This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War.
I won’t say it feels like yesterday because that would be a lie but the memory of the evening when the first ships set sail for the South Atlantic is one of those 'Where were you?' moments.
I mentioned it in a post about Pubs ‘n’ stuff in 2020:
Given my long-held desire to be a journalist it was ironic that my first job (in PR) was with a company based in Fleet Lane which, as its name suggests, was very close to Fleet Street.
A friend worked for an advertising agency nearby but instead of one of the many Fleet Street pubs we would meet after work at The Old King Lud on the corner of Ludgate Circus and Farringdon Street. Built in 1870 this old Victorian pub sat directly under Holborn Viaduct which meant it shook slightly whenever a train rumbled overhead.
Memorably we were in the Old King Lud when the first ships left Portsmouth for the Falklands in April 1982. The atmosphere that night was incredible. Everyone, it seemed, was behind Maggie’s decision to send the task force to the South Atlantic and after several pints quite a few of us were talking about joining up, although we thought better of it when we sobered up the next morning!
As it happens my thoughts were also on the journalists beavering away a few hundred yards up the road. If there was one moment I regretted my decision to abandon a potential career in Fleet Street in favour of PR it was that evening because I’m sure the excitement in the news rooms was off the scale.
Since then so much has been written about the war, some of it very negative, that it’s difficult to remember that at the time the issue for most people was very simple.
A British territory inhabited by British nationals who wanted to remain British had been seized by a South American dictator. Whatever the difficulties, which many argued were insurmountable, and whatever the historic reasons for the dispute, we had to get it back.
Arguments, debates and discussions about who bore responsibility for the invasion (had the Foreign Office effectively given the Argentinians the green light?) could wait another day.
Had we lost the war, or reached some sort of settlement with Argentina without going into battle (as the Americans wanted), Margaret Thatcher would not have survived a moment longer as PM and she would now be no more than a footnote in history.
But that night in the Old King Lud, a few hundred yards from St Paul's Cathedral, I don’t think anyone contemplated defeat. Without fully understanding, perhaps, the enormous task that lay ahead, or the lives that would be lost during the campaign, the excitement was palpable.
And when I wrote that 'quite a few of us were talking about joining up' I mean it. Not as front line servicemen, obviously, but as cooks or bottle washers. Anything that might get us on one of those ships.
It was the drink talking, of course, because next day we were back at our desks reading and watching the news, well away from the action.
Reality however probably hit home only when the task force arrived in the South Atlantic and ships were sunk and servicemen were killed, but on April 2, 1982, that was several weeks’ away.
Simon Weston, a well-known veteran of the campaign, is a reminder of the horror of war but he is also an example of extraordinary resilience.
Despite his injuries (and other survivors arguably suffered worse) I don't think I've ever heard him decry the war or wallow in self-pity.
The Guardian, naturally, has published an article by the Argentinian foreign minister (Forty years after the Falklands war, Britain still acts as if the dispute is settled. It isn’t) who wants the UK to resume negotiations, but I'm pretty sure the response of the British people – if not the bureaucrats and mandarins in Whitehall – would be much as it was in 1982.
Britain may have changed, and not always for the better, in the intervening years but some things never change. Unless the local population votes otherwise, the British public won't let our government give up our dependencies (and our responsibilities) without a fight.
Interesting interview with Admiral Lord West on GB News this morning. His comment about the Americans made me laugh.