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This is Paul Cardin’s 40th anniversary of the Falklands Conflict, a newsletter about a forthcoming, soon-to-be-published printed book / eBook which will be available on Amazon.
See Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, and UK bookshops.
2022 is the 40th anniversary of the Falklands Conflict.
Here, an Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in early April 1982, was followed by 74 days of hostilities and an eventual British victory. It was also known as the Falklands War, although no war was ever declared by Britain or Argentina.
Author Paul Cardin, who was always politically aware, served in the Royal Navy and is a veteran of this conflict. Aged just 22 at the time, his ship HMS Yarmouth found itself anchored in San Carlos bay (Bomb Alley) for a fortnight and here he saw ships being bombed and sunk, and his mates being injured and killed.
As a Leading Radio Operator, Paul saw all the messages that were being passed between ships and CincFleet HQ in Northwood, UK, and was ideally placed to know what was going on as the events unfolded around him. Although this book contains a diary – including a daily timeline of events, written on location – it’s very different from the usual military memoir. It has the feel of documentary journalism and is written from a dedicated, enquiring perspective.
The Falkland Islands are very distant, were not well known to UK citizens in 1982, and were therefore of uncertain or even limited value. At the time, some serious questions were forming in Paul’s mind about the circumstances of the invasion, the lightning-fast creation of a huge task force, and what exactly could have been going on behind the scenes to pressurise Margaret Thatcher into organising such a powerful military response so quickly.
This book is not one of those ‘Here I am, pull up a chair, and here’s a long list of what I did during the war’ offerings. Instead, it poses a number of serious, probing questions from a neutral perspective, aimed at highlighting what may have been under discussion in Whitehall and Buenos Aires in the lead up to the invasion, in the immediate aftermath and what decisions were being made and why in the action areas around the islands.
1. Why was it never reported by the BBC and UK media that 90 percent of Falkland Islands land, including the vast sheep farms, was owned by absentee landlords, resident in the UK, and that Falkland Islanders were actually working tenants? So, just how ‘paramount’ were the islanders’ interests, as claimed by Margaret Thatcher?
2. On the day when ARA Belgrano was sunk, killing 368 Argentine sailors, why had it allegedly taken 17 hours for an urgent telegram, containing the full details of the Peruvian peace plan, to reach 10 Downing Street?
3. Was it right for Task Force leader Admiral Sandy Woodward to suggest that ARA Belgrano was part of a pincer movement and therefore represented an imminent threat to Britain’s aircraft carriers?
4. Why was public access to all incoming telegrams sent during the Falklands Conflict embargoed until 2052, or a further 40 years?
5. Why did Foreign Office Minister Nicholas Ridley hold clandestine meetings in secret locations with senior members of the Argentine Junta, where trade deals, Falkland Islands sovereignty and a 99-year leaseback deal were all on the table?
6. Why was Britain still selling arms to the fascist Argentine junta just four days before the invasion?
7. In the face of high-level protests, why were swingeing defence cuts to UK forces being made in the South Atlantic area in late 1981, and did these reductions leave the Argentine junta with the impression that an invasion of the islands would stand uncontested?
8. What was “The 1,000lb bomb” that Paul Cardin heard rumours of during the conflict, a bomb that was regularly being passed from ship to ship? Was it a tactical, nuclear depth charge, the possession of which breached the South American “nuclear-free zone” treaty?
9. Were any ships containing “The 1,000lb bomb” sunk during the conflict, creating a ‘Broken Arrow’ situation?
10. Have Britain’s junior ranking soldiers and marines been operating under an unspoken, socialist, ‘brothers in arms’ ethos in order to better harness their bravery and loyalty?
11. How could Argentine forces’ volunteers serve a fascist military junta which had spent years kidnapping, disappearing and murdering thousands of their own citizens?
12. Has the Falkland Islands Government now lost credibility and stature by investing heavily in extremely difficult to recover gas and oil as part of a “Fortress” economy heavily reliant upon fossil fuels?
Paul has accessed and reproduced many of the official documents that had been hidden away at the time by the Conservative government. He has signposted and summarised these events from his own perspective, which gives readers a better insight into government evasions, the lies that were told at the time, and why.
After the conflict, no matter how hard they tried, the British public couldn’t get to see what was happening behind the scenes. They were constantly drip-fed gushing media stories about political and military courage and the glory of the Falklands victory. With all of the sensitive cabinet documents under lock and key for the next 30 years, the UK government and media had granted themselves the perfect opportunity to gaslight the electorate into voting for a Conservative government, one that went on to enjoy a landslide election victory just a year later in June 1983. This administration later brought us the Green Paper of 1986, which led to the hated Poll Tax and the ousting of Margaret Thatcher.
Related links:
Wirral In It Together 
Did they hit Invincible on 30th of May?
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No. Not that I recall.
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