Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T15:25:46.882Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Life and death in the South Atlantic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Alex Danchev
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Hold hard. Ten years on, the second wave is about to break. The ultimate Channel 4 documentary series is already in the can. It seems that the tributary of personal reminiscence from high and low (but chiefly high) has not run dry after all Recollected in tranquillity, it turns turbulent once more—as witness the fascinating collective testimony elicited by Michael Charlton in The Little Platoon (1989), at once pointer and landmark for the new wave. Already we have the Carrington memoirs, the Whitelaw memoirs, and even that most unlikely artefact, the Tebbit memoirs. From Washington come the Haig memoirs and the Weinberger memoirs, not to mention a shoal of smaller fry. Our man in Buenos Aires author of a prophetic complaint about the typical British approach to the Falklands, that is, ‘to have no strategy at all beyond a general Micawberism’ talked at length to Michael Charlton and to Peter Kosminsky (for the excellent Yorkshire TV documentary ‘Falklands—The Untold Story’). Our men in Washington and at the UN, both writers of distinction, have published revealing accounts of their stewardships. These British accounts can now be matched against the waspish reflections of Jeane Kirkpatrick, the dissentient US Representative at the UN, an exercise full of interpersonal and international interest. The generals and admirals of each side continue to be remarkably forthcoming, in one case from prison, in the other from retirement—such are the spoils of war.

Type
Review Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 305 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Charlton, Michael, The Little Platoon (Oxford, 1989Google Scholar), a book based on interviews recorded in late 1985 and early 1986 and originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Cf. the penetrating commentary by Hugo Young, ‘Falklands Retrospect’, London Review of Books, 17 August 1989.

2 Carrington, Lord, Reflect on Things Past (London, 1988Google Scholar); Whitelaw, Lord, The Whitelaw Memoirs (London, 1989Google Scholar); Tebbit, Norman, Upwardly Mobile (London, 1988Google Scholar).

3 Haig, Alexander, Caveat (London, 1984Google Scholar); Weinberger, Caspar, Fighting for Peace (London, 1990Google Scholar). See also Gompert, David, ‘American Diplomacy and the Haig Mission’, in Coll, Alberto R. and Arend, Anthony C. (eds.), The Falklands War (London, 1985Google Scholar); Lehman, John, Command of the Seas (New York, 1988Google Scholar); Woodward, Bob, Veil (New York, 1987Google Scholar) [for William Casey]; and the interviews in Charlton, Little Platoon, ch. 7.

4 Sir Williams, Anthony in Charlton, Little PlatoonGoogle Scholar; and in Bilton, Michael and Kosminsky, Peter, Speaking Out (London, 1989Google Scholar). For the protest, see Williams to Fearn, 2 October 1981, quoted in Cmnd 8787, Falkland Islands Review [the Franks Report] (London, 1983), p. 30.Google Scholar

5 Sir Henderson, Nicholas, ‘America and the Falklands’, The Economist, 12 November 1983Google Scholar; Sir Parsons, Anthony, ‘The Falklands Crisis in the United Nations’, International Affairs, 59 (1983), pp. 169–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also their subsequent reflections, ‘The Washington Embassy’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1 (1990), pp. 40–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The Future of the Falklands’, International Relations, IX (1987), pp. 131–9.Google Scholar

6 Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., ‘My Falklands War and Theirs’, The National Interest, 18 (1989/90), pp. 11–20Google Scholar; excerpted in ‘The Falklands—a War the Americans Lost’ Sunday Times, 17 December 1989.

7 See, for example, Admiral Lewin, Lord, Evidence to House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Third Report, Session 1984–85, Events Surrounding the Weekend of 1–2 May 1982 (London, 1985Google Scholar); General, Major Sir Moore, Jeremy and Admiral, Rear Sir Woodward, John, ‘The Falklands Experience’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, 128 (1983Google Scholar); General, Major Thompson, Julian, No Picnic (London, 1985Google Scholar). Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse, and Middlebrook, amongst others, make extensive use of high-level Argentine military testimony, as does the Channel 4 TV documentary series produced by Hugh Scully.

