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had been aware that an invasion was in the offing and he replied, ‘No: I thought it was just another alarm of the kind we had had previously.’ He told me that when he had received our message on the previous Wednesday he had contacted one of the Argentine representatives of their airline on the island who had assured him that as far as he knew nothing was afoot. However, it seemed from what I was told by one of the marines that other Argentinians had been reporting back on every detail and movement from their airline office on the Falklands. Apparently the local Argentine commander of the invasion force knew almost every one of the names of the marines reinforcements who had been there only a few days. The operation had, it seemed, been very well planned with the first wave of Argentine troops coming from the landward side. They did not, however, come out and fight but waited for overwhelming armour and other forces to arrive. Our two marine commanders were very anxious to get back to the islands. They were subsequently flown to Ascension Island — the mid-Atlantic staging post for the task force, vital to our operation — and subsequently took the surrender at Government House when Port Stanley fell.

The Governor was superb throughout, dealing effectively with the media, which was not always an easy task. He repeated again and again that I had said in the House that our objective was the restoration of British sovereignty and the return of British administration and he was sure that I meant what I said. Of course, I did. But there were many times in the coming negotiations when I wondered whether I would indeed secure Rex Hunt’s return to the Falklands.

On Tuesday 6 April there was a long Cabinet discussion of the crisis. From the beginning, we were sure that the attitude of the United States would be a key element in the outcome. The Americans could do enormous damage to the Argentine economy if they wanted. I sent a message to President Reagan urging the US to take effective economic measures. But at the moment the Americans were not prepared to do this. Nico Henderson had his first discussions with Al Haig in which the main themes of their response over the next few weeks were already clear. They had stopped arms sales. But they would not ‘tilt’ too heavily against Argentina. To do so would deprive them of influence in Buenos Aires. They did not want Galtieri to fall and so wanted a solution that would save his face. There were clear signs that they were contemplating a mediation between the two sides. All of this was fundamentally misguided and Nico was very robust in his reply. But in practice the Haig negotiations, which flowed from all this, almost certainly worked in our favour by precluding for a time even less helpful diplomatic intervention from other directions, including the UN. In a crisis of this kind one finds any number of people lining up to act as mediators, some motivated by nothing more than a desire to cut a figure on the world stage.

That consideration lay in the future, however. At this stage the Americans were anxious to achieve a settlement that would prevent them having to choose between Britain, their natural ally, and their interests in Latin America. I should add, though, that from the first Caspar Weinberger, US Defence Secretary, was in touch with our ambassador emphasizing that America could not put a NATO ally and long-standing friend on the same level as Argentina and that he would do what he could to help. America never had a wiser patriot, nor Britain a truer friend.

It was at this Cabinet that I announced we were setting up OD(SA), which became known to the outside world as ‘the War Cabinet’. Formally, this was a sub-committee of OD, though several of its members did not serve on that committee. Its exact membership and procedure were influenced by a meeting I had with Harold Macmillan, who came to see me at the House of Commons after Questions on Tuesday 6 April to offer his support and advice as the country’s and the Conservative Party’s senior ex-Prime Minister. His main recommendation