Briefing NEWS 13
7 May 2022 THE WEEKWhy are the Falkland Islands British?
An English ship made the first recorded
landing on the islands, an uninhabited
archipelago about 300 miles from the
South American coast, in 1690, naming
them after the expedition’s sponsor,
Viscount Falkland. The French, however,
established the first settlement there, in
1764: they called them the Îles Malouines
after the port they’d sailed from, Saint-
Malo. (Hence “Las Islas Malvinas” in
Spanish.) The British founded a rival
settlement one year later, and thereafter,
the islands’ status has always been
contested. France ceded its claim to the
Spanish empire; Britain and Spain nearly
went to war over the issue in 1770, but
reached an inconclusive compromise. In
the early 19th century, newly independent
Argentina claimed the islands. But a row
over seal-hunting led the Royal Navy to recapture the Falklands
in 1833, founding a colony there in 1840. Apart from two months
in 1982, the islands have been a British possession ever since.
How significant were they to the British empire?
Not very. At the time of the 1770 crisis, Dr Johnson said it was
absurd to go to war over such “a bleak and gloomy solitude”.
From the 1840s until the Falklands War, sheep farming was the
only profitable activity. From the late 1960s, British governments
resented the expense of owning them, and saw them as a barrier
to good relations with South America; efforts were made to reach
a deal. “Unless sovereignty is seriously negotiated and ceded,”
a Foreign Office minister wrote in 1968, “in the long term we
are likely to end up in a state of armed conflict with Argentina.”
There was talk of a “Hong Kong solution”: ceding the islands to
Argentina and leasing them back. However, Parliament gave the
islanders an effective veto, and its 1,800 inhabitants, mostly
descended from Scottish and Welsh settlers, wanted to remain
British. On 2 April 1982, an Argentinian military government,
led by Leopoldo Galtieri, put a stop to talks when it invaded.
Why did Argentina invade?
Argentina’s right-wing dictatorship, in power since 1976, was
being shaken by civil unrest and an
economic crisis; a patriotic victory
would be a useful distraction. The
Falklands/Malvinas was one issue on
which most Argentines agreed, and
it was a long-standing obsession of
Admiral Jorge Anaya, who had drawn
up the invasion plan while still a
junior naval officer. In General
Galtieri’s view, Margaret Thatcher’s
government would be unlikely
to engage in a distant war: “that
woman wouldn’t dare”, he said. The
Argentinians also thought that they
could rely on a certain amount of
international sympathy, in an age
of widespread decolonisation.
Was there support for Argentina?
Not nearly as much as it had
expected. The principle of self-
determination for the islanders
partially neutralised the anti-colonial
argument. And even countries that
rejected Britain’s claim on the islands
conceded the point that international
disputes shouldn’t be settled by force.
It didn’t help that the aggressor was a
dictatorship notorious for human rights
abuses. Britain won the day at the UN.
In the meantime, with the full support of
Michael Foot’s Labour Party, Margaret
Thatcher hastily assembled a task force
of 127 ships and 30,000 men, which
would be sent 8,000 miles to the South
Atlantic to retake the islands – a task
the US navy had assessed as “a military
impossibility”. The official historian of
the campaign, Lawrence Freedman,
described it as “an enormous gamble”.How did Britain win?
It nearly didn’t: the task force was within
range of Argentina’s air force, and seven
ships were lost to its Exocet missiles and
bombs, causing many casualties. The task force’s crucial landing at
San Carlos, it is often said, could have gone very differently; many
Argentinian bombs hit British ships but failed to detonate. Lord
Craig, an RAF air marshal, is said to have declared: “Six better
fuses and we would have lost.” As it was, though, the 74-day
campaign was a triumph for Britain. It generated some of the most
iconic moments of the early Thatcher years: the PM declaring
“Rejoice!” after the recapture of South Georgia; the sinking
of the Belgrano (see box); the fierce firefight at Goose Green;
marines “yomping” to Port Stanley. A total of 258 British and 649
Argentinian lives were lost; 11,000 Argentinians were captured.What political effects did it have?
The task force returned to Portsmouth in glory, and Thatcher
rode a wave of nationalistic fervour to a landslide re-election
victory in 1983. Many Conservatives believe that the war
initiated a reverse of Britain’s postwar decline. Thatcher was
forthright in linking the conflict to her domestic aims. She told
the Tory backbench 1922 Committee that, after defeating the
“enemy without”, she would take on the “enemy within”: the
unions. In Argentina, the defeat shattered the junta’s claim to
represent the nation, and paved the way for the first free election
in a decade. Even so, sceptics in both nations regarded the
conflict as slightly absurd: the
Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges
described the conflict as “a fight
between two bald men over a comb”.Is it all settled, 40 years on?
Far from it. Argentina never dropped
its claim. Since 1994, the Argentinian
constitution has made sovereignty
over the Falklands a “permanent and
irrevocable objective”. A poll last
year suggests that 81% of Argentine
voters support that. The Falkland
Islands are still a British Overseas
Territory, and the UK insists that the
wishes of the islanders remain the
crucial principle; in 2013, 99.8%
of them voted to remain British in
a referendum. The islands are self-
governing, and thanks to increased
investment and the sale of fishing
licences, are now relatively rich; they
are defended by a garrison of 1,
military personnel, which costs the
UK about £60m annually.The battle for the Falklands
Forty years ago, British servicemen fought Argentina over a remote archipelago in the South AtlanticRoyal Marines “yomping” to Port StanleyThe sinking of the Belgrano
On 2 May 1982, the British nuclear submarine HMS
Conqueror torpedoed the General Belgrano, an
Argentinian cruiser. It sank with the loss of 323 lives:
nearly half the Argentine deaths in the war. The sinking- marked in The Sun’s first edition the next day with
the notorious headline “GOTCHA” – led to a heated
controversy in Britain. The ship was outside the
Maritime Exclusion Zone imposed by Britain around
the Falkland Islands: neither country actually declared
war, and hostilities were largely restricted to that area.
It also appeared that the Belgrano was heading away
from the Falklands at the time. Anti-war campaigners
argued that Thatcher’s government had ordered the
attack in order to head off a Peruvian peace initiative.
It later emerged that Britain had known, from signals
intercepts, that the Belgrano had been ordered to join
a “massive attack” on the British task force. The UK
had also clearly informed Argentina that hostilities
were not limited to the exclusion zone. The Belgrano’s
captain, Hector Bonzo, later confirmed that the ship
had been manoeuvring, not leaving the war zone. The
sinking “was absolutely not a war crime”, he said. “It
was an act of war, lamentably legal.” It was effective,
too: Argentina’s navy played no further role in the war.