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It's the early morning of the 21st of May 1982. Huddled in landing craft, British Marines and paratroopers are about to hit the beach. It's the first step to retaking the Falkland Islands, a scrap of British territory on the far side of the world that had been all but forgotten, before being seized by Argentina seven weeks before. The first British units land without a shot being fired. Hopes rise that they're going to achieve complete surprise over the Argentinians, but the relief doesn't last long.
At 9.25, just after dawn, nine Argentinian Air Force dagger jets scream over the rough bowl of hills surrounding San Carlos water, which is crammed with British ships. For the rest of the day, showing great skill and bravery, the Argentine pilots launch wave after wave of attacks. It seems impossible that their bombs won't hit the cruise liner-turned-troop ship Canberra, which, at more than 40,000 tons, towers over the rest of the ships like a great white whale.
But miraculously, it survives. Others are not so lucky. As the Antarctic night descends, the harbour is choked with smoke from burning British ships. Six warships have been hit and one, the frigate HMS Ardent, sent to the bottom.
Exciting stuff!
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Battleground podcast with me, Saul David. And me, Patrick Bishop. Every week we're going to be discussing the wars of the 20th century, goodness knows there have been enough of them, and occasionally roaming further afield if we feel the urge. But given that the 2nd of April 2022 marked the 40th anniversary of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands...
we thought we'd kick off with a multi-part series on that war, following events in real time and trying to mark up all the big themes of the event.
Good stuff. But before we get to that, we just want to say a few things about us and the scope of the podcast. I wrote my first military history at the age of 25 and now have 16 under my belt. I've also done a PhD and for 12 years was professor of military history at the University of Buckingham. I've spent a lot of my life as a foreign correspondent for newspapers, a lot of them in war zones.
And I think that sparked my interest in military history. So I started writing military history books back in 2003, and I've written 19 to date. Quite handy, I think, Patrick. I'm the theorist. You've got a bit of practical experience. We're pretty much covering all the bases there. But what about the podcast? It won't just be about war, actually.
it will, of course, have lots of bombs and bullets, but we're also interested in other aspects, social, political and cultural. Yeah, so alongside the personalities and the battles and the controversies, the technology, and there will be plenty of that, we promise you, expect to hear some thought-provoking stuff as well that puts conflict into its wider context.
And in each episode, we'll also be chatting to someone who either has first-hand knowledge of the subject or is an expert at it. And we've got a truly stellar lineup waiting. Can't wait. All right, let's talk a little bit about the Falklands War. We've had a preamble, of course, at the beginning of this episode. Very dramatic stuff when the troops finally reach the islands. But
Really, we need to work out why they got there, how they got there, and the road to war. And we're going to come on to that later on in the episode. But in very general terms, it was an extraordinary conflict. Having long claimed a right to Las Malvinas, as the Argentinians called the islands, their military rulers must have assumed that the British lion was sleeping its eye off the ball with regard to its most distant possession. There were all kinds of problems besetting Margaret Thatcher's government, infighting, economic crisis,
In a military sense, one of our only two aircraft carriers was about to be sold off. Only a handful of Marines were guarding the Falklands and the only naval ship in the area, Endurance, was about to be recalled.
So that's what's happening on the British side. Patrick, what's happening in Argentina at this stage? The Argentinian side was pretty confused as well, always not going well at home for them. They've been fighting this long, pretty hideous internal conflict with the military government turning on its own people, essentially, and going after anyone who they consider to be a communist or even a leftist.
And this dirty war, as it was called, claimed the lives by this stage of tens of thousands of people. They were looking for a distraction and the long standing issue of the islands seemed to provide them with an opportunity to get people's minds onto something else. Whatever differences the Argentinians might have had, they all were united in believing genuinely that the islands belonged to them. So, yes,
It must have seemed like a terrific opportunity to this embattled junta. Here is this issue that's going to unite everyone, and Britain is really not in a position to oppose us, should we...
for the dramatic option and launch an invasion. How on earth are they going to come all the way 8,000 miles across the oceans and try and get it back? It seemed like a win-win for them. Now, Patrick, you and I have written about war. I've gone all the way back to the 17th century. You've written mostly about the 20th century. But it helps a little in this particular conflict, I think,
that we can both remember it. I was a 16-year-old schoolboy just about to do my O-levels, but rather unusually gripped by the events in a way that I don't think all my mates at school were. As they were unfolding 8,000 miles away in the South Atlantic, I was watching the TV news as casualties in ships and people began to mount.
