Falklands 40 years on ..

[likesfish]

The ridiculous War and it was ridiculous Thatchers goverment had the falklands as 99 on list of its number of problems. Didn't take Argentina remotely seriously.
The Falkland Islanders are doing much better.
Argentina has at least removed the military from the goverment. Considering the main military threat to Argentina was the Argentine military. Having them unable to ever intervene again is a win.
Removing the jack boot from Argentine politics 700 lives was probably worth it. .

 

[chilango]

On the other hand it helped keep "our ally" Pinochet in power for another murderous few years, so the "balance sheet" ought to include that too

 

[Spymaster]

The ridiculous War and it was ridiculous Thatchers goverment had the falklands as 99 on list of its number of problems. Didn't take Argentina remotely seriously.
The Falkland Islanders are doing much better.
Argentina has at least removed the military from the goverment. Considering the main military threat to Argentina was the Argentine military. Having them unable to ever intervene again is a win.
Removing the jack boot from Argentine politics 700 lives was probably worth it. .

I'm not sure what was so ridiculous about it unless you're referring to the Argentinian invasion itself. If you're going to keep armed forces, the invasion of your territory by murderous regimes for the political aims of tinpot dictators, is surely precisely the time to use them. The Falklands is the most legitimate non-humanitarian use of the British forces since WW2.

 

[likesfish]

The Argentinan invasion their planning their reasons were and still are ridiculous.
If Thatcher had taken the threat remotely serious the war wouldn't have happened.
But Argentina makes Russia look competent.
The Argentine army didn't issue backpacks!

 

[likesfish]

On the other hand it helped keep "our ally" Pinochet in power for another murderous few years, so the "balance sheet" ought to include that too

Tbf are ally knew he was next on the juntas list their desire to seize the Magellan channel was nearly as stupid as their desire for the falklands.

 

[Gramsci]

Coming from a Naval / Military town Plymouth its going into overdrive to remember it.

Falklands War photos and memories unearthed 40 years on

The Falklands 40 special is a 48-page anniversary publication available exclusively now

www.plymouthherald.co.uk

Thing about the war imo is did the working class of Plymouth get rewarded for being loyal?

No.

I'd already left Plymouth by then. But my brother stayed. Falklands saved Thatcher. Plymouth ended up as one of those left behind Brexit voting towns.

When I grew up there in 60/70 it was poor but people had secure jobs in Dockyard etc.

Now I recently looked at stats for deprivation. The Council wards around the docks are in top 10% and 20% most deprived in the country. Going to visit now and it looks more poor than it was in 60s/ 70s.

Even after WW2 the land fit for heroes seemed a long time coming in 60s. My street still used the wash house at end of our road as most houses didn't have bathrooms.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Coming from a Naval / Military town Plymouth its going into overdrive to remember it.

Falklands War photos and memories unearthed 40 years on

The Falklands 40 special is a 48-page anniversary publication available exclusively now

www.plymouthherald.co.uk

Thing about the war imo is did the working class of Plymouth get rewarded for being loyal?

No.

I'd already left Plymouth by then. But my brother stayed. Falklands saved Thatcher. Plymouth ended up as one of those left behind Brexit voting towns.

When I grew up there in 60/70 it was poor but people had secure jobs in Dockyard etc.

Now I recently looked at stats for deprivation. The Council wards around the docks are in top 10% and 20% most deprived in the country. Going to visit now and it looks more poor than it was in 60s/ 70s.

Even after WW2 the land fit for heroes seemed a long time coming in 60s. My street still used the wash house at end of our road as most houses didn't have bathrooms.

Strategically the navy could and should have left Plymouth mid-eighties, the fact that it is still there contradicts your post. Sure it is a deprived city, but it was when my 81 year old mother in law was a child there too.

 

[Gramsci]

Strategically the navy could and should have left Plymouth mid-eighties, the fact that it is still there contradicts your post. Sure it is a deprived city, but it was when my 81 year old mother in law was a child there too.

So why are the working class areas of Plymouth still up there as most deprived?

 

[Gramsci]

On removal of the military dictatorship in Argentina. Needs to be remembered that Argentinian people themselves risked their lives opposing it for years.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

So why are the working class areas of Plymouth still up there as most deprived?

