Guilty or Not?

[Tomvart]

The media are reporting today that Lord Carrington, the last serving member of Churchills '50's government, and the foreign secretary during the Falklands conflict has died aged 99.

According to the BBC.....
He resigned as foreign secretary in 1982 after the Falkland Islands were invaded by Argentine forces...........After he resigned, taking responsibility for the failure to predict the Argentine invasion, Mrs Thatcher described his resignation as a "devastating blow for Britain".

Surely it wasn't about him predicting anything? He just needed to listen to his intelligence and act.

Carrington always denied being aware of any prior intelligence of the Argentine Invasion, despite there being documented evidence of repeated warnings given many months in advance from both the Governor - Rex Hunt and my old CO (The captain of HMS Endurance) the late Captain Nick Barker.

Nick Barker had his very promising Naval career destroyed by his attempts at raising awareness of the impending attack, (he was sending repeated signals and letters back to both Whitehall, the FCO and very wide distribution around major RN commands, which he was ordered to stop - he chose to ignore those warnings and by way of punishment, he remained a Captain until retiring, never again holding a front-line seagoing command after the war).

The question I have really is, as the Foreign secretary - how can he not have heard such crucial intelligence, information from several different sources that was fed into numerous government and service organisations?

Nick Barker always told us that the conflict was utterly preventable and need not have happened, had HMG listened to the warnings from the people on the ground given many months before.

Having served under Nick when he was my CO - I can say trusted Nick Barker implicitly, he was universally respected by his crews as a great seaman, an outstanding CO, but more importantly - he was honest, courageous, determined and principled.

I also have a natural mistrust for politicians (across all parties), so my opinion on this is somewhat biased........

I would be very interested to hear what the consensus is on SH?

[BobClay]

It's also worth bearing in mind 'Operation Journeyman' put into effect in 1977 which may well have deterred Argentina from further action at the time.

Surely a study of this event would have been on the agenda of dealing with that country.

[Tomvart]

Good point - as I recall Bob, both Hunt and Barker called for a similar show of force way in advance of the invasion, which as you say may well have deterred the somewhat desperate Galtieri from putting his plans into action.
One would have expected some form of HMG contingency plan that involved public sabre rattling....given the past history of the sovereignty of the islands!
An easy win for HMG I would have thought!

[Dartskipper]

Given that most of the general public seemed to be unaware of the existence of those far off islands, I would be amazed that the FCO actually knew anything about them too. I expect a faceless "Sir Humphrey" wondered what all the fuss was about as he slurped another whisky and dry ginger.

[Tomvart]

Originally Posted by Dartskipper

I would be amazed that the FCO actually knew anything about them too. I expect a faceless "Sir Humphrey" wondered what all the fuss was about as he slurped another whisky and dry ginger.

Roy - Have to say your description of the guilty FCO grandee had me howling with laughter!

Sad thing it - its probably right!

[Ray M]

Seems we all share a common love for politicians, useless bunch of wastes of space that immediately disregard why they were put there in the first place. They remind me of a bunch of kids in the playground filling out expenses sheets in crayon!

[CliveH]

It was a well-known fact that Argentina regarded the Falkland Islands as their territory. It apparently cost £1 million per year to maintain HMS Endurance in the South Atlantic. Margaret Thatcher deemed it to be an unnecessary expense and the ship was ordered back to the UK thus removing any visible British 'presence' in and around those waters. That the Argentine government should therefore attempt to take over the islands was inevitable as we'd given the appearance of abandoning them. So, in order to save £1 million per year how much was spent ……?

[Tomvart]

Another (almost) casualty of the Falklands was the Defence Secretary John Nott.

He was the 'public face' of the 1981 cuts referred to by CliveH, I would have thought that Thatcher was pulling the strings in the background though.

Anyway - that announcement opened the door to the Falklands as far as Galtieri and Co were concerned........in my opinion Carrington just made sure that the door to the Falklands was left well and truly ajar........by doing nothing about the enormous amount of intelligence the FCO received on the Argentinian build up!

