Word: thatcherism
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...dead boys float in the South Atlantic, and there is no doubt on earth what those dark festivals were leading to. Last Monday, after the sinking of the cruiser General Belgrano, British armchair admirals were smugly analytical about the deficiencies of the Argentine forces. One day later Mrs. Thatcher listened ashen-faced in the House of Commons as her Defense Secretary announced the death toll from the destroyer Sheffield. Sobered, the world sat upright. It was precisely because the war had seemed so playful initially that it seemed so dreadful now. If anything, it appeared worse than...
Despite the losses they had sustained, both countries and their leaders seemed as grimly committed as ever to their antagonistic objectives: Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to making some 10,000 Argentine troops leave the Falklands; Argentine President Leopoldo Fortunate Galtieri, to winning acknowledgment of his country's sovereignty over the islands, which Argentines call the Malvinas (after the 18th century colonists who settled there from the French village of St. Malo). The British task was by far the harder one, yet Foreign Secretary Francis Pym sounded as firm as ever when he declared that "we shall...
Wraith flashed the information of the Belgrano's course change to Fleet Commander Woodward, who passed it on to London. Admiral Sir Terence Lewin, chief of the British defense staff, took the news at once to the five-member emergency War Cabinet of Prime Minister Thatcher, which was meeting at 10 Downing Street. Lewin's recommendation was that the Conqueror act to defend the British task force. The War Cabinet agreed, and the order to fire was sent back to Commander Wraith...
...Argentine ship or plane representing a clear threat to the fleet would risk an "appropriate response." The dangers of broadening the war, British officials asserted, had to be measured against the risk of allowing the Belgrano to train its impressive firepower on the British task force. As Prime Minister Thatcher told the House of Commons, "The worry that I live with hourly is that Argentine forces, in attacks both naval and air, will get through to our forces...
...negotiating sands ran out and weather in the South Atlantic worsened, both governments, for different reasons, saw a pressing need for success. Mrs. Thatcher, her position at home strengthened by an improving economic outlook, had gone all out for restored possession of the Falklands as a precondition to any further discussion of sovereignty. General Galtieri, with inflation rising at 147%, the peso at 11,300 to the dollar (official rate) and serious internal discontent, had so far whipped up national sentiment as to have pasted himself into a corner. There were others at hand, quite prepared to oust...