The Iron Lady

In particular the speed and convenience of working through a small War Cabinet led her increasingly to by-pass the full Cabinet in favour of decision-making through hand-picked ad hoc committees and her personal advisers. Meanwhile, the conviction that it was only her firmness which had brought victory encouraged her belief that a refusal to compromise was the only language foreigners understood.

The Falklands gave Mrs Thatcher a unique opportunity to become a truly national leader. Matthew Parris was one Tory MP who hoped that she might now ‘emerge as a bigger person; she will acquire mercy; she will find grace’.⁴² Unfortunately it had the opposite effect. Victory in the South Atlantic exacerbated her worst characteristics, not her best. After 1982 she used her augmented authority to pursue more self-righteously than before her particular vision of British society, and to trample on those groups, institutions and traditions which did not share it. Having routed the external enemy, she was soon looking for enemies within on whom she could visit the same treatment.

The war undoubtedly enhanced British prestige in the world, though possibly to a lesser extent than Mrs Thatcher wished to believe. It certainly confirmed the high professional reputation of Britain’s armed forces: the Americans frankly contrasted the success of the Falklands operation with some of their own forces’ bungled efforts in Lebanon and Iran, and British military advisers found themselves in demand around the world to train foreign armies. It also increased Mrs Thatcher’s personal visibility on the international stage: her status as a global superstar, mobbed by crowds wherever she went, reflected credit, or at least heightened interest, back on Britain. But the world was as much amazed as it was impressed by the lengths Britain was prepared to go to recapture the Falklands. Mrs Thatcher invoked fine principles of defending democracy and standing up to dictators, investing the war with high global symbolism that went down well in Berlin, Hong Kong, Gibraltar and other threatened enclaves. But to many elsewhere the Falklands seemed a cause too petty to justify the expense of lives and treasure.

Of course it was disproportionate. The final casualty count was astonishingly low – 255 British servicemen killed, 777 wounded (and about one-tenth of those permanently disabled). This was actually fewer than were killed in the first five years of the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’; but it was still a high human price, and it could easily have been much higher.[g] The material cost was six ships and twenty aircraft lost. The immediate financial cost has been reckoned anywhere between ?350 million and ?900 million, the longer-term expense of replacing lost vessels, ordnance and equipment at nearly ?2 billion. Another ?250 million was spent over the next three years on extending the runway at Port Stanley and improving the islands’ defences, quite apart from the expense of keeping a garrison on the Falklands for the foreseeable future. Altogether the cost of the war and its immediate aftermath was around ?3 billion.⁴³ It would have been cheaper to have given every islander ?1 million to settle elsewhere. This was an ironic outcome of a crisis whose origins lay in the MoD’s plans to cut defence expenditure. Moreover, those cuts themselves had to be substantially reversed. The sale of Invincible to Australia was cancelled, and the navy’s complement of frigates and destroyers was restored to fifty-five. If Sir Henry Leach had an ulterior motive in proposing sending the task force on 31 March he was resoundingly successful. By recovering the Falklands the navy saved itself. But from the global perspective of British strategic defence policy, the war was a disastrous diversion from sanity. Its outcome was to preserve in perpetuity, at vastly increased expense, the anomaly which successive British governments, including Mrs Thatcher’s, had been trying to offload.

Having staked her political destiny on the recovery of the islands, Mrs Thatcher could not subsequently admit to any doubts that they were worth it.⁴⁴ She invested the homely names of Goose Green and Tumbledown with the glamour of Alamein and Agincourt; and in January 1983, accompanied by Denis and Bernard Ingham, she made the long uncomfortable flight by VC-10 to Ascension Island, then on by Hercules bomber to Port Stanley to receive the islanders’ gratitude in person. She reverently walked – in most unsuitable shoes – over the hallowed ground where her boys had fought and died, while Denis memorably characterised the islands as ‘miles and miles of bugger all’ and longed for a snifter in the Upland Goose.⁴⁵ The return journey was even more uncomfortable, since their intended Hercules developed engine trouble. The replacement, hurriedly made ready for them, offered light or warmth, but not both. Mrs Thatcher chose light, huddled herself in as many blankets as could be found, and settled down to read the Franks Report into the causes of the war.

The Falklands was a war that should not have happened. Politically and diplomatically it arose from a sequence of miscalculations. Actuarially it was a nonsense.Yet once diplomatic blunders had created an unstoppable momentum for war, it cannot be denied that it was, in its way, magnificent – in part because the cause was so ludicrous.

Mrs Thatcher saw recapturing the Falklands as a matter of honour – her honour as well as the nation’s honour – which could not be ducked without lasting national shame. Having determined to accept the challenge, the manner in which she and her forces carried it through was an astonishing feat of will, courage, skill and improvisation, a legitimate source of national pride. Generally speaking, Thatcherism was a utilitarian philosophy which subjected every aspect of national life to rigorous accountancy and undervalued what could not be costed. The Falklands war was the one great exception on which money was lavished unstintingly for the sake of an idea, an obligation, a conception of honour. Many would have preferred the coffers to have been opened for some other cause nearer home. But overall the public approved, believing that the war – like landing on the moon – was something which had to be done, without regard to cost, and took pride that it was done supremely well. It was unquestionably Mrs Thatcher’s finest hour. She never achieved that moral grandeur again.

14 Falklands Effect

The emergence of Thatcherism

WITH the successful conclusion of the Falklands war, Mrs Thatcher’s position was transformed. She could now look forward to almost certain re-election whenever she chose to go to the country. There was some speculation that she might cash in on the euphoria of victory by calling a quick ‘khaki’ election in the autumn. But that, she told George Gale in an interview for the Daily Express, would be ‘basically wrong. The Falklands thing was a matter of national pride and I would not use it for party political purposes.’¹ This was humbug. In fact, she had no scruple about claiming the war as a specifically Conservative – indeed Thatcherite – achievement.

But she realised that to call a snap election would have looked cynically opportunist and might have backfired. Besides, it was unnecessary. Why should she cut short her first term just when she had finally secured her dominance? She could carry on for nearly two more years if she wished, to the spring of 1984. Her preference, she hinted was to go on to the autumn of 1983.² That gave her another full parliamentary year to reap the political harvest of her enhanced authority, and time to show some clear economic results from the pain of the last three years.

In the meantime something like normal politics resumed, and the Government could still be embarrassed by the unexpected. On 9 July there occurred an incident, trivial as it turned out, that was potentially almost as humiliating as the seizure of the Falklands. An intruder named Michael Fagan not only broke into Buckingham Palace, but found his way into the Queen’s bedroom and sat on the end of her bed; fortunately he was unarmed and harmless, and she coolly engaged him in conversation until help arrived. (The Duke of Edinburgh, the public was fascinated to learn, slept in another room.) But the implications were alarming. It turned out that it was not the first time that Fagan had broken into the Palace. If security at the Palace was so poor, was it any better at Downing Street and Chequers? ‘I was shocked and upset,’ Mrs Thatcher told George Gale. ‘Really I was very, very upset… Every woman in this country was upset because we all thought, oh lord, what would happen to me?’³ Willie Whitelaw accepted responsibility as Home Secretary and initially felt he must resign. Having already lost Carrington, however, Mrs Thatcher could not face losing Whitelaw too, and persuaded him to change his mind. Whitelaw’s popularity in the House protected him. Security at the Palace was tightened, and the bizarre episode passed off with no lasting political damage.