Political commentary

General Winter changes sides

Ferdinand Mount

areas: short-term, medium-term and long- term. On all three, the original position of the British government has now moderated considerably. Or perhaps it would be more precise to say that the lines of Britain's ultimate, irreducible demands have now been made clear. Some claim that if these demands had been made clear at an earlier stage before the bloodshed, while Mr Haig was still shuttling, then Argentina might have been more eager to accept them. This seems doubtful. The nearer in time to the original invasion, the less likely it is that the junta would have been willing to pull back its troops, thus undoing the theatrical im- pact of the coup.

The correct time and place to unveil the final terms are surely at the eleventh hour and in the last plausible forum of recon- ciliation, in this case the UN. In the short term, Britain no longer insists on the Argentinians withdrawing their troops first.

It is now conceded that the withdrawal could be phased in parallel with the withdrawal of the British task force. In the medium term, Britain no longer insists upon the restoration of exclusive British ad- ministration but is ready to concede some form of joint administration. In the long term, Britain no longer insists that the wishes of the islanders are 'paramount', although their wishes and interest must still be consulted; and instead of merely stating that the question of sovereignty is up for discussion, Mr Pym now looks benignly upon various alternatives to British sovereignty, such as UN trusteeship.

These are considerable concessions. And in the truncated form in which Mr Perez de Cuellar is addressing the question at the UN — by leaving out the long-term future as far as possible — they may seem more con- siderable still. Such terms would be hard, though not impossible, to persuade the Conservative Party to accept. They seem to me the least unacceptable means, both of diminishing further bloodshed and of trying to create some kind of future for the islands which does not involve turning them into an armed camp for the next 20 years. These are the sort of terms I had in mind when argu- ing in this column last week that it was the prime duty of the government to negotiate a cease-fire. This argument seems to have caused some surprise in the public prints. But what else has Mr Pym been up to, for heaven's sake? Nor, I imagine, are his reasons very different from the ones ad- vanced in this column.

Many Conservatives — both those in favour and those critical of the new terms — are now saying that the Argentinian jun- ta would be crazy not to accept them. Over the next couple of days, we shall see how crazy they are.

The change on the diplomatic front is reflected by an equally important change in the military choices as publicly stated by the British government. Appearing on Weekend World last Sunday, Mr Nott seemed — and we must to some extent be guessing here, as no doubt he means the Argentinians to guess too — to step off the escalator, at least for the moment.

For the previous fortnight, we had been led to believe both by the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister that the task force had an unstoppable momentum, dictated largely by the South Atlantic winter. It would be unfair, we were told, perhaps impossible, to keep the task force rolling about in these huge seas for months. The choice was therefore between full-scale invasion and full-scale retreat, between awful bloodshed and abject humiliation.

As from last weekend, this no longer seemed to be the case. Mr Nott told Mr Brian Walden: 'The incoming winter is go- ing to cause horrendous problems for the Argentine forces on the islands, and our troops are relatively well looked-after and provisioned in ships ... so we do have a range of options and we could extend the blockade for far longer, if we wished.' General Winter seems to have switched over to our side.

Now whether the acceptability of this third choice derives from fresh advice from the task force commanders or from a fresh set of tactics to put pressure on the junta evolved by the inner cabinet, in practice it does amount to an enlargement of the stark either/or which was previously on offer.

For this third choice can shade into a considerable range of other choices — or `option-mixes' if we wish to sound smart. The islands can be partially invaded. The blockade can be maintained more or less aggressively. British frigates are now patrolling up and down Falkland Sound, blazing away at Argentinian supply ships; a British warship is said to have circum- navigated the island of West Falkland and met no sign of life.

Intensifying the blockade? Preparing to land on West Falkland? Frightening the Argentinians into coming to terms? Or a lit- tle of all three? By the time you read this, the question may be decisively answered or it may not.

But what needs to be placed on record is that the government has not been ashamed to proclaim the enlargement of the available choices. Mr Nott seems thereby to have

gone some way towards recapturing that freedom of action and reaction which ap- peared to be slipping last week. That im- pression was reinforced by the confusing babble of public discussion. From the start, I think there have been two quite different conversations going on: one, conducted by the Sun, the Express, Mr Enoch Powell el al, has been about honour, and race and fatherland, a mixture of El Cid and Sid Yobbo; the other, conducted by the large majority of the British people, not least as measured in the correspondence columns of the poi,ular papers, has been altogether more temperate and many-sided. The Cid/Sid line is that there is always only one choice: to biff or to run. This Is only the obverse of the line taken by Tony Benn. Either don't send the task force at all, or be prepared to go the whole hog and bomb bases on the Argentinian mainland and accept as many casualties as may be necessary to retake the Falklands. Many people who do not instinctively' warmlto either extreme nevertheless have a guilty feeling that Mr. Benn or Mr Powell must in some way be a superior person because of the highly advertised rigour of his logic. This kind of intellectual bullying is to be fiercely resisted. If carried into daily life, such crude dichotomising would generate the most extraordinary rules of conduct. , Chap treads on your toe. By Benn/Powe,n logic, either you ought to shoot him cleat or you should apologise for having placed your unworthy toe under his perfectlY formed foot. Any reaction lying between these two extremes, we are told, is a

pathetic evasion of the logical choice. ,

Horsefeathers, I say. What logicians cab the Law of the Excluded Middle applies ?Pi: ly patchily to human affairs, wine" characteristically pose several different, overlapping questions at the same tone" That is why policies have to be compronos" ed and qualified in order to obtain the least bad answers to as many of the questions as possible. Outcomes tend at best to be smudged. For most people in this country, the Falklands crisis is neither a joyful crusade nor a mad militarist adventure, and its outi come is one to be awaited with the grimrnes apprehension. Let us leave it there. I had hoped to write a leisured, argyle piece this week as a farewell, for the time being, to the Spectator. The article wonI include a ripe assessment of the past five years, an olympian appreciation of the state of the nation and the tasks that lie before us, possibly even a message to the nation s youth. It would be the sort of job requirinsg, a knobbly pipe and a pouchful of Bruno. Instead, this has turned out more likea hurried farewell on a draughty station Ply_ form, interrupted by the clanking of trooP, trains. There is time and space only to sa), how much I have enjoyed writing here an how kind everyone has been — which 1s what people say after a bereavement which, for me at any rate, this is.