I recall seeing Notts ugly 'mug' on TV in 1981 when he announced the huge swathes of proposed defence cuts - the majority of which fell again on the RN. I was alongside in HMNB Chatham (in the frigate HMS Achilles at the time) - I can safely say that every soul on-board that ship (probably the whole Naval base) despised him at that time and the air was 'blue' in our messdeck.

The planned 'Nott' cuts originally included:

Scrapping HMS Endurance,
Reducing Frigate/Destroyer hulls down to 50 (from 60)
Selling or putting into reserve the RN Amphib. HMS Intrepid & Fearless
Selling HMS Invincible with no replacement
HMNB Chatham to be closed
Type 43 and Type 44 destroyer projects cancelled
Sea Dart MkII SAM project cancelled
Reducing RN manpower by 10,000

No wonder the Argentinians were encouraged!

I think he actually resigned after the Argies invaded - but 'the milk snatcher' was having non of it - and made him stay on, I think he went quietly after the conflict to be replaced by 'Tarzan' Heseltine.

Delighted to see that he was knighted for helping to get so many British and Argentinian servicemen killed in the conflict.

[King Ratt]

I was in RFA Grey Rover in Gibraltar April 82. A big Naval exercise had been completed (Springtrain I think) and Gib was full of warships. Redundancy signals were coming in over the broadcast and around the same time the I9F signals were appearing too. I9F was the indicator code for Falkland Island ops. Many of the ships left and headed South, we refuelled a few and headed North for refit.
The warning signs were there and should have been heeded swifter. The rest is history.

[James_C]

On the flip side, if you take a devils advocate viewpoint of the event and it's repercussions, the Falklands War was quite possibly one of the best things to happen to the RN.

I say that with regard to improvements in onboard procedures and equipment as a result of lessons learnt the hard way, not to forget the consequential retention of certain ships and capabilities which would have otherwise been lost forever if Nott's defence plans had been fully implemented had there been no war.

[Farmer John]

I know very clearly what I was doing at around the times of this war, I was having a big career change. It struck me very forcibly at the time that from a year or more from the start of the whole thing, fashions and types of all sorts of goods took a very warlike look, BEFORE anything happened. We were in a very martial mood in a peripheral way. This is not 20/20 hind sight, it was brewing long before The Malvinas thing. We were looking for a fight, when we got it it did that Old Trout Thatcher immense good.

So many wars are really about playground scraps. I am reading about Younghusband's trip to Lhasa, at the moment he is assailed and besieged miles away from anywhere in a foul place in shocking weather with short rations and 1 thousand Russians about 10 miles away (but causing no problems). What he is wrestling with is one of his officer's expenses, he travelled out on a ship and is entitled to wine and sustenance but had not obtained a signed chit from the Ship's Captain listing the dates he was eating and drinking, so Francis has had to write and explain that it was under unusual circumstances. I can imagine the correspondance. I believe Wellington wrote that he could win the Peninsular Campaigns or fill in the paper work associated but not both.

None of this helps when you lose a husband, son, father. The Falklands has always been about off shore rights to extract oil etc.

[Tomvart]

A very fair point Jim, I suppose war is a good thing to improve service budgets - and the lessons learnt meant vast improvements all round, its just a shame it was caused by poorly thought out defence cuts and an incompetent FCO.

I suppose I find myself particularly annoyed that politicians like Nott are rewarded (with a knighthood in this case), whilst outstanding leaders of men such as Nick Barker (HMS Endurance)- who stuck his neck out through loyalty and a sense of duty, making lots of noise about the build up, handling his ship with skill and bravery, first in and last out of all of the Task force ships, and he essentially had his career finished by the very politicians he was working for.

[James_C]

Tom,
The sad thing is I have no doubt whatsoever that the same thing can and will happen again, and the Nick Barker's of this world will still suffer the same ignominy.

[tugger]

As with all politicians M Thatcher needed something to retain office, if the FO didn't know what was about to happen they should have asked the paper boy.
Tugger