Political commentary
The Falklands Effect
Peter Paterson
Ater ten unhappy weeks, through five set- piece debates and innumerable carping Question Times, the real Mr Foot once more stood up in the House of Commons on Monday night to pay his generous tribute to Mrs Thatcher. It may have been upsetting — galling, even — for some of his colleagues, but if Labour is to recover the ground it has lost during the Falklands crisis, and foreshorten the impact of the 'Falklands Effect' on the party's fortunes, it had to be done.
But, as usual with Mr Foot, a Parliamen- tarian always ready to succumb to the headier moods of the House of Commons, he was a little too gushing, too complimen- tary for his own good. There would be, he said, great congratulations from the House to the British forces, 'and, if I may say so, to the Right Honourable Lady'. And possibly with his own wartime tribulations in mind: 'I can well understand the anx- ieties and the pressures that must have been upon her during those weeks and I can understand those pressures and anxieties may be relieved and I congratulate her upon them.' Perhaps dealing with the Militant Tendency and the revolt of Mr Benn and Dame Judith Hart would become easier with the clear-cut military victory at Port Stanley. A longer delay, a bloodier finale would have embarrassed Mr Foot and his front bench almost as much as it would have damaged Mrs Thatcher, and his sense of relief, not surprisingly, got the better of his syntax.
Next day, however, the old Footie return- ed, conscious that his graciousness to Mrs Thatcher had further upset the more mili- tant pacifists behind him. Once more he regurgitated UN resolution 502, which calls — though he did not dare read it out — for direct negotiations with the Argentines, and Mrs Thatcher, well-groomed and at least ten feet tall, firmly made it clear that all UN bets were off, that sovereignty was no longer negotiable, and that the future of the Falkland Islands would from now on be up to the Falkland Islanders.
Yet Mrs Thatcher, for her part, has cause to be grateful to Mr Foot. Irrespective of subsequent niggling, it was hugely impor- tant to her to enlist his support in the crucial first debate after the invasion, on 3 April. On that occasion, equally overcome by Westminster atmospherics, he spoke of ensuring that 'foul and brutal aggression does not succeed our world', and, ignor- ing the exclusion of the Falklanders from the British Nationality Act, assured them that they had 'an absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, as they have looked to us over the past 150 years'. It was left to Mr John Silkin to ask the obvious and awkward questions about how we had got into this plight in the first place, and to insist that Labour was not willing to offer the Government a blank cheque. In the event, despite some rather strange endorsements, Mr Foot's cheque has not bounced.
It is necessary for Mr Foot and his friends to remember 3 April, even in Mrs Thatcher's heady moment of triumph, because it suggests how they can get back into the game. For while the Opposition on that day did all that the Government could expect of it, the role played by Ministers was distinctly inglorious. If it were not for the howls of rage that greeted him from his own backbenchers, the only sound that might have been heard as Mr John Nott went to the despatch box was the knocking of his knees. This was also Mrs Thatcher's wobbliest moment, with the fearsome Mr Enoch Powell taunting her over her Iron Lady soubriquet and declaring, 'In the next week or two this House, the nation and the Right Honourable Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made' (it was churlish of him not to mention tungsten or molybdenum when he spoke on Tuesday), and with Lord Carrington and the entire Foreign Office team about to be thrown to the wolves. That she recovered magnificent- ly, finally to enjoy on Monday night, in a Commons packed as tightly as a troopship, the triumphant applause of all but the most implacable of the opponents of the war in the Falklands, adds yet another glorious chapter to the saga.
Yet, colossal though she now seems, there is no need for Mr Foot utterly to despair of Labour ever vanquishing such a formidable opponent. The inquest is yet to come: the trepidation displayed by Mrs Thatcher at the outset can still be exploited; Mr Silkin's penetrating questions about British Intelligence, about the machinations of the Foreign Office, about Mr Nott's decision to withdraw the patrol ship En- durance, have all to be answered. And there are further questions concerning the vulnerability of our frigates and destroyers to air attack, delays in installing the anti- Exocet Sea Wolf system, the lack of early warning radar for the task force, the small number of Harriers that were aboard the carriers when the fleet sailed, and whether someone blundered when the Welsh Guards were caught unprotected while disembark- ing at Bluff Cove.
There are also the ominously complain- ing voices from the press corps in the South Atlantic. There is the judgment of the men of the task force, yet to be heard, on the Government's attempts at news manage- ment and the effect this had on their families back home. Was there ever a bigger
botch-up than Mr Nott and his spokesman talking of 'serious losses' and then refusing to identify the ships involved, or concealing the casualty figures at Bluff Cove on the grounds that they could be of value to Me Argentines, already on the point of defeat?
All that is in the past, however, and re'
mains to be mulled over. But what of the future? There is the Government's defence policy to think about. It must be extremely doubtful whether the strategy of running down the surface fleet in favour of Trident submarines, closely argued in Mr Nott hastily-withdrawn White Paper, is n11,4) longer politically feasible, or, with the nee" to garrison the Falklands, financially Pass': ble. And there would doubtless be a serious riot on the Tory backbenches if the sale 0, HMS Invincible to the Australians Wel.' now to go ahead. Al! of which scents /;,, 3 make Mr Nott's position comPler,,e', untenable: can he possibly re-write u" White Paper in a way that would satistY ha House of Commons puffed UP Wi,,tf patriotic pride over the performance non-nuclear weapons and still do his cint,Y' as he so recently saw it, to ensure the defence of the realm? No-one would be much surprised if Mr Nott soon ceases to be Secretary of State for Defence, and, inclenci' there are persistent rumours that he is e°:; sidering retiring from politics at the 'De" election. ns But defence f ei if cteh and are economic long-term implicatlo for has yet to be paid for — there is also the m• has pact on foreign policy. No doubt teniPebre will in due course begin to cool, but at t,..0 moment there are plenty of Tory MPst would be delighted to see carried into effeed a plan for the Foreign Office to be in°ve.ts out of the Victorian splendours of its out in Whitehall and forced to swapti with the Department of Health and 50;1,R Security in darkest Elephant and Castle_- Pym can save them from such a Puru„so ment, but at what price? He has alw'n't found it difficult to win the argutneto against Mrs Thatcher, but his task now is be persuade her that in the long run Presidebe Reagan's 'hemispherical' policy trust taken into account, and that Argentina cep not be treated in perpetuity as a pariah' be other words, like it or not, there has to „, an Argentinian dimension to any Per1/1:, nent settlement of the Falklands probiewr however adamantly the Prime Ministe recoiled from it on Tuesday. Labour's death wish may be too far akd'e vanced for it to seize anything shaped ll„,, an opportunity. But there is sufficient po"g Falklands combustible material 131..,111 around to keep any normal OPPositiu,. busy from now until the next election, e'" say nothing of such skeletons as the three million unemployed whose plight crept in to sour Mrs Thatcher's triumph on TuesdaY,', Handled properly, the "Falklands Effect', instead of guaranteeing a Tory v! c,.. tory next time round, could conceivably as:, its tteormhaounf totfhfieceG.overnment for the rest '
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