Read an Excerpt
Battle Story: Goose Green 1982
By Gregory Fremont-Barnes The History Press
Copyright © 2013 The History Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9256-8
CHAPTER 1
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: WHAT WERE THEY FIGHTING FOR?
The Falkland Islands are situated deep in the South Atlantic, 13,000km from Britain and approximately 650km from Argentina. In 1982 the islands were – and continue to be – the subject of a territorial dispute between the two countries. The dispute formally dates from 1833, but rests on a complex chain of events which preceded that year. In 1540, the islands appear to have formed a refuge for several months for the crew of a Spanish ship that survived a violent gale in the Straits of Magellan. The crew made no claim on behalf of Spain and did not leave a settlement behind. Half a century later, in 1592, the islands may have been sighted by the British vessel Desire, but there is no solid evidence of the authenticity of this claim and no landing appears to have been made at the time. A Dutch ship is confirmed to have sighted outlying islands of the Falklands two years later, but again, no settlers remained behind to establish a claim. The first confirmed British connection took place in 1690, when Captain (Capt.) John Strong, sailing the Welfare out of Plymouth, sighted land and sailed along the passage between the two main islands, naming this body of water Falkland Sound, in honour of Viscount Falkland, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Yet again, no one remained behind, leaving the place for the use of French seal-hunters, who from 1698 regularly landed there and named the islands Les Iles Malouines in honour of St Malo, their home port in Brittany. The Spanish subsequently altered the name to Las Malvinas, the title since adopted by the Argentines.
Actual settlement of the islands dates from 1764, when the French established a presence on Port Louis, East Falkland in an effort to colonise the islands as a whole. The following year Capt. John Byron, on behalf of the British government, landed on West Falkland at a place he dubbed Port Egmont, 130km (80 miles) from the French settlement, proclaiming both islands and the many hundreds of smaller ones around them on behalf of his sovereign – although he left behind no one to furnish substance to his claim. In 1766, another British captain landed a hundred settlers at Port Egmont, almost certainly unaware of the existence of the French settlement at Port Louis, although a short time later a British ship encountered the post and informed the inhabitants of their rival claim. Events became more complex the following year when, upon becoming aware of the existence of Port Louis, the Spanish disputed the French right to occupy what Madrid regarded as its territory. They did so on the grounds that the islands formed an offshore dependency of its mainland colony, the Royalty of La Plata, which included all of modern-day Argentina and considerably more territory besides. The French agreed to evacuate the islands in return for financial compensation, so enabling the Spanish to replace the garrison with one of their own, together with a governor at Puerto Soledad, their new name for Port Louis.
Two years later, in 1769, a Spanish ship sighted Port Egmont while sailing in Falkland Sound, in consequence of which six Spanish ships carrying 1,400 troops arrived at this tiny post the following year and forced the British to evacuate it. In 1771, after threatening to send a naval expedition to retake their post and establish their claim over the islands by force, the British obtained Spain's acquiescence in restoring Port Egmont, but Madrid insisted that, in doing so, it did not relinquish its overall sovereignty of the islands. Owing to the excessive expense of maintaining its presence at so great a distance, the British removed their settlement from Port Egmont in 1774, leaving behind a plaque laying claim to the whole of the Falkland Islands.
Meanwhile, at Puerto Soledad on East Falkland, a succession of Spanish governors served at their respective posts down to 1811, in which year, owing to the end of Spanish rule over La Plata, the Spanish settlements withdrew, leaving the islands unoccupied until 1826. In the meantime, however, Argentina had emerged as an independent state in 1816 and, as a result of its perceived inheritance of Spain's former territories, claimed the Falklands at least as early as 1820, when a ship arrived. They did not, however, establish a permanent settlement. This soon changed when, in 1826, the Argentines established a settlement at Puerto Soledad, posting Louis Vernet as governor. London sent its protests to Buenos Aires but took no military action. Five years later, the American government sent the warship Lexington, under Capt. Silas Duncan, to remove Vernet on grounds that the Argentines had employed force in denying American sealers access to the islands. The American government made no claim and, in 1832, Argentina dispatched a new governor, Major (Maj.) Mestivier, to the islands. Unrest amongst his men arose, however, and in the process of their mutiny the men murdered Mestivier. In 1833 Buenos Aires sent another governor to restore order, but during the course of his efforts to do so, Capt. John Onslow of HMS Clio arrived with a small force that evicted the Argentines, raised the Union flag and proclaimed the islands for King William IV. From this point on British settlers arrived, establishing themselves mainly at Stanley harbour, and inaugurating a period of sovereignty which remained disputed but physically unopposed until the Argentine invasion of 2 April 1982.
