̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Falklands

‘Hectoring, strident and bossy’: Thatcher papers for 1985 reveal plans to soften the Iron Lady

sjr81 — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 15:38:52 +0000

Held by the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, 43,000 pages of papers will be opened to the public from Monday, revealing in close detail the concerns, challenges and crises faced by Thatcher during a year which marked her tenth anniversary as leader and the halfway point in her premiership.

Thatcher’s papers also reveal growing disquiet within Tory Party ranks about Labour’s recovery following the miners’ strike, as well as a general sense of Conservative malaise, and the wrangling Prime Minister Thatcher underwent as she planned and announced her Cabinet reshuffle.

Chris Collins from the Margaret Thatcher Archives Trust, which owns the papers, said the newly-released documents give a sense of the pressures on Thatcher, both domestically, internationally, and closer to home – with her press secretary attempting to soften the image of the Iron Lady.

“ ̽��ֱ��early papers for 1985 are dominated by the unfinished business of the coal strike,” said Collins. “Thatcher’s advisers were worried that Arthur Scargill might still manage to find a way to out-manoeuvre them. ̽��ֱ��papers show Thatcher closely involved in the aftermath of the strike. Although its outcome is now seen as decisive, the possibility of another strike was not discounted at the time. Thatcher wrote a note on March 7, 1985 saying ‘what a relief it’s all over… we shall rebuild stocks of coal at power stations as a first priority.’”

Elsewhere, Thatcher wrote: “We have shattered the myth that the miners can always bring a government down. And it is clear beyond all doubt that we will never give in to violence.”

But the end of the battle with Scargill and the miners did not provide the boost to Conservative popularity that many in the party imagined. In fact, Thatcher’s papers for 1985 suggest the reverse is true with press secretary Bernard Ingham’s press clippings showing how Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s conference speech won plaudits from both the Sun and the Daily Mail.

Perhaps one of the most curious revelations from the release of this year’s papers comes via the many pages of correspondence generated by multiple branches of the government machine over Thatcher’s potential non-attendance at a St Paul’s memorial service.

̽��ֱ��papers for 1985 reveal that the Church of England and Downing Street clashed over proposals to exclude the Prime Minister from the unveiling of the Falklands Memorial at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Thatcher was said to have responded angrily to suggestions that there would not be room for her in the crypt alongside the Queen, church and military officials. ̽��ֱ��row followed a high-profile falling-out between Mrs Thatcher and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie after the latter had prayed for Argentinian dead in a 1982 memorial service.

Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine unwisely allowed a letter to reach the Prime Minister showing him signing off on the agreement to hold the service without her. On the letter, in Mrs Thatcher’s own hand, she has scrawled the words which must have made many a minister’s blood turn to ice: ‘Kindly ask the secretary of state to see me immediately.’ ̽��ֱ��word ‘immediately’, just in case her displeasure was unclear, is underlined twice.

Mrs Thatcher’s lack of popularity with the Church of England also seemed to be reflected in the national approval ratings for the Prime Minster and her party as unemployment figures stayed stubbornly above the three million mark throughout the year.

Added Collins: “Private as well as published polling showed the Conservative party falling badly for much of the year, moving into third place in May behind Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance. By August, the position seemed worse still. Approval of the government’s record was at minus 42 per cent. Thatcher’s personal rating was minus 35 per cent and the party remained well adrift of its two main rivals in the Tory party’s private polls.”

̽��ֱ��disastrous polling figures may have informed attempts by Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham to soften her image. Ingham, whose papers are also held by the Churchill Archives Centre, sent a five-page memo to the Prime Minister warning that she had gained a public image as “hectoring, strident and bossy”.

Ingham’s plea to employ a softer rhetoric, including the words ‘compassion’ and ‘caring’, seem to have largely fallen on deaf ears as she shied away from using such language in her party conference speech that year.

