The British fought the Falklands/Malvinas War to a victorious conclusion exactly thirty years ago. In response Anthony Barnett published a critique of the political culture that embraced the war, Iron Britannia. It came out in November 1982 and is now republished by Faber Finds. This 2012 edition has three additional sections that were written in the year that followed and a new introduction (of 13,000 words) on how a war for the past still shapes today’s Britain which is published here.
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Miss Roberts was very fervent in her determination to stand by the Empire. It was the most important community of peoples that the world had ever known. It was so bound with loyalty that it brought people half way across the world to help each other in times of stress. The Empire must never be liquidated.
(An account of the first known speech by Margaret Thatcher , 25 June 1945, at a general election hustings in Sleaford, Lincolnshire.)
It is the New Year. Preparing a new edition of Iron Britannia, I sit and re-read a book written half a lifetime ago, and I am shocked. Having expected to write a brief, ironic introduction on the thirtieth anniversary of a past polemic, mainly to help those young enough to have no recollection of the Falklands War, I am instead appalled at how relevant Iron Britannia has once again become.
The cause of my astonishment is not only that the issue of the Falklands is resurfacing, if that is the right word. Now that massive oil reservoirs under the seabed have apparently been confirmed, the islanders (being so few) are tagged to become per capita the richest people on earth. Where there is oil there is conflict, and as Argentina asks for a ‘dialogue’ over the resources, the tropes of old attitudes revive, instincts are stirred and the UK responds with warlike postures.
The focus of Iron Britannia is on the short period between April and June 1982, the weeks when its first draft was written. I believe that moment revealed the underlying mental universe of British politics, exposed by the magnificent Iron Lady. After Argentina seized two islands the size of Wales, 290 miles from its coast and with less than two thousand souls upon them, a Task Force of more than a hundred ships and over twenty-five thousand men headed 8,000 miles into the South Atlantic to win back a place almost none of us here had heard of, that in no previous sense ‘belonged to us’, and were inhabited by a few hundred poor islanders who could easily have been offered munificent compensation by the UK government for its failure to defend them.
As it was, over ten thousand British soldiers were landed. Supported by naval artillery and US satellite intelligence they fought to the death with more than thirteen thousand Argentinian conscripts, on almost uninhabited rocks. How could this have happened with the support of all the political parties and no serious opposition? Many merely blamed (or praised) the determination of Margaret Thatcher. Yet there was clearly more to it. An enraged House of Commons and a howling media were bellowing for a fight as she announced that the Navy would set sail. There had to be something in the water here in Britain (and therefore in my waters too) for the whole country to willingly risk the sacrifice of hundreds of young men and the crippling of many more, the devastation of their families, the even larger number of likely enemy casualties, the staggering costs, and the possibility of a military catastrophe, to embrace with such enthusiasm a war for nowhere.
The war was unexpected and the victory a nice surprise (‘We weren’t sure we had it in us’). But what was then revelation has now become expectation. The Falklands War is not, as I hoped it would be, merely an exhibit of how we were. It is the starting point for what we have become. The victory did not just ensure a decade of Thatcher’s direct hegemony, impressive enough though that was. It has inspired what can be called a Falklands Syndrome.