The press
Jingos and appeasers
Paul Johnson
A t every level', the Guardian summed .ri.up the Falklands invasion, 'the Government had been caught flat-footed'. Sure; but Fleet Street had not been all that nimble either. It will be a long time, I im- agine, before The Times is allowed to forget that disastrous headline, 'These paltry islands keepineus apart', which it put on David Watt's feature article last Wednes- day, The islands, Watt wrote, were 'im- poverished and inhospitable'. The Argen- tine junta 'has far more important things on its minds than the Falklands'. Britain had 'every reason to be on excellent terms' with the Argentine and "a serious attempt to improve relations with this most interesting and dynamic country would be well worth the investment'. The Guardian, the same day, was at its flippant worst. 'The whole episode', it editorialised, 'has a rather un- convincing script'. It was 'slightly ludicrous', a case of 'symbolic pinpricks', 'somehow incongruous', and had 'many ludicrous aspects'. It wrote wittily about 'the Steptoes of the South' and thought that 'the reported presence of units of the Argentine navy does not, in practice, much affect the position'. What should Britain do? 'The right answer probably is little or nothing' and we should 'rapidly develop a pretty laid back style of play for the future'.
No doubt the Guardian had been im- pressed by Lord Carrington's own striking- ly laid back style of play in the interview with him ('Carrington of the FO') the previous Saturday. Carrington had made jokes about not knowing the name of the President of Iceland: 'Doris Day', he called her ('she was charming'), and had sneered at the Navy: 'I mean there's no good being nostalgic. Gunboats very often settled things in Victorian times'. But 'what you've got to do is deal with the things and the pro- blems that you're faced with now. And, alas, gunboats won't do'. No doubt that was what Carrington had been insisting to John Nott all along. Indeed it is very unfor- tunate for Carrington that the Falklands fiasco coincided with the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Foreign Office, which induced him to engage in a great deal of complacent spouting. I particularly recom- mend as collector's pieces, not only the Guardian interview but his article in last week's Listener, with its boasting about our 'highly professional and skilful Diplomatic Service which is the envy of our friends and allies'. All this, of course, was before Carr- ington, like Sir Samuel Hoare., vanished through the trap-door of history., After the event, Fleet Street divided fairly sharply into jingos and appeasers. Natural- ly the Guardian, having advocated doing nothing before, was leading the latter. The Falklands invasion looked like 'a deeply irretrievable situation'. With the Argenti- nians established there there was 'little that the British government can in fact do to dislodge them'. It did not actually say that the Falklands were a far-away place about which we know nothing. They were, rather, 'an anachronistic remnant from a former colonial age', which 'do not represent any strategic or commercial interest worth fighting over'. The Daily Mirror was also in the appeasement camp: 'The Argentine ac- tion is outrageous. But this is still a dispute for diplomats and politicians to solve, not generals and admirals'. Its Sunday comPa- nion was presumably taking the same line, though you wouldn't know it from its leader, which contented itself with quoting other newspaper opinions criticising the Government. Its only positive opinion was expressed by its columnist, Woodrow Wyatt: 'Our Royal Navy ... must act to remove the Argentinians'. The Observer was torn between its desire to ridicule the 'Iron Lady' for being 'the first British Prime Minister to face the prospect of presiding over the forced repatriation of British subjects at the hands of a foreign power', and its anxiety to urge her to sur- render outright, The Government 'surely must' rule out, it insisted, 'an attempt to recover the Falklands and drive out the in- vaders'. The 'best that Britain can hope to rescue from this debacle' was a 'conk promise settlement which gives the islanders the best deal available under. Argentine sovereignty'. The Sunday Times did not quite slip into the appeasement camp, though it was by no means clear what it was trying to say in its confused leader, with its grotesquely ungrammatical headline ("The best of two difficult choices'). After examining the Observer-type surrender line, it added: 'Whatever may be said for this course, still more may be said against it'. While it dismissed 'sinking the Argentine navy' or 'bombarding Buenos Aires' as 'fantasies', it thought that 'blockading the islands' and 'putting a commando force ashore to regain their possession' were 'conceivable, though even here 'the last state could be worse than the first'. Its real point, it con- cluded feebly, was that 'we are now on the soundest possible moral ground' and 'the important thing' was to stay there. The Times, by contrast, was emphatic. The Government must take 'action unless Argentina backs down very rapidly'. B,_tr taro could 'inflict severe damage on thee Argentine navy if we have to reply to force with force'. It should be made clear 'we w.e, prepared to do that if the invaders are 110` withdrawn within a very short time'. This was the line taken by most of Flee Street. 'We must strike back against th, Argentinians', insisted the Daily Mail, 'ailu strike back hard'. 'We must act swiftly t°. redress the balance', echoed the News of the World. 'The Falklands must be set free — if not by diplomacy, then by force. 'Force must be met with force', the Daily Express agreed. 'An act of war against this country must be responded to in apPo" priate kind ... We have the means effec- tively to retaliate, to defend our rights pro" vided we have the will'. 'The imperative, wrote the Daily Telegraph, 'is to Press ahead with steps to • end the occupation; Writing in the News of the World, Adinira' of the Fleet Lord Hill-Norton summed UP the consensus: 'Only the Navy could have prevented this happening and it is only the Navy that can bloody well put it right:" Which is a reminder that in Fleet street, it a very ill wind that does nobody any good. Whatever else happens, there's a good time ahead for Former Naval Persons.
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