And feeling an odd sense of detachment as if it wasn't real. But you, of course, Patrick, for you, it was far too real. What were you up to then? Well, in those days, I was a youngish reporter working for the Observer newspaper. And like everyone else, I was taken by surprise by events. My beat was Northern Ireland in those days. So I knew a little bit about the military.
But all of a sudden, this crisis blows up. And if you're a journalist, a young, ambitious journalist, it's a huge opportunity. So I grabbed it and managed to persuade the paper to nominate me as their correspondent with the task force. I think at that point, no one really thought that it would end up in a real shooting war. If they had, they might not have sent me and sent someone more powerful.
more senior. One of the striking things for me and everyone in the country for that matter was how suddenly it blew up. It seemed to come out of nowhere. We were literally looking on maps on atlases, you know, where actually is, where are the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic? When you do identify them on the map, it's quite shocking how close they are to Argentina. We're talking just about maybe three or four hundred miles, but 8,000 from here.
The response was cobbled together, it seemed to me, in a very short space of time. It was very ad hoc and very British, really. I mean, could we get enough force together to do something about this?
That's right. One of the senior officers involved in it told me once that it was a lash up. The whole thing was a lash up, a naval expression, which means you just grab whatever is at hand and try and forge it into some sort of workable instrument. And that's exactly what happened. They were just reaching where they could for information.
for what resources were available. It was a very British lash-up at that, and in the end it did work. But it certainly didn't look very likely that it was going to succeed at the beginning, largely because of this national mood, which was very intense. I think anyone listening now would be surprised at just how deep the malaise was in Britain at that time. You got very high unemployment. For me, the kind of theme tunes of the time were Oliver's Army, the
a great Elvis Costello number, and the specials Ghost Town. So there's this kind of feeling of terminal decline. You've got this new female prime minister who, in those days, she wasn't the Mrs Thatcher we came to know. She was, well, she was unpopular. That bit remained true. But she was very much an untried quantity. And she herself, you know, was the first to admit at the time that she didn't really know much about the business of governing.
So there's this sense of drift and of hopelessness. And although the armed forces nowadays have a very high place in the national estimation,
In those days, they didn't. And indeed, the Falklands War was something that actually restored their credibility and their honour in some ways. They were seen, they were either invisible, like the Royal Navy, you never heard anything of the Royal Navy at all, or when they did pop up in the news, it was usually in a slightly negative way. They were in Northern Ireland trying to keep the peace and invariably, from time to time, there'd be some sort of shooting incident or something.
And this would create a sort of media flurry about the army's tactics and behavior. So all in all, Britain didn't seem to be in a very good place. Is that how you saw it, Saul? I mean, you're a young guy, but you studied the period.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think of it from a military history perspective, it's downhill all the way since the end of the Second World War. Our armed forces are gradually diminishing in effectiveness, size, the Navy is getting smaller, and it's about to get a lot smaller too. And there was very much a feeling, I think, even growing up that, you know, we were no longer a great power. We were heading south.
very much for second-class status. We were, of course, still members of NATO, but we felt we needed to latch on to other powers like the US, like other powers in NATO, to be relevant in the world.
But it was remarkable for all that, how much the political class got behind this. I think I was really struck, actually. You know, you had people like Foote who were against, you know, they were campaigners for nuclear disarmament. So we're talking about Michael Foote, the Labour, famous duffel coat wearing Labour opposition leader, who indeed had been...
you know, an anti-appeaser in the 1930s. He's very much against Hitler and the Nazis. But since then, he's also a great decolonizer and a great CND, you know, against nuclear weapons, marching from Aldermaston and all the rest of that. Exactly right, Michael Foote. As you say, the leader of the opposition, leader of the Labour Party. I mean, I remember my mum going to marches in the 70s and early 80s, which Michael Foote would be there. And you would naturally have expected him
to have opposed this sort of post-colonial venture. But the reality is the provocation was quite obvious. There was a matter of principle going on there. And even the Labour opposition were firmly behind the determination to do something about this. Did they want it to be a shooting war? Well, not necessarily, but they certainly felt we needed to make a stand over this aggressive invasion.
Do you see it as, you know, part of a broader issue, a kind of a matter of principle yourself, Patrick? Yeah, well, this is, you know, we don't want to labour comparisons, but, you know, this is something that never goes away in history. This is something that's always with us, a big issue.
A country trying to impose its will on a neighboring territory against the wishes of the inhabitants. So, of course, we're seeing it in the most terrible fashion in Ukraine today. The principle remains the same.
