Our fifth article to mark the 40th anniversary of the CPBML by looking at the past four decades through the eyes of Workers and its predecessor, The Worker. This month: Thatcher's Falklands War...
1982: War in the South Atlantic
WORKERS, JULY 2008 ISSUE
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The Falklands War was probably the most important foreign policy event in domestic terms in the 1980s. It occurred when Thatcher was deeply unpopular, giving her the chance to gain support.
Thatcher insisted that the Falkland Islands had the right of self-determination and refused even to discuss the matter of sovereignty. This obstinacy clearly increased the risks of Argentine action to gain what negotiations were not allowed to achieve. On 26 March 1982, MI6 warned of an imminent invasion on 2 April. After receiving this warning, the government did nothing, perhaps to lure the Argentine government into attacking.
On 2 April, Argentine forces landed on the Islands. Thatcher decided that they had to be repelled by force. As Reagan said, "Maggie wants a skirmish." On 3 April, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 502 calling on both parties not to escalate the dispute and to settle it by negotiation. Thatcher vetoed the Resolution. Nicholas Henderson, Britain's Ambassador to the UN, later revealed that Thatcher would negotiate only after a war, not to prevent one: "if negotiations were going to lead to anything, this would only be as a result not of conciliatory noises but of direct and heavy military pressure."
British casualties were 218 killed and 777 injured; the Argentinians lost 746 killed. In Britain, a servile press inflated this victory into an equal of the war against Hitler, helping Thatcher to win the 1983 General Election.
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We reprint below our coverage of these events at the time, when on 27 May 1982 The Worker's front page said:
"As Thatcher plunges Britain into unjustifiable war, trade unionists demand:
RECALL THE FLEET!
- With the clarity of workers in active class struggle ASLEF at their annual conference have demanded the recall of the task force from the South Atlantic.
- Health workers all over the country are escalating their war with Thatcher over wages in spite of her attempt to divert all attention to her vicious war over the Falkland Islands.
- Benn, Dalyell, Hart and 30 other Labour MPs defied the pusillanimous leadership of their Party and voted in the House of Commons to oppose Thatcher in their demand for an immediate cease fire.
- The Fire Brigades Union along with other unions have called for a cease fire in the South Atlantic so that negotiations can continue.
- The Inner London division of the NUT has called for the withdrawal of the task force and for a prosecution of the war against Thatcher at home.
- Engineers at Rolls Royce, Coventry, have blacked Harrier engines needed by the task force in a dispute over union recognition.
- Demos up and down the country reflect the growing opposition to Thatcher's war which only strengthens her hand against the workers of Britain.
- Make the June 6th demonstration to keep Reagan out of Britain a mighty rally to get
Thatcher out of the South Atlantic, northern Ireland, Oman and No. 10!!!!
Our war is at home"
On 10 June The Worker said:
"Thatcher is waging a completely unnecessary and totally unjustifiable war in the South Atlantic to strengthen her position for waging war against the working class in Britain. We shall pay dearly if we don't stop her.
We shall pay with our freedom. Thatcher says the war is being fought for freedom. She lies. It is being fought against our freedom. The fatuous chauvinism whipped up by the press, the phony nationalism from pulpits and on TV screens have fastened Thatcher's yoke on our necks tighter than ever. Each khaki election victory won is a green light for her to go ahead with her vicious attacks on our jobs, wages and unions.
We shall pay in cash. Already more than a billion pounds, representing schools, colleges and hospitals which could be kept open and industries which could be saved, have been blown away in this bellicose adventure. Many more billions will be poured down the same military drain while here in Britain monetarism is invoked as the excuse for cutting our public services' expenditure on our welfare.
We shall pay in national honour. Britain's name is beginning to stink in the nostrils of the decent people of Latin America and the Caribbean, of Africa and Asia. Her veto of a UN resolution calling for a cease-fire shows Britain's growing isolation. The barbarous howl of The Sun for blood, the savage cries of the SAS to hunt down and kill 'Argies' show that the hated voice of British imperialism is not dead. Thatcher, like some Cecil Rhodes in skirts, is talking now, to the cheers of a lumpen mob, of hanging on to the Falklands permanently for the export of more capital.
Thatcher says the war is being fought to punish aggressors. She lies. We are the aggressors. The Falkland Islands were stolen from Argentina by imperialist force a hundred and fifty years ago. Just before the Heath Government came to power, arrangements had practically been made to hand the Falklands back. The negotiations that will have to be held on the sovereignty of the Islands could have been held without any bloodshed. Over a thousand young men have died uselessly.
Britain once repelled an armada sent by a villainous king to reduce the British people to vassals of the Pope and Spain. This time the armada was despatched by a British Prime Minister to bolster up her power over the British people at home through belligerence abroad.
It is not too late to undo the shameful damage done in our name for the purpose of undoing us. Pull down the warmonger and pull out the troops – out of the South Atlantic, out of Ireland. They can be housed in the bases from which we expel the GIs."