Falklands Diary continued, for 24th May, 1982 .
Diary in Courier, comments in Times.
24 May. On the whole Guardian editorials have been good. My views must have been influenced by receiving info almost exclusively from Guardian and Radio 4. {1}
Good letter in Guardian (Terry Jones) making the essential point that the dispatching of the task force has reinforced the law of the jungle. It pays to be strong, & next year defence budgets will go up all over the world.{2}
Nott, {3} realising that the British forces are now in a strong position, is talking once again of a total return to British sovereignty. Not UN administration, not shared sovereignty. There is something of a dilemma here. Many Britons will think that since so much has been sacrificed we cannot then give up what has been gained.{4} But "having" the islands is not in Britain's interests {5}. The best way remains to reinforce international law, and to hand the islands over to the UN & be as magnanimous as possible to the Argentinians. Let there be a UN-supervised referendum and a judgment by [the] International Court of Justice.Let Britain recognise that Argentina's claim is not wholly fictitious, and that sooner or later they must be a willing party to any permanent settlement. Tomorrow is the 25 of May. Surely the Argentines cannot allow that to pass without some heroics? {6} Actually the propaganda system is so good, why do they need to fight at all? {7}. But it seems they are losing materiel at a rate too rapid to sustain for long. Will they chance a ship or two?
Comments made 24 May 2012
{1} I believe that at the time both these sources struck me as striving for reasonable balance, and this belief was reinforced by strong criticism on the part of the government and other parts of the media, who viewed the Guardian and the BBC as 'pro-Argentinian'. However they too had to get most of their information from UK government sources. It seemed to go without saying that Argentinian government sources were entirely unreliable, and perhaps nespapers even more so. But what is the best procedure under these circumstances? Presumably it would have helped to read coverage by other media throughout the world, but what? Le Monde? Asahi Shimbun? Pravda? New York Times? El Pais?
{2} I have been unable to find evidence to support this prediction. Probably it would not make much difference to most nations' ability to project power or defend rights; and increasingly 'soft power' is seen as a more effective way of furthering a nation's overseas interests. Perhaps Britain was just a freak in that it had the remains of an imperial navy and was able to give it a last hurrah.
{3} John Nott was the defence secretary, who I thought acquitted himself rather well. Not many defence secretaries enjoy such a lively period of office. This passage reminds me something I had forgotten, that throughout the pre-shooting negotiations, Britain had been prepared to envisage a range of compromise solutions, as indeed it had been seeking during the pre-Thatcher administration.
{4} This must be a standard process. Once even a few people have got killed there is pressure at all levels to increase the probability that 'they did not die in vain'. This presumably lengthens many conflicts, and increases the sense of bitterness and resentment after a defeat.
{5} In retrospect, this is a much more complicated question. In 'the olden days' Princes felt it was their duty to expand their territory whenever they could. In 'the Age of Empire' European powers famously scrabbled for anything they could get, anywhere. At the very least, each scrap of territory could be a bargaining chip. But during the post-WWII era of decolonisation my impression is that great metropolitan powers found small remote colonies a liability and worked hard to get shot of them in one way or another.
The Falklands were probably a perfect example, and could have been transferred with huge smiles all round if the Argentinians had played their cards better.
Since that time however we have become much more aware of the potential resources within the relatively shallow territorial waters of a land mass, especially oil and gas, perhaps fish, so suddenly certain remote islands have a different significance. As far as I recall this was never mentioned in 1982, but has risen up the agenda ever since, and presumably hinders a final agreement. One is reminded of the Russians' tongue-in-cheek attempt to claim the North Pole in 2007.
{6} 25 May was the culmination of the liberation struggle against Spain, and is the Argentine National Day.
{7} I'm now a bit puzzled by this remark. It seems to suggest the ultimate conspiracy theory: that if the government has total control of the media it can report anything it likes and there is no need to undertake real costly or risky actions. The subsequent sentence suggests it was just a throwaway line.