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? You know, I mean, I don't think many people will naturally make that connection between Ukraine and the Falklands. But in a loose sense, I think there is a very real link between an authoritarian regime, partly for reasons of domestic consumption, deciding that it's going to bully its weaker neighbor. The difference, of course, of the Falklands is that although the Falkland Islands was small and weak and neighboring Argentina, it actually had a really interesting
even though it was declining still a significant military power that could possibly do something about this. That's true. But, you know, these things always come down to will, ultimately. And although we...
had the appearance of a significant military power, did we have the will to actually project force? It was going to be a tricky operation, whatever happened. And so here we can talk the talk in the House of Commons. It all sounds great. Rather, as now, people are very good on the rhetoric of supporting Ukraine, but not necessarily so good on the follow through. So everyone was standing back to see Ukraine.
what we were actually going to do. Our reputation in the world was pretty low. And even with our supposedly our strongest ally, the United States, they didn't hold us in particularly high esteem either. And as it turned out, their role in the whole drama that was about to follow was a bit ambiguous. We'll come on to that later on, but that's an important element in the story. So,
What we've got to ask ourselves is really how we got to where we are, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, one of the key things with any war, as we know, Patrick, from our writing, is you can have a military capability, but you've also got to have the political will, which we did have in the UK. But you've also got to have this broad coalition of support, partly because it matters, because
On the one hand, you need support going down there, possibly logistical support from an ally like the United States. And the big question mark at the beginning of this war is whether we were going to get that sort of support. So the decision to possibly use military force was a bold one in that sense, because there was an element of uncertainty as to how the United States, which after all had been courting Argentina in its anti-communist kind of moves in South America, and therefore was it going to consider Argentina
our alliance more important than its need to carry favour with the Argentinians. And indeed, how was the whole world going to look at us? Because we're still remembered as being this
This once mighty empire now down on its luck as a general anti-colonial mood move abroad. Argentina could quite successfully play the card of, well, you know, this is colonial possession really has nothing to do with Britain at all. It's right next door to us. So therefore, de facto, it's surely ours. And I think that's something that they would very much appreciate.
put as a central plank in their argument in the diplomacy that followed. The other thing we shouldn't forget, of course, in all of this, Patrick, is the determination of the Falkland Islanders not to be Argentinian. We're going to discuss this after the break when we look at the long road to war and some of the key decisions that were taken and how it all came about. But there is another parallel there. The Argentinians were determined to be
make the islanders by force argentinians and they didn't want that to happen and frankly the same thing's happening in ukraine at the moment right well we can uh go into this in in more detail and we are extremely fortunate in having a man with us after the break who actually was at the heart of all the great decision making that is lord loose who is then richard loose and
We'll be asking him, were blunders made? Were warning signs missed? And who was responsible? We're about to find out. Join us after the break. So, welcome back. Now, the first thing that happened when the crisis blew up was...
people reached for their atlases to find out where the Falklands actually were. And most of them turned to the pages on Scotland, assuming that it was somewhere off the mainland coast. Now, Falklands, it sounds a bit Scottish. Where does it actually come from, Saul? Well, I've done a little bit of digging into this. And apparently the first recorded sighting of the islands was in 1690 by British sailors.
And they named the channel between the two principal islands, that's the East and West Falklands, Falklands Sound. And the reason they did that is because at that time in 1690, the treasurer of the Navy was Viscount Falkland.
So that's how they got the name. Now, it's interesting. In the next century, there's a claim from not just Britain, but also France and Spain to the islands. And each established settlements at various different times. And so you can see that this disputed claim has a long history. Yeah, and it goes back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes it's settled, sometimes it's deserted.
And that's where you get this confusion over the name because one of the early settlements was landed there by the great French explorer Bougainville. And the people he was settling came from Saint-Malo in Brittany. They're known as Malouines. So that became...
the Malvinas Islands. And of course, that was corrupted then by Spanish into Las Malvinas, the name to which they cling to very, very strongly to this day. I think we should say at this point, Patrick, that Argentina, of course, didn't exist as a separate country as part of the Spanish Empire. But in 1820, when it gets its independence from Spain, this is the point at which the Argentinians now, you know, relate their claim because
They argue, of course, that the islands are really bequeathed to them when they get their independence. The next crucial date we need to think about in terms of Britain's claim to the islands is 1833, because it's at that point that physically, by sending ships to the islands, we take control and have been in possession of this unbroken connection ever since that date. Yeah, you might wonder why...
anyone would prize these islands because when you actually look at them, the Scottish thing is coincidental but it's a very apt comparison because they do look very much like a Hebridean island. They're not mountains on it, they're more hills. I mean, the biggest...
feature on the Falklands is only 2,300 feet high. That's Mount Usborne. The next biggest is Mount Kenda, which we'll be hearing a lot about later. But it's pretty poor territory. The living that you can make there is mainly from sheep. So sheep is really the foundation of the economy there. The people who settled it, I think at the time of the invasion, there were about 1,800 of them. They live a very kind of lonely existence. There are virtually no roads on the island.
