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I've just watched the repeat of last week's 'Question Time' programme on the BBC Parliament channel, and Margaret Thatcher's arch-enemy Michael Helestine was one of the panellists.

He said something very interesting when asked what Thatcher's biggest u-turn ever was. He said the biggest one of all was over the Falklands conflict in 1982: the Argentinian leader General Galtieri and her had apparently done a deal and there was not going to be any military conflict, but (according to Heseltine) she was ganged-up on by a load of right-wing Conservative MP's who demanded we engage in military conflict with Argentina - and she went along with it.

I had never heard this before, and I can't find much info on the Internet about it. I remember the Falklands War very well, it cost many lives, it was said at the time they could have given each man, woman, and child on the islands ?1 million each and it still would have been cheaper than having the war, and I remember Thatcher's predecessor, the former Labour PM Jim Callaghan, saying years later the war was one of the worst things she ever did and that it was "completely unnecessary".

Does anyone know about the Thatcher/Galtieri 'deal', and who the main people in the Tory party were who ganged-up on her and made her go to war? This has got me intrigued.

This is one view of Heseltine "rewriting history".

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/theto ... ands-.html

Cheers
D

War is always terrible, and in this day and age, to appear to be in favour
of one is a mark of shame.
OK, I am marked thus; the Falklands was/is a British territory and at the
time of the war solely dependant on the UK (this is still largely so). The
islanders remain staunchly pro-British.
The war in an imperial sense was the last roar of the old Lion. We do not
have the naval strength, never mind the RAF and Army, to do something
like this again. We told the Yanks to mind their own business and sent
a battle fleet from the North Atlantic to the deepest South, re-established
British supremacy there and incidentally destroyed a nasty fascist regime
in Argentina as a result.
Men get killed in war. Its a dirty business. But much as I loathe Mrs
Thatcher, I am glad the old Lion let out a last roar before agreeing to be
put down.

I find it difficult to sympathise with her as that war was avoidable and a lot of very good people paid the ultimate price, two of my friends amongst them.
The British Armed Forces showed the rest of the world just how good they were, and still are, at kicking arse. Unfortunately I very much doubt if it would happen again.
I think the Thatcher woman painted herself into a corner and the result was the Falklands war.
Frankthring is spot on that the war returned Argentina to democracy, but listening to what shyte is coming out of there regarding the Islands you'd never think that. Ungrateful bastards is a term that springs to mind.

Interesting comments there. Frank I agree war is hell and I agree it is unlikely we will ever do anything like that again. Rodders, sorry to hear you lost two pals there. I have heard though that a lot of the islanders are grateful - they have 'Margaret Thatcher Day' there once a year and celebrate her, from what I've heard.

I read the link you put up David and reading between the lines Thatcher might be subtely hinting there was some kind of ganging up on her to go to war. She talks in the quote from her book that the islanders did not have any interest in the lease-back option, therefore war was the only way forward and that "The House of Commons too was noisily determined that the islanders' wishes should be respected." Reading between the lines on that one it could be interpretted that some of the 'noise' coming from MP's could have been noise from a certain group of her own MP's rather than just many from the various parties in the House of Commons. I would love to know who pushed hard for this.

Heseltine himself fell out with her in a major way in 1986 over the Westland Helicopters issues, literally walked out of the Cabinet, and said to a journalist in the road "I can no longer serve in this Cabinet and I have resigned". He is then filmed walking down to Whitehall and heading back to his office to (presumably) clear his desk. Him and Thatcher have barely spoken since and he stood against her in 1990 for the leadership. He was also omitted from the guest-list for her 85th birthday party last year that David Cameron threw.

John Major has big problems with the Right of the party in the 1990's and they kept standing candidates against him. He eventually got so fed up with it that he actually resigned himself and then stood again (this was whilst he was still PM). Major's biggest enemy was John Redwood. Thatcher must have had thorne's in her side in the early 80's but I can't think who they were.

turan, Thatcher was certainly very unpopular and her mid-term ratings for that Parliamentary term were so low it was incredible. I know the win of the Falklands War helped her to be re-elected, and it seems certain that's why she had an election after 4 years rather than 5 - which is what happened with the next election, the one after (with Major) and the one after that. I remember the massive 'victory' parade through London of the returning troops and, if I remember correctly, Thatcher even took the salute - something which the Head Of State is meant to do. She cashed in as much as possible and got re-elected in 1983.

I seem to recall seeing film that was quite grim on the news (I had not long started secondary school but I remember it all like it was a couple of years ago) and I remember Colonel H Jones getting killed - he was the most senior soldier to be killed - when he grabbed a machine gun and ran towards some Argies (as the press called them) and engaged in some raw battlefield combat, only to be killed.

I also remember the "Gotcha" headline in The Sun, something that is still mentioned today. That was thought up by the then editor Kelvin McKenzie who later became infamous for The Sun's coverage of the Hillsborough football disaster (you still can't buy The Sun in many shops in Liverpool today because of that) and for hounding an Eastenders actor to his death. Kelvin Mackenzie is a c**t, and is still loathed by many even now. For some reason The Sun have re-employed him as a columnist and he writes a column for them once a week today.

You have to remember that Hezza is an old and bitter man, who never achieved his life's ambition to be PM, and blames Thatcher for it.

In Question Time, he was referring to an abortive attempt in 1980 to reach a lease-back agreement with the Argentines. Nothing came of it, but he has turned it in his mind into a huge U-turn, and implied that Thatcher preferred to fight a war than negotiate. He's entitled to hate Thatcher if he wants to, but now he's twisting history and acting like a real cunt.

max_tranmere wrote:

> Thatcher must have had thorne's in her side in the early 80's but I can't think
> who they were.


Mostly the people she called "the wets". Think of James prior, Francis Pym, Peter Walker, Ken Clarke, Ian Gilmour, Heseltine and John Biffen

Didn't most of 'the wets' get sacked though? That suggests it was her who was calling the shots over them. For some of her party to actually force her to do something suggests those people called the shots over her.

I can think of one time when she did something against her own desires, and that was when we entered the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (the ERM) and it cost us dear a few years later. Nigel Lawson had quit as her Chancellor earlier that year (this was 1989 I think) and John Major was her new Chancellor. He really pushed for this and, fearing that if he quit she would be done-for, she agreed to go in. Kenneth Clarke talked about this on a TV documentary years later. He said "she couldn't lose two Chancellor's - so into the ERM we went..."