They always were, the south west of England due to geography has always been deprived, a big natural harbour at the entrance to the Atlantic is why Plymouth exists as more than a fishing port in the first place, but since the 1940’s that’s not really been an issue and Portsmouth can handle the needs of the UK’s surface fleet, we are economically constrained with our military yet we have kept Plymouth going as it is known how utterly fucked the place would be without a bunch of pissed up wankers fighting and whoring their way up and down Union Street of an evening.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

On removal of the military dictatorship in Argentina. Needs to be remembered that Argentinian people themselves risked their lives opposing it for years.

And for all their brave actions they achieved what?

 

[Spymaster]

On the other hand it helped keep "our ally" Pinochet in power for another murderous few years, so the "balance sheet" ought to include that too

How did the Falklands War keep Pinochet in power?

 

[likesfish]

He wasn't forced into a really bloody war with the Argentine Junta?
The Juntas "cunning plan" .
Seize the falklands then seize the islands from. Chile that the pope wouldn't let them have in the 70s.
I mean another South American dictator would just go along with this and totally not send conscripts to die?

 

[chilango]

How did the Falklands War keep Pinochet in power?

Increased support from the UK including weapons.

 

[kebabking]

Have a watch, see if there's new information. Thatcher or her advisors get the blame for the Goose Green battle, which was done for PR reasons and had no military value.

A still unsolved mystery is why Atlantic Conveyor was ordered close to the Falklands in daylight. Nearly all the rations and tents were lost. Some soldiers went without food for 3 days. Had they spent much longer on the islands, some would have died of exposure.

There are lots of other WTF moments. Astonishing incompetence from Tony Wilson, which resulted in lots of deaths and almost lost the war. More cluelessness by whoever was running things at Northwood and by Jeremy Moore. You don't often hear the top officers being slagged off that badly. I'm sure the programme has made quite an impression with the people in the military currently. If not for some frankly moronic decisions, the campaign could have been won a lot sooner, with far fewer casualties. Having said that, if not for Pinochet we would definitely have lost.

There's nothing substantive in the programme that wasn't known long ago - I didn't know that FM Bramall (Chief of the General Staff) had considered sacking Wilson as commander 5 Inf Bde after his dismal performance in the work up exercises at Sennybridge - but his appalling performance in the Falklands was well known at the time, he left the army within months of his return, and was the only senior officer not to receive any kind of award for his conduct.

Something not mentioned was that when Wilson actioned the 'big leap' he used the civilian telephone network to call the settlement to ask if there were any Argentines there - the civilian network was being monitored by the Argentines in Stanley. Fortunately, they believed it was a attempt at deception.

5 Bde was a disaster, but that wasn't all Wilson's fault: he'd been stripped of his two parachute battalions (which went to 3 Bde) and given two Bn's which were unfit, and unworked up. None of them had ever worked with each other, and it was a gangfuck.

The reason that a second land force was used was two fold - the Tufton-Buftons worried that the posh regiments were being eclipsed by the Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment - but much more important was that the Royal Navy decided that it was simply running out of ships, both through enemy action and simply by being in the south Atlantic for 3 months. They took the view that while 3 Bde's plan of systematically rolling up the Argentines on its own was the best military plan, it would take longer than the Navy could keep its carriers online for.

No carriers, no war.

So 'something' had to be done to speed up the land war, and 5 Bde was it.

 

[Spymaster]

Increased support from the UK including weapons.

The UK had been supplying weapons to Chile way before the Falklands. The arms relationship went back to Allende, and Thatcher was cosy with Pinochet in the 70s. That didn't come about because of the war. The Chilean support of the UK against Argentina was more a result of that relationship that the other way around.

 

[Spymaster]

The reason that a second land force was used was two fold - the Tufton-Buftons worried that the posh regiments were being eclipsed by the Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment - but much more important was that the Royal Navy decided that it was simply running out of ships, both through enemy action and simply by being in the south Atlantic for 3 months. They took the view that while 3 Bde's plan of systematically rolling up the Argentines on its own was the best military plan, it would take longer than the Navy could keep its carriers online for.