Added Collins: “Looking at the document there is no sign of dissent from Thatcher; no scribbled notes or underlining like you often see on her personal files. But she simply would never have worn her heart on her sleeve like that, partly because it would have gone against her instincts, but also because, by that point, it would have seemed inauthentic.”

“Her public image was so fixed that she couldn’t win. If she had suddenly shown a softer side, people would not have believed it.”

Massive unemployment, the end of the miners’ strike and a controversial decision to try and exclude the Prime Minister from a Falklands War memorial service at St Paul’s are some of the issues revealed by the release of Margaret Thatcher’s personal papers for 1985.

Kindly ask the secretary of state to see me immediately.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Margaret Thatcher

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Thatcher Archive reveals deep divisions on the road to Falklands War

lw355 — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:01:01 +0000

Government tensions and widespread reluctance to wage war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, even as the conflict unfolded, are laid bare among the thousands of pages of Thatcher’s papers being opened to the public and made available online by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation at http://www.margaretthatcher.org/

Among the 40,000 pages of documents being released is Thatcher’s own copy of the note confirming the Argentine invasion of the Islands, and an emotionally-charged draft letter to President Reagan, eventually toned down, where she resolutely refuses American overtures to concede ground to Argentina’s military dictatorship.

A previously unseen 12-page record made by Ian Gow, Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, following the appearance of Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Defence Secretary John Nott at the backbench 1922 committee, describes how the tenor of that tense exchange informed Carrington’s much-lamented decision to resign.

Thatcher’s attempts to dissuade him came to nought and the archive contains a warm letter of explanation from Carrington to Thatcher, and a touching letter by return from the Prime Minister on May 4, 1982, relating how much she and the Cabinet missed his presence.

But the papers released this year also contain evidence of less cordial relations and weak support at best from large sections of the Conservative Parliamentary Party in the build-up to war.

Critics of Government policy could be found inside Downing Street as well as outside. Some of Thatcher’s closest advisors were sceptical that the islands were worth the fight with John Hoskyns, David Wolfson and Alan Waters, all staunch Thatcherites, persistently lobbying her to strike for a diplomatic deal with Argentina.

Outside Number 10, junior ministers Tim Raison and Ken Clarke as well as Stephen Dorrell and Chris Patten were also expressing alarm; Dorrell for one saying he would only support the Task Force as a negotiating measure - and advocating a withdrawal if the military Junta in Argentina refused to negotiate.

All this only accentuated an important effect of the war, driving the Prime Minister ever deeper into the heart of the government machine where only a handful of her most senior ministers and officials could follow.

On Tuesday, April 6, four days after the Argentine invasion, Thatcher met with former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, seeking his advice on handling the looming conflict. While there was no official minute of the meeting, Thatcher’s own note survives. It references the now famous advice from Macmillan not to have Chancellor Geoffrey Howe in her War Cabinet so that money would not be an issue in making military decisions, and also details his counsel on handling war correspondents – essentially to restrict, if not censor them, as much as possible.

However, as the situation in the South Atlantic worsened in the face of Argentine intransigence and fighting began, wider Conservative and opposition support eventually began to fall in place behind the Prime Minister.

Critics remained, however, and the archive for 1982 contains sharp exchanges with Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Hume, who challenged the morality of the Government’s action, and even Astronomer Royal Martin Ryle, who described the occupation as a ‘relatively minor event’ – a view tersely rebutted by Thatcher.

̽��ֱ��personal sadness she felt at the loss of life during the Falklands War is reflected in the keeping of notes such as the slip of paper handed to her on June 12, relaying that HMS Glamorgan had been hit by an Exocet missile, with casualties at that point unknown. Elsewhere, the archive records instances of the Prime Minister anxiously awaiting news and reading long into the early hours of the morning as losses mounted and the British and Argentine forces traded heavy blows.