So you have these kind of settlements where it's a bit like an Australian sheep station, I suppose, except in much colder, wetter conditions where a small group of shepherds essentially live in bunkhouses, hardly ever see anyone else. And to do that, you have to be very kind of
Self-reliant and that's reflected in the kind of character of the islanders. They're understated people, but what they do feel, they feel very strongly. The thing they felt very, very strongly indeed was that they were British and they didn't want to be Argentinians.
Now, the next key bit of the story is really the 1960s when the Wilson Labour government tries to solve this conundrum about what to do in the long term with the Falklands. And let's remember, this is decolonisation. So we're really looking to divest ourselves of various assets.
possessions around the world and it's at this point that it gives the first indication to the Argentine government that we're going to talk about sovereignty and that's really letting the genie out of the bottle because you've now got the British foreign office trying to tread this delicate balance between the Argentinians who have this expectation of sovereignty on the one hand and on the other hand the group you've already been talking about Patrick the islanders who are
absolutely determined to remain British and it's going to be this tension that's going to lead to the road to war.
And of course, the appetite on the Argentinian side to repossess the islands is getting stronger and stronger for internal political reasons. Around this time, there's been a military junta in power for a couple of years now, and they've been fighting what was termed the dirty war, literally a war against their own people. Anyone suspected of left-wing sympathies, communists, etc., were fair game. And I think the
an estimate of the casualties goes as high as 30,000 people killed in this internal war. So they're sitting on a bubbling cauldron of violent discontent. They're meeting it with even more force. The military is very much involved in the counterinsurgency operation. And I think some people feel that
They felt that their honor had been very severely tainted by the part they played in torture, killing, all sorts of ghastly death squad activities. And so for a couple of reasons, an invasion looks like a very good idea. The Falcons, first, it unifies the people of Argentina. One thing they agree on is that the Las Malvinas belong to them. And secondly, it's an opportunity for the army to actually sort of redeem themselves in a way and fight a proper war.
And so we arrive at the beginning of 1982 with this unwanted problem, at least for the British, looming larger and larger. And to try and untangle our way through this thicket, we're going to talk to someone who's right at the centre of events now. That is Lord Luce, then Richard Luce, who was the Foreign Office Minister responsible for the Falklands. And we're going to find out from him how this diplomatic dispute led to war. Lord Luce, welcome.
Can you paint a picture for us of where Britain stood in the world in the spring of 1982? Well, of course, 1982 was three years after the election which brought Margaret Thatcher to office and my first portfolio was as Minister for Africa. And we had by then settled, pretty well settled Zimbabwe, which was an albatross around our necks.
which we had to get rid of and had to negotiate a solution.
And we were looking outwards. We were negotiating hard with the European Union about the single market, which Margaret Thatcher actually played a major contribution to. And Britain, I think by then, after the 70s, which had been, as you remember, a very stormy period and a very difficult period for Britain, we were beginning to restore the reputation of the country and our position in the world.
Tell us a bit about the Cold War. That was still very much a kind of dominant feature of the diplomatic landscape, wasn't it? Where did we fit in there at that moment? We were a strong partner in NATO, but, I mean, definitely a very strong partner. Our economy was relatively strong at that time, but we were recovering from the disasters of the 1970s.
And times were quite tough in one sense. The Trans-Exchequer Jeffrey Howe had to take some fairly tough measures. And I think it was only really the Falkland situation which turned the tide for the prime minister. There is an analogy today, oddly enough, with Ukraine, not in the same position at all, but there's some similarities there.
And the Falklands suddenly got people's minds onto a totally new and serious challenge. Can we go a little bit into the nitty gritty of the Falklands negotiations, particularly your own role, Richard? So in February 1982,
You're a minister trying to resolve the issue with the Argentine negotiator Enrique Ross at the UN in New York. Can you give us a sense of the key issues that were at stake in those negotiations? Well, we have to put it into context that my predecessor was Nicholas Ridley, who had made a bold attempt to find a way forward and to propose something called the leaseback scheme.
which really meant ceding sovereignty altogether, but Britain continuing to administer the Falklands. Parliament dismissed that immediately. And therefore, we were faced with a situation when I became the Minister of State in the autumn of the previous year, responsible for the Americas, including the Falklands. We were faced with a really serious challenge because the Argentine had been led to expect
over 20 years, since in fact 1966, just under 20 years, that British governments were prepared to talk about sovereignty. That was first made plain in 1966 by the then government.
