48 The last word
THE WEEK 28 May 2022
It’s difficult to imagine a less
hospitable place to spend
five days and nights than
dug into the side of Sussex
Mountain on the Falkland
Islands. Bleak doesn’t do it
justice. The hillside is treeless
and bald, ravaged by winds
that feel as though they are
whipping in straight off the
Antarctic ice sheet, which
indeed they may well be.
This is where the crack 2
Para – the 2nd Battalion,
the Parachute Regiment –
spent the first five days of
the Falklands War, 40 years
ago last month. These
tough infantrymen cuddled
together in the wind and
wore ladies’ tights for
warmth. “The longest five
days of my life,” was how
the paratrooper Tony Banks described it.
Eventually, 2 Para conducted a night march over comically rough
terrain to reach Goose Green, a fortified hamlet. There they
fought a vicious battle, losing 18 men, including their commander,
Colonel “H” Jones, ultimately forcing almost 1,000 Argentinians
to surrender. As Britain reflects on the anniversary of this strange
and final colonial war, one wonders whether it was worth it: 258
British and Gurkha lives lost, along with almost 700 Argentinians,
six British ships sunk, 34 aircraft
destroyed and £10bn spent, all
to recapture a dusty imperial
relic in the middle of nowhere.
There were about 1,800
inhabitants of the Falklands
then, a British farming community mostly descended from
Scottish settlers, who found the unforgiving conditions somewhat
familiar. The islands had changed hands repeatedly over the 18th
and early 19th century, but Argentina, which controlled them
immediately prior to the British occupation in 1833, never gave
up its claim, and when the military junta came to power in 1976,
growing tensions eventually led to the invasion in April 1982.
Trudging to Goose Green in 2 Para’s footsteps, the point of this
remote but nasty squabble is not immediately obvious. This is
the Falklands of the popular British imagination: “Miles and miles
of bugger all,” as Denis Thatcher memorably described it. Two
thousand alcoholics clinging to a frigid rock about the size of
Yorkshire, said others. During the war, British soldiers got in
trouble for nicknaming the locals “Bennies”, after the simpleton
character from the TV show Crossroads, which summed up our
patronising sense of the Falklanders as Bovril and Bisto bumpkins
frozen in colonial aspic. It’s a cliché that endures even now.
The Falklands are a different proposition today, though. War
changed everything. It was a tragic affair, but in its wake came
prosperity and growth. The conflict generated unprecedented
economic support from Britain, and also gave the islanders a
future to believe in and a
point to prove. Thanks to
fishing revenue and oil
exploration, the Falklands
are now far wealthier per
capita than Britain, and just
as cosmopolitan. The capital,
Stanley, has about 60
nationalities (a group of
Zimbabweans arrived just
over a decade ago to apply
their expertise in clearing
minefields; several stayed
and brought their families
with them). The islands’
population has doubled
since 1982 to about 3,600.
Argentina still refuses to
recognise the Falklands –
but even so, the Bennies
are booming.
In Stanley itself, the rackety
old Upland Goose hostelry that became famous in the war has
gone. Instead, I stay at the Waterfront Boutique Hotel, which
feels like a Soho House offshoot. Meetings are held over a glass
of Chilean merlot and my first is with Andrea Clausen, 50, the
Falklands’ director of natural resources. Clausen moved to the
islands from Middlesbrough as a child and was ten years old
when war broke out. Her family in Goose Green were among
more than 100 Falklanders who were locked up in the village
hall for almost a month, as the war closed in around them. “It
was like a giant sleepover at
first,” she recalls. “We all stayed
up playing cards.” Soon, the
hall became more of a prison,
and when gunfire began the
families dug holes beneath the
floorboards to shelter their
children. Clausen still can’t stand the sound of fireworks.
“We do feel that it’s a lot of people to die for us,” she says. “But
I have immense pride about what we’ve done on the back of such
a sad event. We got ourselves educated, rebuilt the country –
with a lot of help, but we did it.” Before the war, educational
opportunities on the islands were limited mostly to a few O-levels,
with children in remote settlements often taught by teachers who
would pass through on horseback. Subsequently, the community
has built a school for more than 200 pupils, and now uses fishing
revenue to offer every child the chance to go to the UK for their
A-levels (many attend Peter Symonds College in Winchester,
where the Falklands has sponsored a boarding house), and to
study at British colleges and universities – all of it fully funded.
The source of this flourishing is immediately apparent on a trip to
the Tamar Pass, a sea passage between West Falkland and Pebble
Island, among the largest of the 776 Falkland islands and the site
of an SAS raid at the start of the war. You can hear the pass before
you see it. Albatross and cormorants swirl across the sky. Fur seals
porpoise through the water in the wake of a whale. Penguins
pootle about on the cliffs. It’s a carnival of the seas and a bad
place to be a fish.
The Falkland Islands: a land
of opportunity
Forty years ago last month, Argentina invaded the Falklands, triggering a short but costly war. The conflict left deep scars
on Falklanders – and changed the islands’ fortunes for good. Josh Glancy pays them a visit
“Thanks to fishing revenue and oil exploration,
the Falklands are now far wealthier per capita
than Britain, and just as cosmopolitan”
Stanley: the islands’ booming capital
