The Long View of the Falklands Situation

(Falkland Islands Newsletter, No.14, May 1983)

There is a wide spread impression that Argentina has consistently pressed a claim to the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands ever since 1833, and has never abandoned it.  This is not so.  The dictator General Rosas of what was then the Republic of La Plata - Argentina did not then exist - offered in 1841 to give up any claim Argentina may have had in return for the release of certain debts owed to City of London interests.  The British Government of the day was not interested.  For most of the 19th century the claim was forgotten.  It was revived, almost as an academic exercise, at the beginning of the 20th century and gained some support from Julius Goebbels' book "The Struggle for the Falkland Islands" published in 1927.  The claim to sovereignty as we know it today was promoted by Nazi propagandists among the largely German-trained Argentine army during the 1939-1945 war.

When General Peron came to power in 1946 he adopted the claim, as he frankly admitted at the time, as a means of uniting the diverse races which made up the population of modern Argentina.  It was he who introduced "Malvinas Day" in Argentina, and the teaching of the Argentine version of the history of the dispute in all Argentine schools.  The Peronista party has always considered itself the custodian of the Argentine claim and the "recovery" of the Malvinas has always been in the forefront of Peronista political programmes.

General Peron was prepared to admit privately, in his usual jovial manner, that he personally did not believe that the Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands or the later claim to their Dependencies was well founded.  Nor did he believe that it would ever succeed or that Britain would be prepared to consider ceding the Islands to Argentina.  His whole motive was an internal political one.  Pulling the British lion's tail was fashionable at the time and free of risk.  These are the origins of the events which commenced on the 2nd April 1982.

We in Britain are probably unique in the world in that those of us with intellectual pretensions and many of us without them automatically fell sympathy with the enemy who has attacked us and whom we have been forced to defeat.  It is a likeable characteristic but it can be a source of weakness.  We may well blame ourselves, our diplomats and our politicians for raising in Argentina hopes which could not honourable be satisfied, but we cannot and should not feel any guilt at all about our actions in ejecting the invading forces of a military dictatorship of the most unpleasant kind from British territory and freeing British people from foreign occupation.

Yet the extraordinary thing is that there are many in this country whose voices are now being heard who appear only too eager to surrender to the aggressor a territory and a people which it has cost priceless lives and enormous sums of money to liberate.  

This is not the way to go about it.  The principal that aggression must not succeed or the world will be an unsafe place for all of us to live in is a sound one.  The principle still holds good now that the Islands are free again and their people under the protection of the British Forces.

The Falkland Islands had never been dependent on Argentina for anything until the Communications Agreement of 1971 between Great Britain and Argentina which channelled all their communications through Argentina and made them entirely dependent upon the Argentine Air Force for passenger travel to and from the Islands.

Traditionally the Falkland Islands and the British presence in the Islands had always had the whole hearted support of Chile and Uruguay, both of whom had a long democratic tradition.  Both of them looked to a British Naval presence in the Falkland Islands and the South Atlantic as a counter-balance to the pretensions of their larger neighbour, Argentina, which claimed Chilean and Uruguayan territory on the disputed borders between their countries.  As the Uruguayan representative in the dispute with Argentina about islands in the River Plate is said to have reminded the Argentine representative, Uruguay had a better claim to the "Malvinas" as successor to Spain than had Argentina.  Britain, as the Arbitrator agreed on at the end of the 19th century by Chile and Argentina in frontier disputes between the two countries, became unacceptable to Argentina only in the 1970s when the Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands was developed.  Since then Argentina has rejected two successive awards by international tribunals in favour of Chile.

Argentina was not prepared to accept anything less than outright cession of sovereingty and Argentine military occupation of the Falkland Islands.  Nothing less would have enabled Argentina to dominate the South Atlantic, confine Chile to the Pacific, and claim as her own the whole of British and Chilean Antarctic territory.  It is doubtful however, had Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands and their Dependencies, that the Argentine Military Government would have stopped there.  The British possessions of Gough Island and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic would not doubt have been next.  Where military ambition, fed by success, would have stopped in South America it is difficult to say, but certainly the pressure on Chile and Uruguay at least would have become intense.

Britain is not without friends among Argentina's neighbours.  The way forward both in diplomacy and in defence is to call on those friendships and to recognise that a British garrison must be kept in the Islands unless and until some future Argentine Government comes to its senses.  Every one of Argentina's neighbours has had to stand up to Argentina and resist territorial claims.  On every occasion Argentina has backed down.

Britain, with a tradition of naval supremacy, is unaccustomed to the concept of a garrison as a means of defending an overseas territory against hostile invasion.  Other countries look on coastal defence and a military garrison as both traditional and routine.  The cost of maintaining a garrison in the Islands, when a new airfield has been completed, will not be excessive.  The cost of installing the garrison is giving and will give work exclusively to British companies and is generating and will generate employment in wide sectors of British industry just where it is needed in the interests of the British economy.  The money is not going abroad, it is staying here and benefiting British workers.

Taking the long view, the value to Britain of the Falkland Islands and the Dependencies, both for their own potential wealth and as the justification for British participation in the Antarctic Treaty area as an Antarctic power, is sufficient reason for holding on to the Falkland Islands.  Most of Argentina's neighbours are secretly grateful to us.  If they are confident of our intensions they may well be openly grateful.  Their future peace and security could well be the direct result of the events of 1982.

This article first appeared in the Falkland Islands Newsletter, Edition 14, May 1983.  The Falkland Islands Association is an independent organisation which brings together those who support the continuing freedom of the people of the Falkland Islands.  Its Constitution states that its objectives are to assist the people of the Falkland Islands to decide their own future for themselves without being subjected to pressure direct or indirect from any quarter.  

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