And ever since that period, up until 1982, putting it into context, the Argentine governments, one after the other, thought that it would be possible to negotiate an agreement leading to transfer of sovereignty. And all the events up to then, when they realized Britain was not prepared to just negotiate,
hand away the Falkland Islands. There was a sharp reaction from the islanders. Parliament wouldn't have anything to do with it. Then there was a dictatorship in the Argentine, and Galtieri, the new dictator, was much stronger and more robust and much fiercer than his predecessor. And clearly they were very restless. Now, they were restless to get action out of Britain. And our backs were to the wall.
because we weren't prepared to cede sovereignty just like that without the agreement of the islanders and parliament. And that is the context in which I came into that meeting. When we get to the meeting, I'm face to face with a very nice, decent person. Enriquez Ross was deputy foreign minister, professional diplomat, serving under the foreign minister Costa Mendez and, of course, under Galtieri.
And my purpose was to try and negotiate a broad understanding of how we would embark upon a dialogue, but understanding the perimeters, the atmosphere, the parameters, so to speak, of how we would be prepared to negotiate.
Now, the thing that I found about Enriquez Ross is that he went along with quite a lot of the things that I was proposed to agree to do, which was the establishment of this negotiating commission, which would enable both sides to talk. But each time we moved forward onto some proposal or other, he would ring up Galtieri or Costa Mendes.
There's a parallel today with Putin and Lavrov, exactly the same. You ring up the dictator because you're too frightened to take your own decision. You know you might be overruled.
And that is actually what happened. So basically, they were not empowered to actually make any real decisions. And every step of the way, they were going back to Buenos Aires to get instructions. At what stage did you get the impression that Galtieri wasn't really interested in a negotiation and had already pretty much made up his mind to take the road to war?
Well, the warning signals came soon after those negotiations in New York, because we agreed to some kind of a communique, Enriquez, Ross and myself, a perfectly reasonable one, to set up a negotiating commission. He was immediately repudiated the moment he got back to Buenos Aires. And as a result of that, we realized things were going to get difficult.
It was obvious that Galtieri was in trouble himself because he was having strikes in the Argentine. His economy was not in a good condition. And that's a well-known fact about wanting to divert attention. So we were aware that there were dangers and that we had to keep to try and find some kind of a way forward.
So this was followed by a meeting that I had with Lord Carrington and one or two senior diplomats. I think it was on the 3rd of March in that year to discuss the way forward. I think the advice we got was quite clear that we'd seen all this before. For example, in 1977, Jim Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, actually sent a submarine to the South Atlantic because they were worried there might be some incident or invasion.
Although, in fact, what transpired was the submarine never surfaced at all. And it was only by surfacing that the Argentinians would have realized there was a threat to them. There was a deterrent there. But put that on one side, his intention was perfectly good. And we were told by the advisers that there was no evidence of anything serious emerging at that time.
that there was no need to take any action, that there was no intelligence which said that we needed to do so. That was a serious turning point. Where was that advice coming from? Was this from MI6? The senior diplomats. But they were getting their advice from the ambassador on the spot. And I think it's right for me to say at this stage, my concern,
My anxiety afterwards was this. In fact, I was slightly harsher than the Franks Commission that looked into it afterwards, that we hadn't had all the intelligence, both from the ambassador, the embassy, from the captain of HMS Endurance, who'd been through a lot, and from other sources, as to really what the thinking in the Argentine was, and above all, in the military leadership.
It wasn't all pulled together. And I think it's partly psychological. They thought they'd seen all this before. This is nothing new. And they go on like this and then it proceeds and it comes back again because it happened so often over the previous 15 years that the threat and then the threat never happened. So that was a serious point.
And thereafter, of course, soon after, I was rung up where I am now in this house as Minister of State at the time on a Saturday afternoon and told that the metal scrap company, Christian Salverson, had sent some men on to South Georgia. But there was some evidence one or two might be military people.
So from that moment onwards, and for the next 13 days, I think, before the invasion, I certainly realised we were in deep trouble. So what you're referring to, of course, is the moment on the 19th of March when Argentine scrap metal dealers actually land on the island of South Georgia, which was 800 miles to the east of the main Falkland Islands, but a dependency of the islands, and raise the flag and shots are fired. And there's almost no doubt that the
Because this was organized by the Argentine Navy, this is a deliberate act by Argentina to effectively claim possession of South Georgia. But the raising of the flag was very symbolic, wasn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And as the days went by after that, we realized our backs were to the wall.
