30 Years After

Issues and Representations of the Falklands War

Carine Berbéri, Monia O'Brien Castro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317189039
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du 20ème siècle

Thirty years after the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, the war remains a source of continued debate and analysis for politicians, historians and military strategists. Not only did the conflict provide a fascinating example of modern expeditionary warfare, but it also brought to the fore numerous questions regarding international law, sovereignty, the inheritance of colonialism, the influence of history on national policy and the use of military force for domestic political uses. As the essays in this collection show, the numerous facets of the Falklands War remain current today and have ramifications far beyond the South Atlantic. Covering issues ranging from military strategy to Anglo-American relations, international reactions and international law to media coverage, the volume provides an important overview of some of the complex issues involved, and offers a better understanding of this conflict and of the tensions which still exist today between London and Buenos Aires. Of interest to scholars of history, politics, international relations and defence studies, the volume provides a timely and forthright examination of a short but bloody episode of a kind that is likely to be seen with increasing frequency, as nations lay competing claims to disputed territories around the globe.

PART I
Representations

Chapter 1
The Falklands Conflict: Media Coverage, Propaganda, Jingoism or Journalism?

Matthew Leggett

Introduction

On 2 April 1982, Argentine armed forces invaded the Falkland Islands, sparking off an armed conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom. This bellicose act on the part of the military junta in Buenos Aires also triggered off a series of conflicts on other levels, namely, political, media-based and jingoistic: the Thatcher government almost declared war on the BBC over its coverage of hostilities; the British daily tabloid newspaper the Sun launched a quasi military campaign against all those who, in its opinion, did not support the national cause in the South Atlantic. In this study, I will examine the sometimes violent exchanges that took place between different actors. To do so, I will refer to written documents, including political memoirs, press articles and historical studies, along with video and audio documents, notably television news footage and documentaries, in order to understand to what extent this conflict was transformed into a propaganda war.

History

Without going into too much historical detail about the Argentine occupation of the islands, it is important to note that a diplomatic disagreement between the two countries over the ownership of the Falklands dates back over two centuries. For the British, the question of national sovereignty had always been a clear one; the Falklands belong to the British crown. From the point of view of Buenos Aires, however, Les Malvinas, to use their Spanish name, are an integral part of the Republic of Argentina. Following several decades of fruitless negotiations between the two sides in the post-World War II period, the military junta led by General Galtieri decided to send thousands of troops to the islands to take control of them. The Thatcher government immediately referred the matter to the United Nations claiming that sovereign British territory had been violated and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all Argentine forces from the islands. The UN passed a motion calling on both sides to enter into talks in order to resolve the issue as peacefully and rapidly as possible. While accepting this motion the British government assembled and dispatched the ‘task force’ to the South Atlantic. This task force was made up of a fleet of Royal Navy ships and merchant and passenger ships commissioned for the task of transporting military personnel and equipment to the islands, in case the talks broke down. The Reagan administration in Washington set about trying to set up talks between the two countries’ governments, mainly in the form of shuttle diplomacy. This all proved to be of no avail, as military conflict began within the next few weeks.

Britain v. Argentina or Them and Us?

While the two opposing armies were beginning to engage in military actions, a second front, one based on news and (mis)information in the media broke out. Fiercely determined to maintain its reputation for independence and objectivity, the BBC, the British public broadcaster, chose to allow the same airspace to its news reporters on board the task force ships, as to its correspondents in Buenos Aires and its crews in its London studios. All were given the same instructions, namely to present events in the most neutral and balanced way possible. Thus, for example, the BBC showed images of British and Argentinean families mourning their dead. On another occasion, it broadcast extracts of an interview with Margaret Thatcher followed by one with General Galtieri. At the same time, BBC journalists both on radio and television made a point of referring to the troops fighting in the Falklands as either ‘British troops’ or ‘Argentinean troops’. This choice was not at all to the liking of the members of the so-called ‘war cabinet’, the select Cabinet committee in charge of military operations, who would have preferred such terms as ‘our troops’ and ‘enemy troops’. This was especially true of the Prime Minister herself.

The popular press had already launched its own offensive on this front, adopting the same style of American wartime terminology such as ‘our boys’ as soon as the ‘task force’ was dispatched (Milne, 1988, p. 89). As they and the government continued to make clear their position on this point to the BBC, the Corporation’s Editor of News and Current Affairs on radio, John Wilson, sent a memo to all staff indicating the BBC’s policy on this matter:

Not Our Troops: We should try to avoid using ‘our’ when we mean ‘British’. When we say ‘our troops’, ‘our ambassador’ or ‘our ships’ we sound to some people as though we are a mouthpiece of Government. We are not Britain, we are the BBC; so ‘our’ should be reserved for ‘our correspondent’ and ‘our reporter’. No listener should be in any doubt that when we refer to ‘our man in Buenos Aires’ we are talking about a BBC correspondent and not a British official. (Milne, 1988, p. 89)

In their book, The Fog of War, Derrick Murcer, Geoff Mungham and Kevin Williams examine the relations between government and media at times of war. They devote a lot of space and time to the Falklands conflict, and at one stage quote a serviceman aboard a task force ship bound for the South Atlantic to illustrate how attitudes on this point changed as the conflict went on: ‘One army CO noticed how the journalists began by saying “British” and “Argentines”, yet ended up saying “us” and “them”’ (Mercer, Mungham and Williams, 1987, p. 111).

