do you think it was in on the cards anyway?
Speaker 2:She probably yeah, I think she almost certainly would have won that 1983 election. It's interesting what you say about a quick war to improve domestic fortune for the Argentines. We're seeing right now with Putin in Ukraine how that's blown up in his face and he nearly lost power just over a couple of weeks ago. It really is, wars are very unpredictable things.
Speaker 2:The hostage to fortune? Yeah, and you know, fortune has been a theme throughout our discussion today, and I would have thought that and I think Sandbrook agrees here as well, doesn't he that the election would have been won. Perhaps the Falklands war meant she won more strongly even more comfortably yeah than she would have.
Speaker 1:He says the polls were slightly turning because the economy was already improving somewhat, and I don't really know I'm less close to it the evidence, but that's his point I was going to say as well. There's an element a quick war. I think you can trace something from the Falklands and Max Hastings makes this argument to Tony Blair's interventions that there was a feeling from Tony Blair that a war can actually be quite a good thing for a prime minister quote, unquote because it can boost your esteem, it can make you look like you're striding the world stage and it can help you a bit when you're against the ropes, and obviously that it's kind of we learned the wrong lessons sometimes from history, don't we? Because that didn't work out very well for Tony Blair. The last thing I was going to say is about, or question I was going to ask is a bit about how's the war remembered, which I think we probably have. Yeah, there's a lot of just militarily.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of controversy still at Rages today. There was a documentary on Channel 4 recently. I could put a link in there. It's very interesting talking about the failures of the military leadership on the ground in the Falklands, and my father was in the army, knew a lot of these people, they were his generation and there's controversy that rages over one particular senior officer. But there are two sides of it, or three sides really their side, the other side, and the truth and the argument being that this senior officer I think I don't really want to.
Speaker 2:I feel us sitting in our nice comfy chairs criticizing military leaders. It's very difficult, but there are senior officers now who are still at furious over some of the things that happened when the Welsh guards landed on the east side of the Falklands just before Port Stanley surrendered and all the Argentine surrendered, when a Welsh guards troopship was bombed and a lot of Welsh guards soldiers were killed. That incident as well is hugely controversial. But you've got to. In the end. It was a victory, a war that was won. I think 250 British soldiers killed, I think, around 600 Argentines. It was a clear victory, regardless of all the sort of nuances of the controversies that I've just mentioned. But I think even today, from a military standpoint, there's still a lot of resentment and anger.
Speaker 1:I think that's a right thing to have paused on whilst we're wrapping up, because ultimately there are at the centre of this, there are the politics and there's the sort of theoretical debate, but, as you said, there are lives entangled in all of this, at stake, real people, not just kind of historical points of interest. And the only final thing I'd say on how is it remembered is that the contestation around the Falkland Islands has not fully been resolved, has it? So that debate, I think, carries on.
Speaker 2:No, you see a succession of Argentine presidents demanding the return of the Las Malvinas, but I think the British have stuck a quite a modern destroyer patrolling down there. That means that the Falklands are safe. I think for some time You'd have to say that the Falklands were ensured, that the Falklands would remain a British sovereign territory the foreseeable future and I don't and it blew any chance of any kind of Len Lee system. That's not going to happen now, is it?
Speaker 1:That sounds right, that feels right to me, so I think I just say thanks so much, ollie, for doing this collaboration podcast with me. Shall we give a final reminder of what our different podcasts are?
Speaker 2:We'll sign on, yeah yeah, excuse me, aspects of history. You'll find me on YouTube, spotify, apple, google and there are these other ones, podaddict and all that kind of stuff. Wherever you get your podcasts, you will find aspects of history, so come along plenty to listen to.
Speaker 1:And modern British political history the podcast. Similarly, you'll find it on most of those different outlets and all some of those slightly random, miscellaneous ones.
Speaker 2:What have you got coming up, Harry?
Speaker 1:Good question, yeah, so I've got a few things that are potentially in the pipeline. One was thinking a little bit more about the return of the, I guess what you'd call, like the labor right across the 80s and the 90s, the resurgence which actually picks up quite neatly off the back of what we've talked about, about the kind of the hard cultural left falling in its kind of power. So, yeah, we're going to do put out an episode fairly soon about the kind of the comeback of the labor rights all the way up to the Tony Blair being elected. What about you? What about you?
Speaker 2:I have an interview with a Ukrainian historian who's written a book about the Russo-Ukrainian war, so it's interesting. It's basically contemporary events the war in Ukraine but he takes a look back into why the Russians, in particular, have territorial gains on the Ukraine and how that's a misunderstanding of history, of course, and talks about the war from 2014, which is really when it started, and right up into talking about how Putin has blundered and how the war has really given an even stronger sense of identity for the people of Ukraine than it already had, which indeed it did have, which is what the Russians have discovered. So that's coming up next.
Speaker 1:That sounds incredibly timely and important, so I encourage readers to listen. To give it a listen.
Speaker 2:And the rise of the right. I'll be listening to that, so I recommend the listeners do too.
Speaker 1:Thanks, so much and thanks everyone for listening to this one. Thanks Harry, thanks everyone.