Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [113]
Peter Carrington defended the Government’s position that morning in the House of Lords and had a reasonably good reception. But Peter and John then attended a packed and angry meeting of Tory back-benchers shortly after the Commons debate. Here, Peter was at a distinct disadvantage: as a peer he had struck up none of those friendships and understandings with back-benchers on which all of us have to rely when the pressure builds. As Ian Gow reported to me afterwards, it was a very difficult meeting, and feelings had boiled over.
WEEK TWO
The press over the weekend was very hostile. Peter Carrington was talking about resigning. I saw him on Saturday evening, Sunday morning and again in the evening. Both Willie Whitelaw and I did all that we could to persuade him to stay. I felt that the country needed a Foreign Secretary of his experience and international standing to see us through the crisis. But there seems always to be a visceral desire that a disaster should be paid for by a scapegoat. There is no doubt that Peter’s resignation ultimately made it easier to unite the Party and concentrate on recovering the Falklands: he understood this. Having seen Monday’s press, in particular the Times leader, he decided that he must go. Two other senior Foreign Office ministers also resigned: Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce. In a handwritten letter he wrote to me on Tuesday 6 April, Peter said:
I think I was right to go. There would have been continual poison and such advice as I gave you would have been questioned. The Party will now unite behind you as it should have done last Saturday.
It has been a crowded and enjoyable three years and the spirited debates we have sometimes had were productive and had no rancour.
Only one thing more. Though I have never pretended to agree with you about everything, my admiration for your courage and determination and resourcefulness is unbounded. You deserve to win through and if there is anything I can do to help you have only to ask.
It was a characteristically generous and encouraging letter — and these things matter when the skies are growing darker.
I also received a wonderful letter — one of a number over the years — from Laurens van der Post, who pointed out that there was one principle, more important even than sovereignty, at stake in the dispute:
To appease aggression and evil is to connive at a greater aggression and evil later on … If we fail to deal with the Fascist Argentine, the Russians will be even more encouraged than they are already to nibble away with more and more acts of aggression in what is left of a free world.
Of course, he was entirely right.
John Nott also wished to resign. But I told him straight that when the fleet had put to sea he had a bounden duty to stay and see the whole thing through. He therefore withdrew his letter on the understanding that it was made public that his offer to resign had been rejected. Whatever issues might have to be faced later as a result of the full enquiry (which I announced on 8 April), now was the time to concentrate on one thing only — victory. Meanwhile, I had to find a new Foreign Secretary. The obvious choice was Francis Pym, who had had the requisite experience of Foreign Affairs in Opposition and Defence in Government. And so I appointed him, asking John Biffen to take over his former position as Leader of the House of Commons. Francis is in many ways the quintessential old style Tory: a country gentleman and a soldier, a good tactician, but no strategist. He is a proud pragmatist and an enemy of ideology; the sort of man of whom people used to say that he would be ‘just right in a crisis’. I was to have reason to question that judgement. Francis’s appointment undoubtedly united the Party. But it heralded serious difficulties for the conduct of the campaign itself.
It was also on Monday that I was able to talk face to face at No. 10 with Rex Hunt and the two marine commanders who had just arrived from Uruguay. I asked him whether he