News that the Argentinians had surrendered came in a call from Fleet Command at Northwood at 9pm on Monday, June 14. ̽��ֱ��Thatcher Archives has her notes on the call, as well as her annotated copy of John Nott’s celebrated earlier statement announcing the recapture of South Georgia, nearly two months earlier on April 25.

̽��ֱ��‘Falklands Factor’ famously led to a huge post-war boost in the Prime Minister’s own popularity rating, as well as the Government’s. She connected the conflict to domestic issues, asking in a famous speech ‘why does it need a war to bring out our qualities and assert our pride?’.

Despite looming large over much of 1982, the Falklands were not the only overseas challenge to the Prime Minister. Thatcher’s first big visit after the Falklands War was to Japan, China and Hong Kong. ̽��ֱ��Chinese leg of the trop was particularly significant as it kicked off the long negotiation on the return of Hong Kong to China.

̽��ֱ��archives reveal something of the vast preparation she personally undertook for the visit to the Far East, especially China. She felt obliged to examine every detail of the trip, wary of the symbolism of each visit and determined to make a powerful impression at every point.

Among the papers at Churchill are a list of clothes she was planning to wear, meeting by meeting (all the outfits were given names such as Smoky, Fuchsia and Plum Stars), and the archive also contains details of her outright refusal to lay at wreath at the Monument to Revolutionary Martyrs in Tiananmen Square, despite being advised that many Western heads of government had recently done so. She simply scrawls ‘NO’ in capped letters next to the suggestion.

She also spent an astonishing amount of time planning the British return banquet (held in the Great Hall of the People) where she oversaw cutlery arrangements and the silver table settings supplied by the Royal Navy. Ever keen to cut costs, whether in the British economy or domestically, Thatcher also waded in on a ridiculous argument about the cost of the banquet; the PM favouring the cheaper 50 Yuan option but eventually being persuaded to accept the 75 Yuan menu which contained shark’s fin and sea slugs.

She also became embroiled in a heated dispute about the possibility of serving jam sandwiches for dessert (considered a treat for foreign visitors). Meriting official discussion with the Foreign Office, Thatcher opted for a fruit salad dessert instead.

Despite the care and attention put into seemingly every aspect of the Far East trip, the archive confirms her meetings with the Chinese leadership did not run smoothly. Papers released this year relate for the first time that Communist Party Chairman Deng Xiaoping threatened to move into Hong Kong before the expiry of the lease in 1997 if there were ‘very large and serious disturbances in the next fifteen years’, even going so far as to mention HSBC by name as a potential agent of such disturbances.

Away from the seriousness of war and international political wrangling, Thatcher also spent one evening in 1982 in the company of the man behind the world’s most famous drag queen – Dame Edna Everage. While not attending in full and glittering regalia, Barry Humphries did give Mrs Thatcher a Dame Edna cooking apron for ‘informal lunches at Chequers’. ̽��ֱ��archive also contains record of an amazing literary dinner at the home of Hugh Thomas where she sat down with Larkin, Spender, Stoppard, Berlin and the like. However, records note that Iris Murdoch and John Le Carre, a grudging admirer, were unable to attend.

For Christmas 1982, the archive also reveals she was sent tapes of Yes, Minister, by the Director-General of the BBC, Alisdair Milne.

̽��ֱ��Falklands War – the conflict that defined much of Margaret Thatcher’s political career and legacy – dominates the release of her personal papers for 1982 at the Churchill Archives Centre from Monday (March 25).

Among the 40,000 pages of documents being released is Thatcher’s own copy of the note confirming the Argentine invasion of the Islands

British Army official photographer Sgt Ronald Hudson

After landing at San Carlos, a heavily laden paratrooper of 2 Parachute Regiment heads south for Sussex Mountain on 21 May 1982. From there the Battalion attacked Goose Green.

