Falklands War: Thatcher wobbles, Britain sends mixed messages and Argentine misogyny....what really started it?

Now 57, David still remembers particular moments that punctuate the story of the Falklands, like the moment everything changed from being a bit of an adventure to something deadly serious. David was on HMS Fearless on his way to the islands but even as they headed out, they thought that half way across the ocean, peace would break out and they’d all sail back again. “We were sunbathing, swimming and having a good time,” he says.

But then HMS Sheffield happened. The destroyer was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile early in May 1982 and sunk with the loss of 20 lives. Not only was it the first Royal Navy warship to be lost in combat since the Second World War, it was a signal to the crew of HMS Fearless that this was serious.

“Suddenly there was a change of mood,” says David. “Up to that point, the war had seemed like a bit of a one-way street. But after HMS Sheffield everyone took a collective intake of breath. This is serious.”

There are other moments, 40 years on, that are still vivid in David’s mind, like the first major battle of the war when HMS Fearless was in the thick of the action. And he remembers Fearless taking on board a group of Welsh Guards and one of them swapping David a sweatshirt for a pair of winter socks. “A couple of days later they were targeted by the Argentine Air Force and they lost 50 Welsh Guards. I still think of that guy and wonder if he made it.” Six of David’s crewmates were also killed.

David Cruickshanks in the Falklands

Forty years on from it all, the war that David and his friends fought still has a curious and difficult place in British history. David’s view is that all wars are horrific but that the British were right to fight as a last resort when the Argentines invaded. But for others the war is controversial. Why on earth was Britain fighting to keep a remnant of Empire thousands of miles away? Did Margaret Thatcher encourage it as a way of winning an election? Was the Belgrano sailing away from the Falklands when it was sunk? All of these questions, and more, still linger and the 40th anniversary is a good opportunity to tackle them again.

I raise the questions with the author and Falklands historian Ricky D Phillips at his home in Edinburgh and the first question I ask him is about the origins of the war and why Britain was prepared to fight it. In many ways, the UK didn’t appear to care much about the Falklands – they had been in talks with Argentina for years and had sent out the Cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley to convince the islanders to accept a Hong Kong-style British lease and Argentinian ownership. Ridley told them that if they didn’t accept some kind of deal, the Argentinians would invade and there would be nothing the British could do about it.

However, standing at the back of the room while Ridley was speaking were two Argentinian air force officers who reported back to their government and Phillips believes this may have been one of the triggers for the war. Indeed, he believes Ridley’s comments may have been interpreted by the junta as a secret sign that Britain didn’t care about the Falklands and would do nothing about an invasion.

“You couldn’t have blamed the Argentinians for thinking they were being given a nod and a wink,” he says.

Tony Banks

There were other signs the Argentinians may have interpreted as tacit encouragement for their plans, such as the cuts that Mrs Thatcher was making to the Navy and the shocking state of Britain’s finances. Phillips also thinks Thatcher herself and the fact she was a woman may have been a trigger. When asked if Thatcher would re-take the Falklands, President Galtieri is said to have commented “that woman would never dare” and it’s an interesting thought: could misogyny and underestimating Mrs Thatcher have played a part in leading to the invasion?

Whatever the motivations and causes, the initial stages of the war were tricky, for the soldiers and the politicians. James Garrett, an 18-year-old merchant seaman from Stranraer, remembers the first air attack on his ship, which was loaded with supplies including explosives. “I just thought, if we get hit, we’ll be blown sky high,” he says.

Willie Urban, a Drum Major with the Scots Guards, also remembers his first impression of the islands. “It was wild, rough terrain. We just had to get on with life as best we could.”

As for the politicians, in those first few days, Mrs Thatcher was far from the Iron Lady – in fact, Ricky Phillips’ views is that a more appropriate description would be the Wobbly Lady. “Wobbling wasn’t the half of it,” he says. “The truth is she didn’t know what to do about the Falklands and when Argentina invaded, she looked up feebly and said, ‘But where’s the Ark Royal?’ and she was told it was scrapped in 1979. It wasn’t until her comments about South Georgia – “rejoice at that news” – that you get the first glimpse of the Iron Lady.”

Phillips also rejects the idea that Mrs Thatcher was keen to start a war because of her deep unpopularity with the electorate, although he does accept that the British success in the Falklands boosted her support in the 1983 election. Instead, Phillips says that if we really want to find who took Britain into the war, a better candidate would be the First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach.

“Henry Leach pulled a dodge,” says Phillips. “He waits until there’s no one else around and walks straight into Thatcher’s office and says, ‘I can win this’. She asked why she should do it and he said, ‘because if we don’t, in a few months, we will be living in a totally different world in which Britain’s word counts for nothing’.”

And, of course, in the end Leach was right: Britain did win the war and David Cruickshanks remembers it well. “We walked up the main road into Stanley,” he says, “And these two women ran up to us and hugged us and kissed us. They thanked us for being there and doing what we did. It was just such a lovely outpouring of gratitude. It was very emotional and was just the best feeling.”

Longer term, however, the hidden injuries started to emerge. David, like many of his comrades, has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and has been given help and support by the charity Help For Heroes.

Many of the personnel who served in the Falklands also found the civilian world a pretty harsh place at times. I speak to Tony Banks, the Scottish businessman who founded the Balhousie Care Group and was in 2 Para during the Falklands and he tells me about his struggles.

“When we came back, we didn’t talk about it,” he says. “It’s a soldier thing. It was: what’s the point of trying to tell a civilian what it’s like, they’ll have no idea. So for years, I never talked about it. Then you saw the number of suicides after the Falklands when PTSD was unheard of. I had nights when I thought why did I survive?