Following the broadcast of the BBC’s flagship news magazine, Newsnight, on 2 May, Jack Page, the Conservative MP for Harrow, a staunch supporter of the British cause in the South Atlantic, accused the programme’s presenter, Peter Snow, of being ‘almost treasonable’. In fact, Snow had questioned on air the veracity of a claim made by the Argentine media that the British naval vessel HMS Hermes had been seriously damaged as a result of an Argentine air-strike. He referred to the testimony of the BBC correspondent, Brian Hanrahan, on board Hermes, who denied these claims categorically. This was unlikely to upset anyone in the government, but what Snow went on to say immediately after, was the cause of Page’s outburst:

There is a stage in the coverage of any conflict where you can begin to discern the level of accuracy of the claims and counter-claims of either side. Tonight, after two days, it must be said that we cannot demonstrate that the British have lied to us so far, whereas the Argentines clearly have … Until the British are either seen to be deceiving us or concealing losses from us, we can only tend to give a lot more credence to the British version of events … So what now? If we believe the British, and I have already pointed out we have good reason to, the Argentines have lost more than 3 of their 46 interceptors …. (Newsnight, 1982)

This statement caused outrage in government and Conservative Party circles and four days later, during Prime Minister’s questions, John Page asked the Premier her view on the media coverage that the conflict was being given:

[will] my right hon. Friend … try to find a few moments to listen to the radio and watch television, and judge for herself whether she feels that the British case on the Falkland Islands is being presented in a way that is likely to give due confidence to our friends overseas and support and encouragement to our Service men and their devoted families? (Hansard, 1982, cols. 278–82)

In response, Mrs Thatcher denounced this coverage in no uncertain terms, but did not mention the public broadcaster by name:

Judging by many of the comments that I have heard from those who watch and listen more than I do, many people are very concerned indeed that the case for our British forces is not being put over fully and effectively. I understand that there are times when it seems that we and the Argentines are being treated almost as equals and almost on a neutral basis. I understand that there are occasions when some commentators will say that the Argentines did something and then ‘the British’ did something. I can only say that if this is so it gives offence and causes great emotion among many people. (Hansard, 1982, cols. 278–82)

Several years later, Margaret Thatcher wrote her memoirs covering her time as premier under the title The Downing Street Years. In this account she confirms the attitude expressed above, again without naming expressly the BBC, describing how she ‘became very unhappy at the attempted “even-handedness” of some of the comment, and the chilling use of the third person – talk of the “British” and the “Argentineans” on our news programmes’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 181). In its own inimitable style the tabloid the Sun fired a major broadside against the BBC and Snow in particular, making the following accusation ‘There are traitors in our midst’ (Milne, 1988, p. 90). The tit for tat between the corporation and the government did not finish there, as later on the same day as Mrs Thatcher launched her attack in the House of Commons, George Howard, the BBC Chairman defended the corporation’s reputation and commitment to veracity: ‘The Corporation is not, and could not be, neutral as between our own country and the aggressor. Coupled with that is a determination that in war, truth shall not be the first casualty. Our reporters are believed around the world precisely because of our reputation for telling the truth’ (Harris, 1983, p. 75).

When the BBC showed footage of British troops being buried along with pictures of the funerals of Argentine military personal, Robert Adley MP for Christchurch and Lymington repeated this charge, describing the public broadcaster as ‘General Galtieri’s fifth column in Britain’ (Milne, 1988, p. 90). Several members of the war cabinet clearly shared Adley’s views on the BBC, one member openly declaring: ‘I was absolutely disgusted with the BBC. Oh God, yes, we all were – from Mrs T down.’ One of his fellow war cabinet members went even further in his denunciation of the BBC saying: ‘At the war cabinet there was a general hate of the BBC whom we reckoned to be biased and pro-ITN whom we reckoned were doing much better.’ At the same time, another minister said: ‘well, you know we give all this information to the bloody BBC and what do they do with it. We don’t help ITN enough and we ought to help ITN more’ (Mercer, Mung and Williams, 1987, p. 134).

