Political commentary

The last armada

Ferdinand Mount

Adebacle speaks for itself. All things that inescapably follow — the humiliation, the indignation, the ministers hurrying in and out of Cabinet, the spec- tacular sitting of Parliament on a Saturday, the calls for the resignation of Mr John Nott, Lord Carrington and anyone else standing in the line of fire — are not only themselves part and parcel of the debacle; they help to explain why it happened.

The Falkland Islanders are the last vic- tims of our refusal to be honest with ourselves; we have clung to the rhetoric of empire long after we have lost the desire or the ability to maintain its reality. The easy refuge in these circumstances is to blame the 'appeasers' in the Foreign Office. It was undoubtedly the Foreign Office which is to blame for the misreading of Argentina's in- tentions and for Britain being caught napp- ing. Lord Carrington and his juniors had to go, and they duly went — in Lord Carr- ington's case, with remarkable candour and dignity — providing a respectable herd of scapegoats for a demoralised government. Mr Nott survives, I think rightly, but his survival surely depends on a successful out- come to what may be the last great naval task force Britain will ever launch.

This column has rarely found much to admire in Lord Carrington's style of diplomacy, except in Rhodesia. But apart from the immediate and crucial misjudg- ment over the Falklands, it would be unfair to pile all the blame on him or even on to the Foreign Office collectively for what has been the undeclared ambition of every British government for the past generation; somehow or other to disembarrass Britain of the Falklands.

Back in 1968, Lord Chalfont, then Minister for Peace and Disarmament at the Foreign Office (one of Sir Harold's master- ly fancies), was nearly debagged by the islanders when they gathered the impression that Britain intended to discuss a transfer of sovereignty with Argentina. Under this pre- sent government, Mr Nicholas Ridley had a scarcely less frosty reception from the islanders when talk of a 'leaseback solution' was in the air. The islanders were and are determined to stay British, and they know how to shame British politicians into giving pledges which they would rather not give.

After all, didn't the islanders have British public opinion firmly behind them? So they did, and do. But opinion is a relatively painless, cost-free commodity. When it comes to paying for the maintenance of a permanent naval force in the South Atlantic sufficient to deter any invader, British public opinion seems to be less ardent.

Year by year, for 20 years now, suc- cessive British governments have given Argentina the impression that they would not be prepared to pay for any major pro- ject which would help to secure the Britishness of the Falkland Islands. The runway was never lengthened to take direct flights from Europe. A commercial agree- ment was signed in 1971 which gave Argen- tina a virtual monopoly of air and fuel ser- vices. Britain gave up her nearest deep- water base, at Simonstown, because of apartheid. Almost more important than the lack of arrangements to secure the islands' defence was the absence of colonial en- thusiasm. The Falklands were left to fend for themselves.

Most of the islanders are tenants of the Falkland Islands Company. Ultimate con- trol of this company has changed hands several times. Recently, it belonged to the Charringtons Coalite empire; at one mo- ment, it almost fell under Argentinian con- trol, via Sir James Goldsmith. Since the islanders rarely own their own homes, many of them find themsleves obliged to leave when they become too old. for work; they tend to emigrate to New Zealand or Britain. The young often leave too. The result is that the population has dropped by about 15 per cent in 15 years. Whatever the final outcome now, many more will surely leave when and if they can.

Britain's contribution to the islands has been ancestors, a governor, a flag, a few marines, an occasional gunboat — and the rhetoric. Last Saturday it seemed that almost every British MP was personally prepared to shed his last drop of blood for the Falklands. Extremities of heroism were promised by all sorts, from Mr Patrick Cor- mack, doubtless to be remembered as Boy Cormack by readers of the next edition of the British Book of Heroes. 'The defence of our realm,' Mr Edward Du Cann told a hushed house, 'begins wherever British peo- ple are.' We should start, I suppose, by bombing Buenos Aires where there are ten times as many British people as there are in the Falklands.

How much would it have cost to protect the islands securely against Argentina in perpetuity? Mr Keith Speed, the Navy minister, who was sacked for disagreeing with Mr Nott, believes that it could be done for £20 million a year — on the analogy of what it costs for three British frigates to patrol the Straits of Hormuz. That sounds like an underestimate for patrolling waters 8,000 miles from home.

But even if his figures are correct, the costs of protection would come to £40,000 per island family per year. For half that sum, most of them would be quite pleased to emigrate to New Zealand. But if the safe- ty of the islanders is not the sole concern, if British possession of the Falklands is militarily necessary and commerciallY valuable, then why have we not lengthened the runway? Why are we not busily drilling and leasing?

But Mr Speed is one of the few people in the whole business who is utterly honest. He believes that the Royal Navy ought to continue to patrol the world and the South Atlantic in particular and that if we will the end, then we must will the means.

The other form of honesty — and 1 think the preferable one — is to say that if we cannot provide the means, then we had bet- ter stop pretending that we can secure the ends. That was the logic behind Christopher Mayhew's resignation from the Nary ministry when Denis Healey — now the most zealous of gaucho-biffers — scrapped Britain's great aircraft carriers. A few years later, the next economic

crisis proved Mayhew right by forcing the government to withdraw Britain's frontiers from the Himalayas, where Sir Harold Wilson in one of his most exuberant moments had drawn them, and redraw them distinctly West of Suez. That sort of honesty comes hard to politi- cians. The cost of gunboat diplomacy creases at a prohibitively expensive rate. Even for superpowers, it has long lost the cheapness and effectiveness it had in the days of the huge technological gap between the imperial power and the natives, when whatever happens,

'We have got The Maxim gun and they have not

What they have now is our second-hand warships, plus some new French aircraft. In 1833 we gained the Falklands from Argen- tina with a single sloop. We are attempting to regain them with two thirds of the Royal Navy. In the case of the Falklands, the moral right is indisputably on our side. Is th,_e, British government really prepared to OP' to regain its rights? Mr Enoch Powell in- sistently poses this question as the only one ultimately worth asking. But it is not the only question, and the answer to it is not settled by the despatch of this great British armada. How much force is to be used? At what point should Britain regard herself as having gained her point and retrieved her self-esteem? When the last Argentinian marine leaves the island? When Argentina begins to negotiate? Mrs Thatcher's under- taking to return the islands to British ad- ministration is less specific than it sounds, but it could not stretch to include total failure to dislodge the Argentinians.

The immediate causes of the debacle are of the Government's own making. 1° despatch a task force to see what can be retrieved, by blockade or marine landings or both, is the only way to deter similar acts of aggression in other parts of the world. This last British Armada is a quixotic but necessary enterprise. The position of the British Government remains at best a highlY undignified one. But then discarding an ern' pire tends to be a succession of indignities.