“In the 80s, I lost my eldest brother who committed suicide and my other brother was diagnosed with a brain tumour and the following year one of my best mates got killed in the Foreign Legion. There were nights when I was drinking two, three, four bottles of wine because of the guilt. That’s when I realised I was left on the planet and should do something with my life.”

Sir Galahad burns

For Banks, looking back now, the Falklands is a troubling mixture of horrifying negatives and great positives. The greatest negative was definitely seeing people killed – his company, D Company, 2 Para, lost 10 men. He carried the memories of killing people too.

“I’ve got kids and grandkids,” he says, “and I look back and think, yes, that was somebody’s son but it was killed or be killed. It’s the law of the jungle. If you’re weak, they’re going to take you out. But it’s not someone you can be proud of or wear as a badge of honour.”

As for the positives, one of them for Banks, the boy from Dundee, was the connection he felt to the islanders, especially after discovering that many of them had Scottish heritage. You might also think that Banks’ personal history and politics – working class, Catholic, Celtic supporter, Scottish nationalist – might incline him to be suspicious about a British war to defend a distant island but, while he recognises the failures of conflict, he is in no doubt that it was the right thing to do.

“I was a young boy. I was 20,” he says . “I always felt the conflict was a failure of politicians – I believe that British intelligence must have known that Argentina was building up its forces. Could it have been avoided? Should it have been avoided? Of course it should have, there’s no glory in war. It’s death, destruction and war. Forget all the John Wayne stuff – it’s crap. When I saw comrades die and they were 18 or 19 years old, you just look at the waste of life.

“However, the flip side is that I returned to the Falklands about 10 years ago and when you speak to the Falklanders, you get a different perspective and it’s probably a bit like the Ukrainians are feeling now: we don’t know what it feels like to be interned, or have your homes bombed. You think: this is why the Russians are facing such a stiff resistance. For the Ukrainians, it’s their home. War should always be a last resort but my conclusion is that, even now, as a 60-year-old man I would do it again and go back and fight because the Falkland islanders deserved to have their homes back and be liberated regardless of the politics.”

Banks also feels some disappointment that the Falklands War hasn’t been given more recognition. “The achievement was huge,” he says. “It was 8000 miles away and the odds were stacked against us”.

Part of the reason is that, in the public's memory, the war is associated with some notorious controversies – and the biggest of them is undoubtedly the sinking of the Belgrano. In popular imagination, Mrs Thatcher ordered the Argentine ship to be sunk even though it was sailing away from the Falklands but Ricky Phillips says this is not the true picture.

“A few hours before the Belgrano was hit,” he says, “it had received an order to advance and attack and try to sink HMS Hermes. The reason this news didn’t come out at the time is we couldn’t say publicly that we had broken the Argentine codes and secondly we couldn’t say the Americans were helping us because we were sending the messages to the States to be decoded.”

Phillips also says that Belgrano was undoubtedly advancing not retreating. “The Belgrano was zig-zagging,” he says. “Whatever direction she was pointing in at the time, they were advancing.” He also believes that, given the Belgrano’s intentions and capabilities, sinking her was the right thing to do. “It was removing a vital piece from the chess board that allowed us to dictate our terms,” he says. “We were still going for terms at the time.”

Which leaves that final – and perhaps the biggest – question: was the Falklands a “good” war? In popular imagination, wars are divided into bad and good (Second World War = good, First World War = bad) and how you view the Falklands War may depend on how you view British history or Mrs Thatcher. However, as far as Falklands historian Ricky Phillips is concerned, the war was one that had to be fought and was fought well.

“My answer to the question was it a bad war is: at what number of people, at what distance from us are we prepared to stand up for everything we fought for in the Second World War? Remember, it had been less than 40 years since the Second World War. It was so fresh, most people’s fathers and grandfathers had fought in that war. And you cannot put a number or a value on human rights.”

David Cruickshanks agrees with this assessment on the whole but it is those little moments that linger in his mind. He remembers being 17 and being on weekend leave from Faslane and his mum saying when he got home: ‘The Navy are coming to pick you up’.

“I said: ‘The Navy aren’t coming to pick me up, Mum. I’m not James Bond’. But sure enough, in what must have been the only time a Navy Land-Rover arrived in Glenrothes, two guys knocked on my door and took me back to Faslane where I was told I was joining HMS Fearless.”

A few days later, the news came through about the Falklands and someone said ‘whereabouts in Scotland is that?’. Then, on April 6 1982, David and his crewmates left Portsmouth with the crowds cheering. Surreal is the word David uses. He also talks about some of his duties – dropping charges in to the water to scare off Argentinian frogmen for instance – and standing amid the wreckage of their helicopters and rescuing equipment from a wrecked British destroyer. “You could see from the very bowels of the ship, right up to the sky,” he says.

But when you speak to veterans like David, it’s always the friendships and comradeship that matters to them and Ricky Phillips says this is also the key to the success of the British war effort. There was a PR war by both sides – the Argentinians claimed to have sunk HMS Invincible 18 times – and there were controversies about whether we should be fighting at all, but ultimately it came down to the men like David.

“It comes down to the British soldier,” says Phillips, “Guys who are determined to do it and training, training, training. No one who went out there had any idea of losing or throwing the game or anything other than achieving the aim which was complete success and it was done.”

In 74 days from start to finish. Forty years ago.

And in the words of David Cruickhanks, the survivors try to make the best of it.

The First Casualty by Ricky D Phillips is available now. For more information on help and support for veterans, visit helpforheroes.org.uk, combatstress.org.uk and poppyscotland.org.uk