The Tabloid War

Alongside its staunch support for the government and British military engagement in the South Atlantic, the Sun decried what it saw as the cowardice and treachery of the two daily national titles that opposed Britain’s military engagement in the South Atlantic, the Daily Mirror and the Guardian. It charged its arch rival the Daily Mirror with ‘treason’ qualifying it as ‘this timorous whining paper’, while the Guardian was reduced to the epithet ‘the pygmy Guardian’. The Mirror reposted with the belligerent headline ‘the Harlot of Fleet Street’, referring of course to the Sun, and in its editorial remarked that ‘the Sun today is to journalism what Dr. Joseph Goebbels was to truth’ (Greenslade, 2002). It went on to add that the Sun was ‘coarse and demented’ and should be made to carry an official Government announcement on each copy with the phrase: ‘Warning: reading this newspaper may damage your mind’ (Greenslade, 2002).

As I have shown, the Sun nailed its colours to the government’s mask early on. Indeed, long before British ships had even reached the South Atlantic, the Sun rejected the UN call for a diplomatic compromise in its inimitable style with the following headline: ‘STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA’.¹ In so doing, it was both insulting the Galtieri regime, and firmly backing British military intervention. Once hostilities began, the tabloid expressed its jingoist backing for the task force on a front page consisting of a British soldier’s confident, smiling face superimposed onto a Union flag under the inimical headline ‘SUPPORT OUR BOYS AND PUT THIS FLAG IN YOUR WINDOW.’

The Sun went even further on 3 May, printing what was to prove to be one of the most emblematic headlines in the history of popular British journalism and jingoism in the twentieth century. The Thatcher government had declared that an exclusion zone would be set up around the Falkland Islands, which no enemy sea or air vessel should violate, for fear of immediate military reprisal. This zone extended for 200 miles around the Islands and was patrolled daily by Royal Air Force and Royal Navy planes and ships. On 2 May, the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed and sunk by the British nuclear submarine, HMS Conqueror as it was making its way towards the Argentinean coast, moving away from the Falklands. The next morning in its first edition, the Sun carried the headline ‘GOTCHA!’ alongside the sub-heading ‘Our lads sink gunboat and hole cruiser.’ Once again, one can note the use of the now clichéd and controversial epithet ‘our lads’. According to Roy Greenslade, journalist at the Sun at the time, the newspaper’s editor Kelvin MacKenzie had had second thoughts about going with such an aggressive headline, but he was overruled by the daily title’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, who happened to be visiting the paper’s offices at that very moment and who thought that this headline would catch the national mood (Greenslade, 2002). When, later that day, the heavy casualty list was revealed, MacKenzie had the original headline replaced by a more moderate version for the later editions ‘DID 1,200 ARGIES DROWN?’² However, despite the questionable taste of this second more moderate heading, the initial impact of the ‘GOTCHA’ headline stuck in the public collective memory of the conflict and was one of the major factors that guaranteed that the Sun won the populist patriotic war that it waged with its rivals, notably the Daily Mirror.

Indeed, a further Sun front page hit the headlines, incorporating a prize offered to its readers if they took part in what was, at the time, a popular sort of game proposed by tabloid titles. In this case the front page featured a headline that quite simply called on all British troops and patriots to ‘KILL ALL ARGIES’, alongside a blown up photo of General Galtieri, and the sub-heading ‘KILL AN ARGIE – And win a Metro.’³

This in fact turned out be a hoax organized by the satirical magazine Private Eye designed to highlight the extremes to which the popular press, especially the Sun, was prepared to go to in order to state its patriotism. The extent to which people’s view of the conflict, or at least tabloid coverage of it, was underlined by the different reactions to this hoax. In their book tracing the career of Kelvin MacKenzie as editor of the Sun, Stick It Up Your Punter, Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie describe the effect it had on MacKenzie himself: ‘When MacKenzie saw it pinned up on the office wall, he was lost in admiration. “Fucking brilliant!”, he smiled rapturously. Why couldn’t we have thought of that, eh?’ (MacQueen, 2011, p. 27).

However, apparently many people were taken in by the hoax page, especially among those on board HMS Invincible as it steamed towards the South Atlantic: ‘Many of the sailors on the ship genuinely believed that the front page was part of a genuine copy of the Sun’ (MacQueen, 2011, p. 27).

Conclusion

Ever since the Second World War, successive British governments have clashed with the BBC over its staunch defence of its editorial independence. Indeed, several Prime Ministers before Margaret Thatcher have criticized the attitude and objectivity of the public broadcaster in times of peace and war alike, especially Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Wilson, and more recently Tony Blair. However, the absolute hatred expressed by some ministers towards the BBC in 1982 goes far beyond anything witnessed before or since. Like any government in time of war, the Thatcher government sought public support for its armed fo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Representations
• Part II The Conflict and its Long-Term Effects
• Part III Defence Issues
• Part IV Global Issues
• Conclusion
• Index