8 Quoted in Middlebrook, Martin, The Fight for the ‘Malvinas’ (London, 1989), p. 291.Google Scholar

9 Tinker, Hugh (ed.), A Message from the Falklands (London, 1982).Google Scholar

10 Ascherson, Neal, ‘Cain Finds Pity in the Falklands’, Observer, 5 April 1987Google Scholar; Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (London, 1975).Google Scholar

11 Quoted in Middlebrook, , Malvinas, p. 290Google Scholar. I have dealt more fully with Middlebrook's method of military history in the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 68 (1990), pp. 267–9.Google Scholar

12 For contemporary surveys of both sides' first-wave literature, see Ascherson, Neal, ‘By San Carlos Water’, London Review of Books, 18 November–1 December 1982Google Scholar; Collier, Simon, ‘The First Falklands War?’, and Freedman, Lawrence, ‘Bridgehead Revisited’, both in International Affairs, 59 (1983), pp. 459—64 and 445—52CrossRefGoogle Scholar respectively; Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, ‘The Fighting and the Writing’, Times Literary Supplement, 13 May 1983Google Scholar. Cf. the later assessments of Eduardo Crawley, ‘The Paradox Islands’, Times Literary Supplement, 25–31 March 1988; and Freedman, Lawrence, ‘The Literature on the Conflict’, in Britain and the Falklands War (Oxford, 1988), pp. 122–7, or Contemporary Record, 1 (1987), pp. 34–5.Google Scholar

13 See Cardoso, , Secret Plot, pp. 83–6Google Scholar. Cf. Freedman, and Gamba-Stonehouse, , Signals, pp. 94–8.Google Scholar

14 The best case for the prosecution is developed in Gavshon, Arthur and Rice, Desmond, The Sinking of the Belgrano (London, 1984Google Scholar). Jenkins, Simon, ‘The Truth about the Belgrano’, Spectator, 11 June 1983Google Scholar, is a peerless first-wave commentary.

15 See Greig, Peter [a pseudonym], ‘Revelations’, Granta, 15 (1985), pp. 252–61Google Scholar; Norton-Taylor, Richard, The Ponting Affair (London, 1985Google Scholar); Ponting, Clive, The Right to Know (London, 1985Google Scholar).

16 See Danchev, Alex, ‘The Franks Report: A Chronicle of Unripe Time’, in A Matter of Life and Death: International Perspectives on the Falklands Conflict (forthcoming).Google Scholar

17 Notably, ‘The War of the Falkland Islands, 1982’, Foreign Affairs, 61 (1982), pp. 196–210Google Scholar.

18 Dillon, G. M., The Falklands, Politics and War (London, 1989), p. 226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 In addition to the book under review, see Beck's work on this theme in Danchev, Life and Death; and ‘Whose Island Story’, History Today (1989), pp. 8–11.Google Scholar

20 Freedman, Lawrence, ‘intelligence Operations in the Falklands’, Intelligence and National Security, 1 (1986), pp. 309–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. King, David E., ‘intelligence Failures and the Falklands War: A Reassessment’, Intelligence and National Security, 2 (1987), pp. 336–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 [Jenkins, Simon], ‘America's Falklands War’, Economist, 3 March 1984Google Scholar; Hitchens, Christopher, Blood, Class and Nostalgia (London, 1990Google Scholar). Cf. Bluth, Christoph, ‘Anglo-American Relations in the Falklands Conflict’CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in Danchev, Life and Death. See also Zakheim's, Dov S. review of Signals of War in Survival, XXXII (1990), pp. 473–4.Google Scholar

22 Carless, Hugh interviewed by Charlton, , Little Platoon, pp. 60–1. See also Franks Report, paras. 52–7.Google Scholar

23 Franks Report, para. 65.

24 diary, Benn, 15 November 1977, printed in Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest (London, 1990), pp. 248–9.Google Scholar

25 Franks Report, paras. 64–6; Callaghan, James, Time and Chance (London, 1987), p. 375Google Scholar; Charlton, , Little Platoon, p. 65.Google Scholar

26 This analysis is based on private information from a number of those involved. Cf. Hennessy, Peter, ‘Whitehall Watch’, Independent, 8 October 1990.Google Scholar

27 Franks Report, para. 65; Rowlands, Ted, ‘Five Years before the Invasion’, The Times, 15 January 1983.Google Scholar

28 Franks Report, para. 148.

29 Lord Callaghan, letter to the author, 7 June 1990.

30 Interview with Merlyn Rees, 5 February 1990.

31 Healey, Denis, The Time of My Life (London, 1989), p. 494.Google Scholar

32 Owen, David, ‘How Franks Missed the Real Point’, Observer, 23 January 1983Google Scholar. Cf. Interview with Lord Lever, 5 February 1990; Rowlands, , ‘Five Years’.Google Scholar

33 Franks Report, para. 66 and annex A, assertion 5.

34 I have benefited from discussions with Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse on the Argentine evidence. Cf. Charlton, , Little Platoon, p. 116.Google Scholar