On the 14th June, 1982, the Argentinian armed forces in the Falklands surrendered to the British after an armed conflict that had begun in early April. The below is extracted from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard.
One of the ideas which was supposed to have been killed off—or rather laughed to death—by the satire boom of the 1960s was Boer War British jingoism. To some people this was a comforting idea because few theories are more disturbing than the blind-eyed, deaf-eared, empty-headed patriotism which insists “my country, right or wrong”. But ten years ago it was necessary to learn that jingoism was alive and kicking, cheering and waving Union Jacks as the task force sailed out to deal with the Argentinian capture of the Falklands.
This hysteria was in response to the government telling us that the war was fought so that the Falkland Islanders did not have to live under a regime they did not want. Now this was, to say the least, surprising since under this capitalist system—and most definitely under the Thatcher government—human rights and democratic self-determination were not high priorities. The war cost between £3 million and £5 million a day at 1982 prices and then to fortify the Falklands cost about £300 million and to maintain the base there cost some £120 million a year. Do governments—did the Thatcher government—really spend that kind of money so that a few thousand people in a small and desolate group of islands thousands of miles away can decide who rules over them?
Two days before the invasion a huge demonstration in Buenos Aires was fired on by troops, six protestors were wounded and about 2000 arrested. The prisoners were saved from what might politely be called an uncertain fate when the government released them as a gesture of national unity. A different kind of demonstration was sparked off by the Argentinian landing, as thousands came on to the streets to voice their support of General Galtieri, who assured them that he was ready to accept 40,000 dead as the cost of capturing the Falklands. It is, of course, not unknown for a member of the ruling class to courageously face the prospect of workers being killed to protect their interests. In Galtieri’s case it was even more obvious; he was a general who had never fought in a war.
In Britain, the Thatcher government’s popularity had slumped after the recession in 1981, which was widely considered to be the worst since the war. Serious trouble was in prospect in the coal industry, after the miners had recently been dissuaded from action over pit closures by what amounted to a government subsidy—even if this directly contravened what was supposed to be the government’s most cherished principles. The Falklands dispute was a golden opportunity to divert workers’ attention from such problems; they could forget it all in a great splurge of jingoism about Britain’s rightful place in the world as the defender of human freedoms against a rabble of treacherous South Americans.
Thus it was that the Argentinians invaded and the British, in record time, prepared an expeditionary force to respond. The speed with which troops and materials were assembled and ships were modified to carry them was impressive—particularly at a time when workers were being so forcefully instructed on the need to tighten their belts because essential resources were in short supply. The Uganda was changed from a school educational cruiser into a hospital ship; the Canberra from a luxury liner into a troop transport; the QEII (where the carpets were protected from the working class boots of the Marines who would soon yomp across the Falklands allegedly to save democracy) into a troop ship…
The war illustrated the international scope of capitalism’s deadly trade in armaments, as British forces were attacked with weapons which Argentina had bought from allies of Britain or from Britain itself. Argentinian snipers used American night sights to devastating effect. The infamous Exocet missiles were supplied by a French company (“This is indeed a wonderful victory for French know-how” was how a spokesman for the company which made them greeted the crippling of the British warship Sheffield).
The Argentinian Navy’s Type 42 destroyers were sister ships of British destroyers in action in the war; they had been designed, and one had been built, by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness. When the war began the Argentinian government still owed Williams & Glynn Bank £3.8 million on the deal. The sale had been covered by the British government’s Export Credit Guarantee scheme, which would have paid up if the Argentinians had defaulted. Instead, the Argentinians quietly settled the debt a month after the end of the war. Business, after all, is business—after all the fighting and suffering and killing. Business is business.
And politics is politics. The Falklands war proved to be a vote-winner beyond Thatcher’s wildest dreams. At the general election in 1983 the Tories practically put the Labour Party to the sword. Labour might have complained about the injustice of the vote and the ingratitude of the voters; after all they had supported the war as well. Their leader, Michael Foot (who had recently pleased a party conference by describing himself as “an inveterate peace-monger”), had been among the more vociferous in the demand that the Task Force be despatched, and so the killing begin, with all possible speed.
So everyone was happy, except the families of the dead and those who had to live with their wounds and disfigurements (and who. because they were too disturbing to look upon, were kept out of sight of the subsequent victory parade). It is rather changed now in the Falklands. The islands are no longer in the grip of the Coalite company and some of the economy has been developed. Ten years on the war is being “re-assessed” by military historians and experts. Some are already saying that it was all unnecessary—as if, except to the capitalist social system, there could now be a war which was needed by the human race.
Ivan
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