No carriers, no war.

So 'something' had to be done to speed up the land war, and 5 Bde was it.

Is that why Rose saying that the big leap (and therefore Bluff Cove) was unnecessary and blaming it on Wilson? He seemed to be saying that the Argentine positions should just have been shelled instead.

 

[chilango]

The UK had been supplying weapons to Chile way before the Falklands. The arms relationship went back to Allende, and Thatcher was cosy with Pinochet in the 70s. That didn't come about because of the war. The Chilean support of the UK against Argentina was more a result of that relationship that the other way around.

Never said it was started by the war, but the war helped strengthen/maintain/justify the relationship.

Simply put, if you're going to say that the fall of the Argentine junta was a beneficial consequence of the war (which I'd agree it was) you should also look at the strengthening of the Pinochet regime as a negative one. Do the two balance out? Probably not. But all I'm saying is to take it into account when drawing up a balance sheet of the results of the war.

 

[Spymaster]

Never said it was started by the war, but the war helped strengthen/maintain/justify the relationship.

Simply put, if you're going to say that the fall of the Argentine junta was a beneficial consequence of the war (which I'd agree it was) you should also look at the strengthening of the Pinochet regime as a negative one. Do the two balance out? Probably not. But all I'm saying is to take it into account when drawing up a balance sheet of the results of the war.

But if you're going to do that you have to quantify the supposed strengthening of Pinochet as a result of the war. That doesn't seem to have happened. If anything it was through the 80s that his regime declined and eventually fell.

 

[kebabking]

Is that why Rose saying that the big leap (and therefore Bluff Cove) was unnecessary and blaming it on Wilson? He seemed to be saying that the Argentine positions should just have been shelled instead.

Pretty much - 3 Bde was a cohesive, trained, experienced, fit force, and they (and Jeremy Moore, and Clapp) thought that it would be best if they did the fighting, not least because the logistics (Commando Logistics Regiment, the helicopters, and the amphibious fleet) could only really support one Brigade), and it would be better to concentrate all the artillery they had to support one action at time. So you'd have had each mountain taken one night at time, rather than several on one night.

Moore had, once 5 Bde was foisted on him, wanted to use it to secure the Logs bases at San Carlos and Mount Kent, but sadly he was overruled.

One thing Rose is wrong on (in my view) is that Goose Green-Darwin was unnecessary - while it is true that it was not on the line of advance between San Carlos and Stanley, it could not be left to its own devises - if only a small proportion of the force (say 200 men out of 1200 or whatever it was) had marched north for a day, they would have been sat squarely on the main supply route between the San Carlos logistics base and the advance to Stanley.

 

[chilango]

But if you're going to do that you have to quantify the supposed strengthening of Pinochet as a result of the war. That doesn't seem to have happened. If anything it was through the 80s that his regime declined and eventually fell.

"Declassified papers reveal that, by June 1982, her government had sold the dictatorship: two warships, 60 blowpipe missiles, 10 Hunter Hawker bomber planes, naval pyrotechnics,
communications equipment, gun sights, machine guns and ammunition"


"Her government went on to approve licences for a range of military equipment including 10 Hawker Hunter fighter planes, Canberra bomber aircraft, three warships, eight Blowpipe missile launchers with 60 missiles, a Sea Slug surface-to-air missile system, armoured Land Rovers, machinery to manufacture small arms and ammunition, and cluster bombs."


"The British government spent more than £1.1-million on training 255 members of the Chilean armed forces in the UK between 1981 and 1984"

"The UK government then withdrew its support from a December 1982 UN General Assembly resolution condemning Pinochet’s human rights abuses. It also worked behind the scenes to persuade other countries to water down the criticisms in the resolution."

"Every year throughout the 1980s, Britain continued to lobby other countries at the UN to tone down an annual resolution condemning Pinochet’s military regime"

...and so on.

i don't think it's particularly disputed that Britain supported and aided Pinochet in, and out, of power nor that Chile's role in the Falklands War was a significant part of the relationship (along with a shared love of neoliberal economics).