Action was taken. I always feel very sorry for the Captain of Asia Miss Endurance, but he was sent backwards and forwards. But that ship had only just, we'd only just persuaded the Ministry of Defence not to withdraw it altogether, which meant that all we had in the Falklands would have been 35 Marines.
And that, of course, was an MOD decision, wasn't it, to save a bit of cash, objected to, I seem to recall, by the Foreign Office, by Lord Carrington and yourself, presumably, the year earlier. Yeah, yes. Well, of course, there was a defense review that John Knott was undertaking, and part of this involved a reduction in the size of the neighbors.
This is not a criticism of John Lott. I'm just saying exactly what the situation was at that time. And endurance, HMS Endurance, was a signal that if you withdraw the last remaining sort of symbol
then the message to the Argentine must be, we're not really bothered, Britain. And that was part of the whole story, a misreading of each other. And my goodness, how often this happens in history and is happening today, that neither side understood each other, what their motives were, what their intentions were. So that was the background as it developed. With a military leader,
who was desperate to do something to divert attention from his own internal troubles.
The decision to send nuclear submarines, I think it was on the 29th of March, you're getting more and more intelligence that the Argentine naval force is building up, an invasion looks likely. So the decision is taken to send those submarines down there. Now, a day later, you make what sounds to the House of Commons like a very emollient speech. It seems like an olive branch. Can you tell us a little bit about your intention that day? Well, I think I can't remember precisely that particular day, but
And whenever I was pressed to give an assurance that we were taking appropriate measures, that is to say, principally military measures, to act as a deterrent, I could not possibly have divulged to the House what we had in mind and what we were doing, because otherwise Galtieri would have worked out how he was going to respond to it. We were beginning to wake up.
But a lot of cabinet ministers really couldn't believe any more than the Americans could believe. And that's a very important point in this whole story. The American intervention was very weak. Intervention with the Argentine would try and get them. A lot of the cabinet ministers couldn't believe that we were likely to have military action involving a small overseas territory. And it took time for that to get through.
and for people to realise there was a problem. I think the Prime Minister got on to it quicker than others. Tell us about that. She's an untried force, really. I mean, she's been in power for a couple of years, but she's got plenty of problems with her own cabinet. She's certainly not held in any great esteem by the electorate, it seems. Tell me about your first encounters with her in the crisis and how she reacted to it. Well,
It was only really in that week leading to the invasion that she got intensely involved. Lord Carrington, my outstanding boss as Foreign Secretary, was away in Israel, but keeping his tabs almost hour by hour on what was happening. And then he returned early to join us in discussions.
And I have to say, and this may well have happened with Churchill, too, at some stages in the war, that she was wallowing around because this was all new to her.
I mean, how could she have thought a week previously that there would be a problem in the Falkland Islands which might lead to a war when she had all these other difficulties all over the world to deal with, let alone not just in Africa, but in Europe and elsewhere. So she had to adjust. It was very difficult for her. But I was full of admiration because if we get to the critical point,
Well, she called me over to a meeting in the House of Commons. I think it was on that Wednesday, the 31st. That's correct. Yeah. I think it was that day. John Nott was there as defense secretary. I was in place of Lord Carrington. And there were one or two other officials, not many. She was wallowing around, as I would if I was prime minister at that moment, trying to work out the pros and cons of what we should do, how we should respond. Because by then we'd assumed there was going to be an invasion.
the evidence was becoming clearer and clearer. And it was only when the first sea lord came in, in his uniform, looking the appropriate part, Admiral Leach, that things began to clarify. Up to then, John Nott had said it wasn't, we hadn't got the capacity to occupy. Now, you may want to ask John Nott his opinion of this, but that is what he said,
until Admiral Leach came in and the Prime Minister said to him, now, Admiral, this is the situation. What is your advice? If I ask you to retake the Falklands, assuming there's an invasion, can we do it? And there was only a short pause. And he said, if you ask me, Prime Minister, we'll do it. And that was the turning point. She then became stronger because she knew it was the right thing to do. If you allow countries to invade each other,
with no punishment whatsoever, then the price would be very heavy indeed all over the world. She knew that deep down in her heart. That was a turning point for her. And then, of course, she was right into it and involved day by day.
What was the attitude of the army? As I understand it, they weren't quite as keen as Sir Henry Leach on the whole prospect. Well, first of all, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lowins, who was a wonderful person, but he was in New Zealand, unfortunately, at that time and doing an official visit.
