THE DATE WAS May 2nd , 1982. The place was the South Atlantic. The British nuclear-powered submarine Conqueror made contact with the Argentinean cruiser General Belgrano, and was ordered to sink it. The Conqueror’s commander, 36 year-old Christopher Wareford-Brown did not hesitate in his duty and fired off his torpedoes. The resultant sinking took the lives of 323 of the Belgrano’s crew.
It was a decision that incensed the Left back home, who had little to cheer about; knowing what the price of victory would mean for getting rid of Thatcher. The likes of Sir Tam Dalyell, and the MoD civil servant Clive Pontin led the charge by suggesting that the General Belgrano was sailing away from the 200 mile exclusion zone created by the British government. This attack was later pursued by a 56- year-old teacher from Cirencester, Diana Gould; who challenged Margaret Thatcher on television over the Belgrano’s headings and accused her of ‘sabotaging any possibility of any peace plan succeeding’. Of course Ms Gould became the martyred saint of the British Left at the time. But Mrs Thatcher’s repost went ignored by the ‘slaying’ of the Iron Lady by a mere teacher.
At the time Mrs Thatcher replied to Ms Gould and the viewers of the exchange thus: “one day, all of the facts, in about 30 years’ time, will be published”. She was referring to the 30 year rule by which the state allows official documents concerning events in the nation’s history to be published.
In 1984 Mrs Thatcher commissioned, Major David Thorpe, a member of a highly-secret signals-intercept unit during the Falklands War, to carry out an investigation into circumstances surrounding Belgrano’s sinking. He was given access to every document relating to the sinking. But the results of his investigation were never published; presumably because of the 30 year rule.
But now 30 years after the event, Major Thorpe has written his own account of the events surrounding the torpedoing of the General Belgrano. Called, The Silent Listener, in his account he concludes that the Belgrano was ordered by Buenos Aires to rendezvous with other Argentinean warships at a location east of the islands, and well inside the Exclusion Zone.
I can guarantee that his account will meet with derision from the Guardianistas who will distrust Major Thorpe’s political pedigree in the light of his secondment by Mrs Thatcher. To these people, his authorship, despite his intelligence role at the time, will be questioned by the croakers on the Left.
COMMANDER CHRISTOPHER WAREFORD-BROWN did his nation a great service. By sinking the Belgrano, he effectively made the Argentinean navy obsolete, as they scrambled back to port in the light of Conqueror’s power.
When we have to go to war, we must do whatever is needed to shorten it in terms of victory. The quicker the victory, the fewer of our people need die. If we fall in anyway short of using all means in our armoury to finish a conflict, then we only prolong the suffering of our military personnel.
The Falklands War was the last conflict we engaged in which allowed us to use whatever means at our disposal to defeat our enemy; and it was all due to Margaret Thatcher and her insistence upon doing what was necessary for victory. She was the last British prime minister to show such spine.
She did what was needed to be done in order to keep our country respected, if not liked, throughout the world. Her legacy to our nation; if the nation chooses to adopt such an inheritance, would be to be ready to act militarily to protect our island nation, including the Falklands.
We are not, thankfully, easy to anger. But when a part of the UK is threatened, then we must be prepared to leap to its defence.
Argentina is once more making noises. The country’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is using the Falklands as a prop for her re-election. She has managed to procure various other South American nation’s support for a maritime blockade of British vessels entering their ports.
The sinking of the Belgrano was followed by the sinking of HMS Sheffield by a French exocet missile. In Buenos Aires the crowds cheered to the heavens their fighter pilot’s efforts to sink as many of our ships as they could; and why not? In a war each side does whatever it is in their capability to do to bring about victory. Yet we quibbled as to the Belgrano’s nautical position at the time of her sinking.
When the Sun ran with the headline Gotcha! after the Belgrano met with its fate, there was an outpouring of disgust and anger from all progressives on the Left. They could not bear the thought of their own country destroying an enemy of their country.
Only we, it seems, care about the direction of an enemy vessel in time of war. It would never have been an issue with the Americans, but a cause for celebration if one of their submarines had destroyed an enemies capital ship.
Can you imagine a badly crippled Bismarck being allowed to limp back to a home port to fight another day? I find it incredible that the sinking was turned into a cause celeb by the croakers; as if some kind of war crime had been committed by Conqueror and her commander.
Even if the Belgrano had been sailing away from the Falklands and to a home port. Those back in the UK who gave Wareford-Brown permission to sink her did the right thing and have no need to question their decision, or feel any kind of remorse, other than the natural sympathy for the Argentinean crew who died.
Indeed, Conqueror could have had a further brace of Argentinean warships that were close by and part of the Belgrano flotilla. But they were allowed to scarper from the scene, leaving those survivors of the action to fend for themselves. If it had been the Atlantic in 1942, we would have followed up by attacking any other enemy vessel in the area.
MARGARET THATCHER went on to win the next election following our removal of the Argentineans from the Falklands. The Left were incandescent with rage. They wanted Thatcher out and fought back; via Diana Gould, Clive Pontin as well as dear old Tam Dalyell, who was later to become an embarrassment to the Labour Party in the MP’s expenses scandal uncovered by the Daily Telegraph.
The Belgrano sinking was, to the Left, the one way they could find to pour misery on Thatcher’s premiership in the hope of ridding the nation of her. They thankfully failed in their rancour and Maggie never lost another election for her party. However, after much Machiavellian manoeuvring by the party’s Left to be rid of the Iron Lady- this unhappy fate was to be experienced by her successor, John Major. But even he managed to win an election over the almost comical Welsh windbag, who was never a serious contender to lead a nation; and helped keep Margaret in power – but he was later rewarded a role as an unelected EU commissioner .
When Argentina overran the Falklands, they thought that the British no longer cared about a couple of thousand of the island’s inhabitants. Britain had been on the economic skids for years at the time of Thatcher’s election, and they believed that the ‘Malvinas’ were now theirs for the tacking. For even under the Thatcher government, a defence review under John Knott, the Secretary of Defence, was underway, and Argentina naturally assumed that the UK had lost all interest in defending the Falklands.
The sinking of the General Belgrano brought home to Argentina the price they would have to pay to gain their sovereignty of the Falklands. Just as our loses in the unfolding drama told us that we must hang on to the isles until its citizens are tempted by Argentina away from our jurisdiction, after which we can talk about relinquishing our sovereignty of the Falklands.
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