Since 1833 Argentina's claim has rested – and continues to rest – on the basis that upon independence from Spain, Argentina could rightfully claim her former territories, including Las Malvinas (the Falkland Islands). The foundation for such a claim has its regional precedents, too. Chile controls the Juan Fernández Islands, which lie 650km (400 miles) offshore – not to mention Easter Island, which is situated 3,200km west, deep in the Pacific. Ecuador, another former Spanish colony, administers the Galapagos Islands, more than 1,000km away, and Brazil rules Trinidade Island, also over 1,000km offshore. The Argentines contend that the British used force to evict their governor in 1833 and then introduced settlers to confirm an illegal transfer of power. The fact that the British had controlled a small post on West Falkland, Argentina deemed irrelevant, as Port Egmont survived a mere five years, the British abandoning it decades before the Argentines began their own settlement of the islands in 1826, which itself came closely on the heels of a continuous period of Spanish control stretching from 1767 to 1811.
The British, for their part, assert that the arguments underpinning their claim to the islands hold greater merit, on the basis that Argentine control of the Falklands remained tenuous during the seven-year period preceding British arrival. Above all, they assert that since 1833 Britain has maintained a continuous, stable presence, with its inhabitants almost wholly of British descent, in many cases tracing their predecessors' residence back five or more generations. From the British perspective, the principle of settling a claim of sovereignty stretching back more than a century and a half makes little sense in light of the fact that, if the same principle were applied across the world, virtually no nation would stand immune from territorial adjustment, sometimes radically so.
The problem, at length, rests with the definition of sovereignty. Argentina possesses a de jure claim to this principle dating back a considerable period, whereas Britain's de facto position of sovereignty lends a degree of credibility to her case. Nor does the complexity of the issue stop there, for the Falklands include the dependencies of South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and, significantly, all modern British governors based at Stanley have been invested with authority over the British Antarctic Territory as well. South Georgia is 3,750 square km of glacier and mountain, which lies 2,000km from the South American mainland. Although a seemingly worthless piece of territory, it was important for whalers for generations and has been the site of a British scientific research station since 1909. Moreover, Argentina's claim only dates from 1927. The South Sandwich Islands lie 750km south-east of South Georgia and consist of a chain of volcanic islands measuring 240km long, discovered by Captain Cook in 1775 during his voyage en route to the Pacific. Conditions amongst these very isolated islands are Antarctic; characterised by permanent ice and strong, freezing winds. They are uninhabited and, perhaps as important, uninhabitable. Apart from Argentina's unauthorised establishment of a 'scientific' base on Cook Island from 1964 to 1982, the islands have never been occupied. Finally, control of at least a portion of Antarctica rounds off the whole, complicated issue of sovereignty across a large swathe of the South Atlantic. While various nations with interests in Antarctica, including Argentina, Britain and Chile (all of whom dispute the same area of that frozen continent) have by international agreement dating from 1961 consented to hold their territorial claims in abeyance, the fact remains that a British scientific presence has existed for decades and successive British governments have refused to establish any precedent whereby recognition of Argentine claims to the Falklands can be construed to extend to the British Antarctic Territory.
Argentina's claim over the Falkland Island dependencies led, in 1947, to Britain putting its case before the International Court of Justice at The Hague, but Argentina refused this arbitration. When Britain unilaterally submitted its case in 1955, the court agreed to consider the dispute, but when Argentina announced its refusal to comply with any decision reached, officials closed proceedings the following year. In 1960, however, Argentina believed it had a strong case on the basis of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly's new policy designed to encourage self-determination; specifically, to render independent the numerous colonies, particularly those in Africa, still under white rule. Yet the Falklands stood in a unique position, for the UN declaration did not take into account – much to Argentina's dismay – the peculiar situation of the Islanders, who were themselves white, maintained a democratically elected local government in Stanley, and wished to maintain their colonial relationship with Britain. In short, the wording of the new UN declaration, while applicable across much of the world, did not meet the criteria of a largely self-governing people who desired to preserve their connection with its mother country. 'All peoples,' the document read,
... have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development ... Immediate steps shall be taken, in trust and non-self-government territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories, without any conditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire, without any distinction as to race, creed or color, in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.