And so really it was the first sea lord who was leading. And I never really, I dealt more with some of the ministers in defence on one or two issues. But it was principally the navy leading. And of course, we have to remember that in Argentine, the navy was the strongest factor. The navy was powerful in Argentine, as you will remember. They also at that time, they quite often did training exercises.
It wouldn't be very difficult for a group of ships to load an Argentine ship
on board and suddenly divert from their exercises. And that obviously is what they did. So the result of this meeting, of course, is that the fleet has put on initial alert. That doesn't mean it's definitely going to go, but they've got to prepare for it to go. And just a couple of days later, the invasion itself happens. Yeah, this is overnight on the 2nd of April, the Argentinians launch a
Operation Rosario, which is basically the amphibious landing on the islands. There is, around Port Stanley, there's a marine garrison, which when the Argentinians arrive, they put up a fierce resistance, but of course they're heavily outnumbered. There's only 86 of them. And eventually, after a couple of hours of intense firefight, the governor, Sir Rex Hunt,
realizes the situation is hopeless and announces the surrender. Now, when this news gets back to Britain, of course, this is the point where you resign, you and your boss resign. Well, perhaps I could put this into context of what happened after the invasion.
On that Friday morning, I went to the chamber and I think it was Humphrey Atkins, who was the Lord Privy Seal, who announced that the invasion had taken place. I immediately decided that as the Minister of State for day-to-day responsibility, as a matter of honour, with something as disastrous as that in terms of our foreign policy, that I should go and hand in my resignation to the Prime Minister.
I went straight to see Lord Carrington, who was in his office. He was back from Israel. And I came in and he said, you're not going to. He'd guessed what I was going to try and do. But I came and sat down and I said to him, look, somebody's got to carry the can for this. And he quite rightly said to me, I'm the foreign secretary, not you. And the person who carries the can is me. And we're going to stay at our post.
And we're going to battle through this one. And over the weekend, I want you now to take charge of rallying the United Nations in support of Britain. And I felt I said to him, OK, but if you come to a moment when you feel you want to resign and it is right to resign, I will do it with you. So I spent the weekend doing what I could, but I sought the prime minister's help.
We rallied country after country. I spoke to as many heads of government as I could. But when I got to the difficult ones or the ones we really needed, like King Hussein, I rang up the prime minister on a Saturday or Sunday and said, Prime Minister, could you intervene? She did that, rallied whatever person they were, and we got the vote on our side. But...
I always felt that it wasn't going to last. And I did alert the Prime Minister that as a matter of honour, I thought I should go. She sent messages by Parliamentary Private Secretary saying, no, stay at your post. But when I used the word honour to her, she said, I can't quarrel with that. So I waited because I felt that something would happen in the next day or two. The aircraft arrived at Bryson Orton with the Governor and the Marines.
on the Monday morning. And in the editorial of The Times, we were described, particularly me and Lord Carrington, as traitors virtually to our country. That led to Lord Carrington ringing me at Brighton Orton as the plane was landing and saying, Richard, I'm resigning. I said, well, you've got to hang on because I've got to come back and resign too. He said, you better be quick because I'm going at lunchtime.
So I took the poor governor who got off the aircraft in a flight to Northolt and then threw all the red lights by car to see the prime minister. And he said to me on the way, do you always drive like this? And I said, only when I'm resigning. And then he realized and I'm sure he understood the reason why.
And that is what led to our joint resignation. And what mattered was the loss of Lord Carrington, never to come back into government. He was going to be Secretary General of NATO, which is good, but never to be back in government and to do the job he was so good at.
Richard, terrible question, but a historian has to ask it. I mean, with the benefit of hindsight, at what stage do you think the crucial errors were made that made the war almost inevitable? Well, I certainly thought that even before going into New York and once Galtieri had come in, that it was going to be extremely difficult to find any solution because both points of view were totally irreconcilable.
On the one hand, you had Galtieri who felt that Argentina had sovereign rights over the Falklands. On the other hand, you had 2,000 Falkland Islanders who wanted to remain British. The British had been there with sovereign authority since 1832, and the British Parliament felt very strongly indeed
There's no doubt about that. So I felt that we were in great danger after the talks in New York broke down. But the evidence wasn't that there was about to be a military action. The advice we had was that we might get increasing pressures on us and troubles of one kind or another with the Argentine, but
If there was likely to be any military action, it wouldn't come to the 150th anniversary of our sovereignty, which was not till 1983. And so we went along with that. Now, hindsight is a very easy thing. I wouldn't I know I couldn't and wouldn't have done anything other than what I did with Lord Carrington at that time.
But with hindsight, and had we known, of course, the obvious thing should have been done would be to have sent two submarines much, much earlier. Submarines had then surfaced in the South Atlantic, more than one, and then allowed that to sink in with the Argentine leadership.
