Brian Wilson: Time to rethink Falklands attitude

In THE moral maze of just wars and legitimate military interventions, there is one absolute endorsed by history: Aggressive dictators should be confronted. That, at least, is what I was brought up to believe by a preceding political generation which had good reason to regard appeasement as a strategy doomed to failure.

Accordingly, I never needed persuading that it was entirely right for Britain to defend the Falkland Islands when the need arose, in stark and urgent form, in these dark days of 1982. The invading Argentina was run by military gangsters of the lowest order. The alternative to defending the Falklands was to hand victory to the fascist regime of General Leopoldo Galtieri. There was no middle way.

On Saturday, 3 April, 1982 the House of Commons was recalled by Margaret Thatcher to be told of the Falklands invasion. But it was the inveterate peacemonger and Labour leader, Michael Foot, who spoke for Britain that day when he directly linked the plight of the Falklanders to the evils of the Buenos Aires regime.

Foot summed up the case thus: “They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless – as worthless as the guarantees given by the same Argentine junta to its own people.”

He continued: “We can hardly forget that thousands of innocent people fighting for their political rights in Argentina are in prison and have been tortured and abused. We cannot forget that fact when our friends and fellow citizens in the Falkland Islands are suffering at this moment.”

Precious little thanks Michael Foot ever got for his eloquence or principle. In the crude caricatures that pass for historical art, the Falklands War is portrayed as an example of Thatcherite bellicosity from which she benefited mightily. But this should never overshadow the certainty that it was a just war which also bequeathed a great deal of good, particularly as the democratic tipping point for Latin America.

Even by the standards of that continent, the Galtieri regime was ruthless in its brutality. Its favoured form of torture was to electrocute and part-suffocate political opponents before dumping their still-living bodies from aircraft into the ocean where they remained “the disappeared”; mourned for decades by the women of the Plaza de Mayo, demanding retribution against the perpetrators of these crimes. The mourners only stopped when they knew their country had changed and the oppressors had truly been evicted from power.

As a direct result of defeat in the Falklands, the Galtieri regime fell; to be replaced by a democracy that now seems secure. The waves of resistance to military repression soon spread to other countries of South America. One by one, the tyrannies were replaced by functioning democracies. Thanks to Galtieri, Pinochet and their ilk, the familiar figure in Latin American history of the Washington-sponsored strongman had become too much of an embarrassment for easy reinstatement.

So that is part one of the story. Events in Latin America have moved on at a pace and in a direction that could not have been predicted by even the most hardened optimist 30 years ago. But now, in the run-up to the anniversary of the Falklands War, the verbal sabres are being sharpened. The volume of the rhetoric is being raised. Nobody is yet talking about military action, and probably won’t, but we do still have six weeks to go.

Last week, the Argentinian foreign minister, Hector Timerman, addressed the United Nations and won overwhelming support for the terms of UN Resolutions, calling for negotiation between the UK and Argentinian governments on the future of the Falklands/Malvinas. Already, Latin American countries are endorsing a string of measures aimed at isolating the Falklands and, by association, the UK. Is this really where we want to be?

Hector Timerman was not in Buenos Aires at the time of the Falklands War. His father, a human rights activist, had been a victim of Galtieri’s torture squads and after he was kidnapped the family fled to the United States where Timerman helped to found Americas Watch, an organisation which monitored human rights abuses in Latin America. Now he is the foreign minister of the democratic Argentine state.

A lot has changed in 30 years, and for the good. But one thing that has not changed is the British position. In that Commons debate of 1982, Margaret Thatcher summed it up thus: “We have absolutely no doubt about our sovereignty which has been continuous since 1833. Nor have we any doubt about the unequivocal wishes of Falkland Islanders, who are British in stock and tradition, and they wish to remain British in allegiance.”

Essentially, that is exactly the same case being enunciated by David Cameron today. It was unquestionably good enough in the face of invasion by a fascist dictatorship. But is it really good enough – a clincher of an argument which precludes the right of any other to be countenanced – when the challenge is not military but diplomatic and the challenger is not fascist but democratic?

It seems to me intensely disappointing that so little has been done in the past 30 years to address that question, suggesting a certain lack of respect towards the political evolution of Argentina. Reading these words of Prime Minister Thatcher, I am struck by the similarity of language that used to be deployed in defence of Northern Irish intransigence. An artificial statelet having been created, the rights of the majority within it were then declared absolute.

Eventually, the artificiality of that construct had to be admitted to and change accommodated. Other people had rights too. There are surely parallels with the Falkland Islands. The fact that they have been a British colony for 180 years undoubtedly conveys rights on the people who live there. However, it does not seem satisfactory simply to assert that this should permanently deny rights to those whose geographic proximity is somewhat greater than our own.

And then there is the question of oil. When Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of the Falkland Islanders’ right to be defended, only a fool would have claimed (as a few did) that they were motivated by the anticipated presence of oil beneath the waters of the region. Thirty years on, with exploration pressing ahead under British auspices, it is a lot less easy to make that unequivocal case. And the moment oil is a factor, 3,000 miles away, then the charge of economic colonialism becomes viable – a reality well understood throughout Latin America.

Instead of sending princes and submarines, the British government might do well to spend the next few weeks reappraising both the principles and perceptions which attach to its Falklands policy. Respecting the wishes of the Falkland Islanders should not translate simply into a power of veto over any reasonable accommodation. Defending the islands should not be synonymous with gratuitously insulting a continent that has made the hard journey from dictatorship to democracy.