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Falklands/Malvinas: A national cause

bjb42 — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:44:46 +0000

A bleak archipelago in the South Atlantic, with a population of around 3,000 and temperatures that rarely rise above 13 degrees, there seems little to commend the Falklands, or Islas Malvinas. Offshore oil reserves have aroused new economic possibilities in the region, but the islands’ main industries remain sheep farming, fishing and tourism. Many justifiably wonder why these rocks are the subject of such bitter diplomacy or why, in 1982, the lives of more than 900 people had to be lost in their name.

Thirty years after the conflict, however, the debate between Britain and Argentina over who owns the Falklands/Malvinas shows little sign of abating – indeed, the anniversary of the war has reignited tensions between the two. At the same time, their attitudes are hardly the same. While Britain continues to stress its commitment to the islanders’ right to self-determination, popular interest in the UK is nothing compared with the passions that the Malvinas arouse in Argentina.

There, when the Government calls for negotiations with the British, it is guaranteed huge public support. In Argentina, memorials to the war and posters reasserting the country’s claim to the islands are a common sight, while young people often get tattoos of the Malvinas in the national colours. Such zeal seems odd in the UK, where a war over a territory that even the Prime Minister’s husband had to look up in an atlas at the time, now tends to feel long-since gone.

̽��ֱ��key to understanding Argentina’s very different point of view lies not with what the islands are, nor with natural resources. It is about what they represent. For many British people, the story of the Falklands War is a simple one, in which the country fought for its fellow-citizens and won. Argentinian ideas about the islands are usually much more complex, and often deeply emotional as well.

Since the war, a number of Argentinian writers, poets, academics and filmmakers have expressed, debated and critiqued those ideas and feelings in works which show how central the Malvinas are to the way Argentina perceives itself as a nation. Many of these works will be the subject of a conference at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge on June 9^th, five days before the 30^th anniversary of the conflict’s end. Academics from Britain, Argentina and elsewhere will join forces to discuss the war’s cultural legacy, because, they argue, doing so allows us to better understand the debates and controversies that the conflict has inspired in Argentina.

Although this will not be an event about rights to sovereignty, Dr Joanna Page, from the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Latin American Studies and a specialist in Argentinian culture, argues that the current political debate over who owns the islands should be informed by a better understanding of the social and cultural weight of the Malvinas in Argentinian history.

“When I go to Argentina, people often ask me about what people here in Britain think about the islands,” she said. “If you tell them that most people don’t really think about them at all, that’s very difficult for them to understand. For them, the memory of the war runs much deeper, it reaches much further into how Argentina thinks of itself as a nation, and those ideas are still evolving to this day.”

“In spite of all the political wrangling, there is not a lot of understanding in Britain about why the islands are so important to Argentina. It doesn’t seem to make sense. When you start looking back through the history and the literature, however, you realize how far they are tied up with ideas about nationhood and identity. Exploring how the Malvinas are represented in cultural texts reveals a lot more about what motivates Argentina’s performance on the diplomatic stage.”

Page’s own research on evolving Argentinian perspectives on the war has been influenced by the work of the political scientist, Vicente Palermo, and the historian, Federico Lorenz, who will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference. Palermo argues that since the country achieved independence from Spain in 1810, its national identity has been founded on a number of clear, fundamental ideas.

Where some countries define themselves primarily in terms of a shared culture, for example, territorial integrity – the land itself – is core to Argentina’s sense of national identity. ̽��ֱ��nation’s destiny is often represented in history and literature as frustrated by colonial powers who have invaded the land and ransacked its riches. Another key notion that Palermo identifies in Argentine national identity is that of unity, of a cause that brings everyone together.

These ideas sit perfectly with that of the Islas Malvinas: a physical territory, usurped (according to one version of history) by imperial British forces, and now a cause which the nation can unanimously throw itself behind. If, for the British themselves, the islands are curious and remote, to the Argentinians they are a national icon.