The dilemma created by this statement left the UN only able to issue a vaguely worded resolution in 1965, which invited the British and Argentine governments to open negotiations based on the aspirations stated in the declaration, in order to find a peaceful solution to the dispute. Apart from a few abstentions, including Britain's, ninety-four nations in the General Assembly voted in favour of the resolution, but its wording was sufficiently unclear on the principle of sovereignty as to leave Argentina frustrated that her claim over the Falkland Islands remained tenuous. In such peculiar circumstances, the principle of self-determination – whether or not in tandem with sovereignty, however defined – operated effectively and to the satisfaction of those who wished to retain their connection with the mother country.
Talks nonetheless began in 1966, but with no result. Even if successive British governments wanted to separate the link with the Falklands owing to the damage the issue was causing for trade and diplomatic relations across South America (and evidence of this emerged all the way up to 1982), the fact remained that they could not do so as long as the islanders themselves expressed a desire to remain a UK Overseas Territory; that is to say, effectively self-governing except insofar as its trade, defence and foreign relations were concerned. Besides, notwithstanding the disadvantages arising out of the dispute, Britain continued to maintain an interest in the South Atlantic quite apart from the Falklands themselves, long before engineers discovered large oil reserves beneath the sea floor – reserves which still remain unexploited. Moreover, no joint control proved feasible since neither the islanders nor the Argentines were prepared to reach a compromise. Appeals to the wider world from Buenos Aires counted for little, since most people could appreciate that exchanging Argentine for British sovereignty would merely result in the deeply unpopular control of one group over another – in precise contradiction to the UN 'Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples' of 1960. Besides, so long as open hostilities did not occur – especially those which might potentially involve repercussions elsewhere – the dispute remained practically unrecognised by everyone except the parties immediately concerned. Talks between London and Buenos Aires concluded only two months before the Argentine invasion in April 1982, with no progress.
If in international law nations increasingly gave credence to the principle of self-determination over sovereignty, then the arguments seemed, by 1982, to be favouring Britain. However, the Thatcher government did little to develop an impression in the minds of Argentine military and political leaders that Britain stood determined to hold on to the Falklands, irrespective of Argentine demands. Not only did the British government do little to bolster its claim with a clear policy, a number of circumstances in fact probably went far in persuading the Argentines that Britain was gradually withdrawing its interests in the South Atlantic, thus inadvertently encouraging Buenos Aires to cease its hitherto frustrated diplomatic initiatives and choose a military option. Since the 1950s, for instance, the British garrison in the Falklands consisted of one naval party, which in 1982 totalled a mere forty-two Royal Marines, plus the ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance, the only ship the Royal Navy regularly deployed in South Atlantic waters. Neither the British Army nor the Royal Air Force possessed any assets in the area, and the closest British forces beyond the Falklands garrison were stationed in Belize, the former colony of British Honduras, almost 8,000km (5,000 miles) away. The Argentines occasionally made naval demonstrations in the area, prompting the government of James Callaghan in 1977 to dispatch a submarine and a few surface vessels, but these maintained a distant station, undetected by the Argentines, and no substantial naval presence remained to monitor Argentine activity.
Under Margaret Thatcher's premiership, further signs developed which, quite erroneously, indicated to Argentina that Britain would not resist armed intervention. When, in 1981, the helicopter aboard Endurance sighted the Argentine base in the South Sandwich Islands and recognised that the size of the buildings exceeded the needs of the scientific community, which Buenos Aires insisted composed its only occupants, London rejected the captain's request to evict them. In the same year, when the British scientific station on South Georgia moved to a more modest building for the sake of cost-effective maintenance, the Argentines wrongly assumed this represented a greatly diminished financial investment in the area. When the British government postponed construction of new barracks for the Royal Marines' garrison on the Falklands, again the Argentines interpreted this as a sign of Whitehall's growing indifference to future British sovereignty over the region. Much more critically – and the significance of two further factors cannot be underestimated – the 1981 UK Defence Review under John Nott reached the conclusion that, rather than replace the veteran Endurance, she should be decommissioned after completing her tour of duty, leaving no Royal Naval presence in South Atlantic waters at all. Further, in the same year, by a single vote the House of Lords refused to grant full rights of residence to Falkland Islanders – a privileged status already extended to residents of Gibraltar. Unsurprisingly, Buenos Aires attached much significance to these developments, a circumstance that was reinforced when, at the failed UN talks in February 1982, only two months before the invasion, the British delegation issued no firm statement declaring the Thatcher government's resolve to oppose any aggressive moves by Argentina to enforce her claim over the islands.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Battle Story: Goose Green 1982 by Gregory Fremont-Barnes. Copyright © 2013 The History Press. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
