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By Root 3166 0

World axis. My visits to India, Pakistan, the Gulf, Mexico and Australia for the Commonwealth Conference brought home to me how badly the Soviets had been damaged by their invasion of Afghanistan. It had alienated the Islamic countries en bloc, and within that bloc strengthened conservative pro-western regimes against radical states like Iraq and Libya. Traditional Soviet friends like India, on the other hand, were embarrassed. Not only did this enable the West to forge its own alliance with Islamic countries against Soviet expansionism; it also divided the Third World and so weakened the pressure it could bring against the West on international economic issues. In these circumstances, countries which had long advocated their own local form of socialism, to be paid for by western aid, suddenly had to consider a more realistic approach of attracting western investment by pursuing free-market policies — a small earthquake as yet, but one that would transform the world economy over the next decade.

* Our three-month rate was 13 per cent. By contrast, interest rates in the US stood at 18 per cent and in France, Italy and Canada between 18 and 20 per cent. German interest rates, at a nominal 13 per cent, were very high indeed in real terms — and still the deutschmark had depreciated by between 40 and 45 per cent against the US dollar in the previous twelve months.

CHAPTER VII

The Falklands War: Follow the Fleet

The attempts by diplomacy and the sending of the task force to regain the Falkland Islands — to the end of April 1982

BACKGROUND

Nothing remains more vividly in my mind, looking back on my years in No. 10, than the eleven weeks in the spring of 1982 when Britain fought and won the Falklands War. Much was at stake: what we were fighting for eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world — above all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force. The war was very sudden. No one predicted the Argentine invasion more than a few hours in advance, though many predicted it in retrospect. When I became Prime Minister I never thought that I would have to order British troops into combat and I do not think I have ever lived so tensely or intensely as during the whole of that time.

The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain’s self-confidence and for our standing in the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one long retreat. The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain’s name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.

Beginning in the summer of 1982, only weeks after the war, I wrote down my detailed recollection of events as I had lived through them at the centre of government. I finished the story at Chequers over Easter 1983. It was still etched in my mind, and I had all the records to hand. The task took some time to complete; it is a long and complicated story. Parts of it will have to remain secret for a considerable time to come, but it is upon my personal memoir that I have based this account.

The first recorded landing on the Falklands was made in 1690 by British sailors, who named the channel between the two principal islands ‘Falkland’s Sound’ in honour of the Treasurer of the Navy, Viscount Falkland.