It doesn't need to change your view on the rightness or wrongness of the war, but if you're going to talk about knock on effects in South America you have to include Chile.

 

[Spymaster]

"Declassified papers reveal that, by June 1982, her government had sold the dictatorship: two warships, 60 blowpipe missiles, 10 Hunter Hawker bomber planes, naval pyrotechnics,
communications equipment, gun sights, machine guns and ammunition"


"Her government went on to approve licences for a range of military equipment including 10 Hawker Hunter fighter planes, Canberra bomber aircraft, three warships, eight Blowpipe missile launchers with 60 missiles, a Sea Slug surface-to-air missile system, armoured Land Rovers, machinery to manufacture small arms and ammunition, and cluster bombs."


"The British government spent more than £1.1-million on training 255 members of the Chilean armed forces in the UK between 1981 and 1984"

"The UK government then withdrew its support from a December 1982 UN General Assembly resolution condemning Pinochet’s human rights abuses. It also worked behind the scenes to persuade other countries to water down the criticisms in the resolution."

"Every year throughout the 1980s, Britain continued to lobby other countries at the UN to tone down an annual resolution condemning Pinochet’s military regime"

...and so on.

i don't think it's particularly disputed that Britain supported and aided Pinochet in, and out, of power nor that Chile's role in the Falklands War was a significant part of the relationship (along with a shared love of neoliberal economics).

It doesn't need to change your view on the rightness or wrongness of the war, but if you're going to talk about knock on effects in South America you have to include Chile.

But nobody is suggesting for a minute that Britain (esp Thatchter) didn't have an unhealthy relationship and supply shit loads of weapons to Chile. What's at issue is the extent to which these were a "knock-on effect" of the Falklands War, which is what you seem to be arguing.

Pretty much everything you've mentioned there was going on before the war. Those Hawker Hunters famously bombed the presidential palace during the coup in 1973 and were originally supplied to Allende. If the training of their soldiers started in 1981, the war was in 1982.

There's no doubt that Britain was complicit in arming and training the Pinochet regime, but saying it was a knock-on effect of the Falklands is an enormous stretch (actually just plain wrong). It had been going on for 10 years by the time the war started. The Chilean support of the UK during the conflict was a game-changer but at the very most you might say that the war slightly bolstered an already ironclad relationship between the governments, not that it 'kept AP in power'.

 

[chilango]

But nobody is suggesting for a minute that Britain (esp Thatchter) didn't have an unhealthy relationship and supply shit loads of weapons to Chile. What's at issue is the extent to which these were a "knock-on effect" of the Falklands War, which is what you seem to be arguing.

Pretty much everything you've mentioned there was going on before the war. Those Hawker Hunters bombed the presidential palace during the coup in 1973. If the training of their soldiers started in 1981, the war was in 1982.

There's absolutely no doubt that Britain were hugely complicit in arming and training the Pinochet regime, but saying it was a knock-on effect of the Falklands is an enormous stretch. It had been going on for 10 years by the time the war started. The Chilean support of the UK during the conflict was a game-changer but at the very most you might say that the war slightly bolstered an already ironclad relationship between the governments, not that it 'kept AP in power'.

It helped, it maintained...

I don't think we have substantial disagreement here.

 

[Spymaster]

I don't think we have substantial disagreement here.

Where's the fun in that?

 

[Pickman's model]

Never mind arms sales to Chile, I'm surprised arms sales to Argentina haven't had a more prominent part on this thread Margaret Thatcher’s secret dealings with the Argentine military junta that invaded the Falklands

 

[Spymaster]

Never mind arms sales to Chile, I'm surprised arms sales to Argentina haven't had a more prominent part on this thread Margaret Thatcher’s secret dealings with the Argentine military junta that invaded the Falklands

Well it's no secret that arms have been supplied to scumbags. We do it all the time. The majority of the Brit supplied kit in Argentina's arsenal was sold to them under the previous Labour government though.

 

[Pickman's model]

Well it's no secret that arms have been supplied to scumbags. We do it all the time. The majority of the Brit supplied kit in Argentina's arsenal was sold to them under the previous Labour government though.