I think that would have made a difference. Wonderful stuff. Thank you so much, Richard. That's amazing recall. Beautifully put. And your voice is coming in. Well, you helped me. You helped me. Good luck with everything. I think it's excellent you're doing this.
People have to be reminded of these past things. And there are some, you know, when we face Ukraine today, some parallels, certainly not exact parallels, but some parallels come back. You know, did we understand each other? Did Putin know that we were going to be robust in our reaction? I bet he didn't. He thought we'd be as weak as anything. So did Galtieri.
It's very interesting, isn't it? Great stuff. Thank you so much, Richard. Good to talk to you. And you. Bye-bye.
Wow, is all I can say, Patrick. I mean, that's one of the key players in the story, Richard Luce, who was the minister of responsibility for the Falklands, South America at that time, leading us through the diplomatic sequence of events that led to war. And what's so striking about it, apart from the goosebumps I'm feeling as someone who actually lived through those moments has just recounted it in such extraordinary detail, is how much a sense you get that there's almost nothing you could do to stop it. You know, he was getting...
not enough information to allow him and the Ministry of Defence and Thatcher to take the sort of action that was needed to prevent that war. Yeah.
Yes, he was very honest about that, wasn't he? I felt actually privileged to talk to him. There aren't many people around who were actually at the heart of the storm, at the eye of the storm when all this was going on. And to have someone who was such a key player, it's really quite a remarkable thing. I think what came out of it for me was that sort of lack of coordination. I think...
put it into context as he says there's so much going on at the time that you can't really expect everyone to keep their eye on the ball all the time and there is that other great point that he makes is that you know to the old hands who are dealing with this crisis it comes it goes it's on the boil it goes off the boil again and so in a way if you're being fair you can't really blame them for thinking well it's just another another one of these scores that will blow up and then and then subside again
So he wasn't afraid to say what he thought, nor to apportion blame where it was. But I think his judgment was just in that respect. Yeah, I mean, I think the question we always ask ourselves as historians is, is there a moment along the way when things could have been different? Now, of course, there are. We can look back with hindsight. And we know perfectly well, as he said at the end of that interview, if we'd sent the nuclear submarine sooner, might we have deterred the
the Argentinians a little bit like you know if we'd sent different signals to Putin today might we have discouraged him from invading Ukraine but the much more interesting question is is there enough information for the politicians at that time to have done something differently that's much more relevant really than when we look back
And what you see as he works his way through that story is well-meaning, bright, capable, determined politicians and diplomats doing the best to deal with a problem that they never realized was going to be as serious as it became. Yeah. Also fascinating for me was the way that...
one man can swing events. In this case, Sir Henry Leach marching into the meeting in the House of Commons at his full naval rig. That must have been quite a sight.
And clearly everyone who was there remembers it with enormous clarity. And he obviously put it on to have this effect. And by golly, it did have that effect. So here you've got one forceful character more or less taking the country to war. Of course, it's the prime minister's decision. But here's a prime minister who is actually quite impressed by men in uniform. She's got a great respect for them.
military men and with a forceful personality and forceful argument clinched again very importantly by this sort of appeal to national honour we have to do this it's a question of right or wrong we can do it and what is more we have to do and I think that's a really crucial moment I think what's
I think, Patrick, what's so chilling about that moment is that, you know, the way he recounted it, even as late as the 31st of March, when it was absolutely clear from intelligence that the Argentinians were gathering a force that was almost certainly going to invade the Falklands. There was still hesitancy, particularly on the part of Nott and the Ministry of Defence, as to whether we could do anything about it, urging caution and
And yet it took the courage, frankly, the moral courage of the naval chief Leach to actually force events. It also reminds me, of course, Patrick, this great question in history is can individuals make a difference? And this clearly is the case of one person making a big difference. Absolutely. And if it had been something that...
that Richard didn't say because he said he wasn't actually qualified to say, but I've heard from other sources, is that if it had been the head of the army, Dwyn Bramall, walking into that meeting...
He would have been telling a very different story. And his story would be, why do we need the Falklands? They've got no strategic value. They are a drain on our limited resources. Let the Argentinians have them. If we have to go to war over this, we won't actually be able to win it. That was absolutely his view. And the army was by no means as enthusiastic about the enterprise as
as the Navy was, but we'll hear more about that in episodes to come. Yeah, absolutely. So we've now got to the point at which the task force has been authorised. It's about sale. That's all we've got time for. Do join us next week for episode two of our Falklands special, The Task Force Sales. Goodbye. Goodbye.