Political commentary
The blame for victory
Colin Welch
There may be in Franks more criticism of Mrs Thatcher, politicians and civil ser- vants than any of us, as I write, wholly realise. Lord Franks's judgments are notoriously cool, fair, balanced, temperate, his prose mandarin, subtle and reserved. That is why he was chosen. He is not exact- ly a journalist of the shock-horror-I-name- the-guilty-woman sort; he is not given to flaring headlines and bold type. Moreover, delivered to us journalists as his report was, raining down like a ton of coal, with no time in advance to pick over and examine each lump, anyone outside the privileged circle who claimed to know on Tuesday night all that was in it — or, more impor- tant, what was left out — is a liar. Its stric- tures were like an Argentinian minefield difficult to locate, map and lift.
Michael Foot had actually got the report on Monday, the day before, but had seem- ingly made little use of the privilege. The questions he put in the House on Tuesday to Mrs Thatcher were uniformly trivial and pettyfogging, of no public interest. They say he has difficulty nowadays in reading for long spells. Well then, why not give the report to Denis Healey, expert alike in defence and foreign affairs? After riffling through the report Healey could have come up with five or six questions, all nasty, ap- posite, embarrassing and revealing, the sort of questions which take wickets. As it was, Mrs Thatcher had no difficulty whatever in surviving. For Labour a debacle worthy of General Menendez. Perhaps the debate, fuelled by Hastings's and Jenkins's book, will be leveller.
Even so, two things I will bet on: one is that this report won't run and run, except in a very academic nit-picking way, as pedants analyse details and nuances. The other is that whatever mud ill-conditioned people may find in it to chuck at Mrs Thatcher won't stick.
After all, she has just won a famous vic- tory. If the seeds of continuing difficulties and sadness are embedded in it, they have yet to sprout. In the light of this, what mat- ter that she was slow off the mark, overlooked certain warnings, made one or two errors of judgment — though the report mostly acquits her. Who would have had time to spare just after VE day for a long report analysing Churchill's mistakes in 1942 or 1943? It would have seemed ab- surd. Moreover, the victory was in a very special sense her own, her own and that of her superb forces. Very few of us are those who can claim, without a major rearrange- ment of what we actually thought and said at the time, to have shared throughout her confidence or courage, still less to have `known better.' The mistakes she made, with the possible exception of the En- durance withdrawal, seem very understan- dable. We would surely have made them in her place, perhaps more of them and worse. Nearly every stone thrown at Mrs Thatcher will come from a glass house.
Many of us indeed wondered whether she had given General Galtieri any precise war- nings about the consequences of aggres- sion. If she had not, she would have been gravely to blame. Well, it appears from the report that she gave three: one through Mr Luce qualified, one vague, the third forceful but indirect through President Reagan, who warned Galtieri that invasion would be a casus belli. The General presumably didn't believe them. Our past record of surrender whenever a fist is clen- ched in our face made his mistake ex- cusable.
The old sea dog Callaghan made much of his having deterred the Argentinians from a previous adventure by the timely movement of ships. But did the Argentinians actually know of this movement? The report drily states that it 'found no evidence' that they did. If they didn't, how could they have been deterred by it? As the exam papers say, Discuss. On this point as on others the lack of any Argentinian witnesses is regret- table. Might it not have been possible to send someone to see General Galtieri and his friends in retirement?
Talking of Galtieri, would we all have at once identified him as an unprecedentedly dangerous and aggressive fascist beast? I doubt it. My own impression of him was of a relatively well-meaning old buffer, perhaps impulsive and irresponsible, part bully part coward, but not the worst, who had set himself the complex and horrible task of restoring some sort of law and order and some sort of democracy to Argentina while also conquering Argentina's appalling inflation. (Yes, I know about the hapless `disappeared ones', but I doubt it and doubt still whether Argentina's military rulers were directly responsible for them all in the prevailing chaos.)Galtieri doubtless thought that a cheap, bloodless, patriotic triumph would help him on his gruesome way and might sugar the deflationary pill. That it would be bloodless many signals from successive British governments had in- dicated to him — failure to develop the Falklands, a blind eye to the Thule landing, continuing arms sales to Argentina, no British citizenship for the Falklanders, con- tinuing negotiations which appeared to ig- nore the Falklanders' wishes, now again
formally paramount, the withdrawal of the Endurance. Would we have avoided all these errors? Well, I have always thought Nicholas Ridley, for instance, a notably shrewd, level-headed sort of chap. If he made a mistake, why not the rest of us?
And once the task force had assembled and set off, can there have been all that many knees, apart from Mrs Thatcher's, which were not knocking? For myself, though I think I kept quiet about it, my own thoughts went repeatedly back to the poor Tsarist Baltic fleet which went round the world to its heroic doom at Tsushima. I had a private nightmare, too, that Russian submarines might, without identifying themselves, creep up and sink our ships, doing the Argentinians' work for them.
On most of these matters which worried me, Mrs Thatcher's judgment has proved better than mine — better perhaps than yours? — and whenever it wasn't, luck and iron resolution have made it look so. What more is there to say?
Well, we have an Opposition, and one not noted for taciturnity, generosity or large-mindedness. It will have plenty to say: but from what a sorry platform shaped by what a sorry record it has to say it! Most of the mistakes allegedly made by Mrs. That- cher are ones Labour itself made in office. Peter Shore once innocently lambasted Nicholas Ridley for doing again exactly what Labour had done when he wasn't looking. When the Argentinian balloon went up, they egged her on. That mighty warrior Silkin to the fore, they were amaz- ingly bellicose. If words could kill, the whole junta would have expired at once. I suspect, as who does not, that the Opposi- tion was absolutely sure that, resolute for retaliation as Mrs Thatcher might be, she would be restrained and overruled by `wiser' and wetter heads in the Cabinet. They hoped to light the blue touch-paper, retire and then watch her fizzle out ig- nominiously on the ground. But, to their horror, she took off in a blaze of sparks; and what could they do except hang pitiful- ly on to her skirts, bleating all the time about the United Nations.
But as Conor Cruise O'Brien has pointed out, the UN can act in a dispute only when one side or the other has thrown in the towel and seeks a dignified exit. The Argen- tinians wouldn't throw in the towel, nor would Mrs T, nor did Labour (with the ex- ception of Mr Senn) dare honestly to urge her to do so. Labour were looking to the UN for what it can't provide: a solution ac- ceptable to neither one side nor the other. Labour had hoped to torture Mrs Thatcher: but Labour go naked into the torture chamber.
And so it is left to the Opposition to blather loudly for a bit, and then to fizzle out as it hoped she would. There is no mud in Franks, no Franks for them if you like, and the longer they blather the longer they will keep the Falklands Factor alive, and the more they will remind everyone of what Margaret actually did.
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