Not sure if you're trying to say that's ok then,or that the gear was out of date, or that in this Thatcher's hands are fairly clean or all three

 

[Spymaster]

Not sure if you're trying to say that's ok then,or that the gear was out of date, or that in this Thatcher's hands are fairly clean or all three

None of the above

But it's a polarising topic and lefties have a tendency to take the "my enemy's enemy ..." view of it, so just pointing out that it's a bit more complicated than that.

 

[ska invita]

Self determination of the Falklands is real and to be respected, but as it is a settler colonial state I can perfectly see why Argentinians might hark back to a time before then, however imagined.

If anyone has the time this long article is really interesting about what life was like and is like now on the Islands, how the improvement in material conditions post-war have loosened the ties of the community, and crucial to the topic of '40 years on', how ethnically the links to Britain are fading away as the community becomes more cosmopolitan and tourism has increased

How Prosperity Transformed the Falklands

Once a distant outpost of the British Empire, the islands have become a global crossroads. In the season of the coronavirus, the intimate communities may evolve yet again.

www.newyorker.com

"Some islanders complained that, with so many people from all over the world, the Falklands were becoming unrecognizable. Others found the new cosmopolitanism exciting, and thought that those who complained were lacking in vision and probably racist, harkening back to the days before the war, when islanders used to cite the nearly hundred-per-cent whiteness of the population as proof that they were truly British. But, in addition to this familiar divide, there was a twist unique to the Falklands, caused by the lingering spectre of the war.

Falkland Islanders claimed the right to self-determination under the United Nations Charter. The charter granted that right to “peoples,” but it didn’t define what that meant. What did it take to be a people? How did some people become a people? Was it a matter of time? Shared culture? Children born on the land? Was there, on the other hand, a point at which a population was so transient and unstable that it looked less like a society than like an airport? Islanders liked to point out that their old families had lived in the Falklands for more generations than many Argentine families had lived in Argentina—for practically as long as Argentina had been a country—and some worried that if the islands again came to be inhabited mostly by travellers and contract workers from abroad this advantage would be lost."

 

[Spymaster]

Self determination of the Falklands is real and to be respected, but as it is a settler colonial state I can perfectly see why Argentinians might hark back to a time before then, however imagined.

If anyone has the time this long article is really interesting about what life was like and is like now on the Islands, how the improvement in material conditions post-war have loosened the ties of the community, and crucial to the topic of '40 years on', how ethnically the links to Britain are fading away as the community becomes more cosmopolitan and tourism has increased

How Prosperity Transformed the Falklands

Once a distant outpost of the British Empire, the islands have become a global crossroads. In the season of the coronavirus, the intimate communities may evolve yet again.

www.newyorker.com

"Some islanders complained that, with so many people from all over the world, the Falklands were becoming unrecognizable. Others found the new cosmopolitanism exciting, and thought that those who complained were lacking in vision and probably racist, harkening back to the days before the war, when islanders used to cite the nearly hundred-per-cent whiteness of the population as proof that they were truly British. But, in addition to this familiar divide, there was a twist unique to the Falklands, caused by the lingering spectre of the war.

Falkland Islanders claimed the right to self-determination under the United Nations Charter. The charter granted that right to “peoples,” but it didn’t define what that meant. What did it take to be a people? How did some people become a people? Was it a matter of time? Shared culture? Children born on the land? Was there, on the other hand, a point at which a population was so transient and unstable that it looked less like a society than like an airport? Islanders liked to point out that their old families had lived in the Falklands for more generations than many Argentine families had lived in Argentina—for practically as long as Argentina had been a country—and some worried that if the islands again came to be inhabited mostly by travellers and contract workers from abroad this advantage would be lost."

She's right about it being left ungarrisoned by the Brits in 1774 but it was less that they felt "it wasn't worth the money and went home" and more to do with the looming American War of Independence, and the refocussing of priorities. The plaque that they left behind sounds laughable but it was the way sovereignty was asserted by the convention of the day. The Argentinian claim ignores the entirety of what happened in the 18th century and begins with the Brits reclaiming the islands in 1833 (handy that, because an independent Argentina didn't exist until 1816).

I enjoyed that. It was a good read. Cheers.