As Lorenz shows, however, remembering the war in Argentina is a complicated question. It was perpetrated and lost by a deeply corrupt military junta, which had been in power since 1976 and was guilty of numerous human rights abuses. ̽��ֱ��invasion of the Malvinas was partly an opportunistic act to shore up its popularity. Some 650 Argentinians lost their lives as a result. Perhaps as many veterans again have killed themselves since.

̽��ֱ��dilemma this creates is whether to remember the Malvinas War as just another crime committed by the military regime, or as a legitimate popular and national cause. Argentina’s cultural output since the war reflects this dilemma. “In the years following 1982, the war was associated with the regime and many people distanced themselves from it,” Page said. “They forgot, rather conveniently, that they had poured on to the streets to support it when it began. After defeat, the war was seen as a horrible mistake and it was a relief to many that it could be seen as a chapter that closed with the end of the dictatorship.”

̽��ֱ��desire to forget has often been summed up in the term desmalvinizacion, a “don’t mention the war” mentality which presided in Argentina for many years. Literature and film of the period often portrayed the conflict not as a fight with the British, but as an expression of internal strife. ̽��ֱ��war for the Malvinas became a coincidental backdrop to a battle within Argentina itself.

Often, this was achieved by focusing on how officers (representing the junta) abused and even tortured their conscripts (the ordinary Argentinian) in the freezing conditions of the Malvinas. ̽��ֱ��1984 film Los chicos de la guerra, for example, showed frightened adolescents being press-ganged into an absurd conflict not of their making. In 2004, the award-winning Iluminados por el fuego picked up many of these themes.

Ironically, those who fought never approved of such works, even though they claimed to be telling their story. Los chicos de la guerra provoked an angry response from veterans, and even Iluminados por el fuego has come in for criticism because the memoir on which it is based was more ambiguous. As a book, it described exemplary conduct among officers as well. That was conveniently erased in a film which aimed to show the ordinary soldier as a victim of the government, and the war as a cruel and expensive mistake.

What fascinates scholars like Page is that other perspectives on the war are now starting to emerge more clearly. In historical and cultural narratives, the war has often been separated from the broader campaign to reclaim sovereignty over the islands, remembered, in the words of a popular saying, as una causa justa en manos bastarda - a righteous cause in the hands of bastards.

That cause is alive and kicking. Cultural texts on the war – novels, poetry, film and comics – reveal a huge range of responses to the legacy of the Malvinas war and Argentina’s continued campaign for sovereignty. Many do not simply stick to recording the events of the war or its impact then and now, but stray into fantasy or parody. In the view of Carlos Gamerro, another keynote speaker whose seminal novel, ̽��ֱ��Islands, comes out in English translation this month, the only way to understand the nationalist fictions in which Argentinians present the war is by giving it an obviously fictional treatment. If the history of the islands has been shaped by their mythical role in Argentine nationalism, then history and fiction are not so far apart.

Amid the recent political heat, Page hopes that the conference will help to cast a more dispassionate and analytical eye on the question of how the Malvinas have been imagined within Argentina. “There are people coming to Cambridge on the 9th who feel that the debates in Argentina about the Malvinas are still very restricted, and perhaps more so with the recent resurgence of nationalist feeling about the islands,” Page added. “Just as the past overshadows the politics of the present, the politics of the present define the ways in which we look at the past. One of the things we want to ask is what role culture plays in shaping history.”

Thirty years after it ended, the Falklands/Malvinas War still casts a long shadow over the lives of many Argentinians. A conference marking the anniversary next week will look at how it has been represented in history, literature, cinema and other media, showing how through these we can better understand why Argentina cares so much about the islands.

Exploring how the Malvinas are represented in cultural texts reveals a lot more about what motivates Argentina’s performance on the diplomatic stage.

Joanna Page

Wikimedia Commons.

Argentinian graves in East Falkland. While soldiers were often characterized as victims of the junta in the war’s immediate aftermath, they are now seen by many as patriots who died for a righteous cause.

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