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Chapter 17
Since World War II the UK has been all but umbilically connected to the United States. Across an 80-year sweep of time, geopolitical changes have ebbed and flowed around a significant number of far-reaching, ultra-offensive, western military campaigns, where the UK seems to have tagged along as an obedient also-ran. I’ve felt my own perspectives shifting, but there’s been one steady constant which persists to this day; the recruiting sergeant sells dreams but delivers nightmares.
Impressionable youngsters, targeted and absorbed from largely working class families, continue to be drawn in, put through their paces, indoctrinated, mentally harmed, or maimed for life. Occasionally they will end up perishing on a lie. Few emerge from active service as they went in, unharmed.
For precisely what in return did the hundreds of dead soldiers, sailors, an airman and three civilians make the ultimate sacrifice? Largely, we’re told it was to salvage this tiny population’s British pride over land they never owned, along with their major industry; some economically tanking sheep farming, the vast majority of which was carried out on rented land.
There was a Falkland Islands population of just 1,847 in 1982. Roughly speaking, for every two liberated islanders, a British or Argentine forces member gave up his life.
For every UK armed forces member involved in the conflict, 15.4 Falkland Island sheep were provided with salvation.
The farming of this rented land had for centuries been the traditional way of life for the Falkland Islanders; a harsh, hard-fought existence they were so desperate to preserve and protect from the Argentine incursion. This was their principal occupation and a huge element of the ‘paramount interests’ quoted ad nauseum by Thatcher. As history now sees it, these new on the scene, much flaunted ‘paramount’ interests – which hadn’t been evident before, and seem to have been conjured up in 1982 – were the prime justification for 255 young British servicemen and three Falkland Islanders having their lives cut short.
Whoever did the pre-war cost / benefit analysis, before concluding it was worth our while venturing most of the way across the planet to recover a small number of anonymous UK landlords’ frozen, windswept property – along with their tenants – must have been either living in cloud cuckoo land, or acting fully in keeping with a concealed, party political agenda.
I would suggest the former AND the latter.
Today, it appears the Falkland Islanders’ long-cherished, traditional farming economy is being abandoned. And very soon, into its place will flow dirty oil and gas. Or at least, that’s the plan. It’s notable how the tiny, and now somewhat credulous FIG (Falkland Islands Government) – which speaks in glowing terms of a ‘burgeoning oil industry’ – only succeeds in reducing itself even further in stature, and divesting itself of all integrity.
To the old, hard of thinking conservative jingoist – who doesn’t know one end of an SA80A3 from the other – it doesn’t matter if the enemy’s a 55-year-old hard-bitten general or a 16-year-old, wet behind the ears cadet. It’s our boys’ opportunity to shine. The enemy shall die before we do.
And if our boys are killed, they died for their country – whichever blood-smeared, gun-running set-up that happens to be – with something referred to as ‘honour’. But seriously, what sort of an achievement can it ever be to make like a bullet-ridden corpse, after being cut down in your prime of life on the orders of some dishonest, posturing, ambitious politician?
UK and Argentine politicians stitched us all up, sent us to war, whipped up nationalistic fervour, appealed to patriotism, lit the blue touchpaper, retired to a safe distance, then sat back to munch on popcorn and watch the spectacle. Soon, with the dead forgotten, they were loving the plaudits and counting the June 1983 votes as they flooded in.
They’d enjoyed the luxury of plenty of time to plot and think their options through.
But how many active, fighting men had the same time to think and weigh their options as death came racing towards them? Once you’re there where the bullets and missiles fly, the time you spend thinking is the time you get killed in.
The war-dead, strewn across a field, or sunk to the ocean bed all look alike because death is a great leveller. It’s a cliché, but generals, privates, kings, beggars, all are rendered equal when they’re lying in the mud. ‘The fallen’ – or the blown up, the decapitated, the drowned, the vapourised – are remembered as courageous, God-fearing, armed forces patriots, proud to have sacrificed themselves and – strangely – will always be remembered clad in their uniforms.
The statues of proud soldiers, sailors and airmen in military dress are the public-facing result of carefully thought-out, ongoing, well-practised manipulation. Otherwise known as cynical, calculated fakery.
The truth for most is they were scared human beings, dressed in the uniform of empire, but who’d become deceased via the whims of powerful, exploitative others; interfering rogues who’d hoodwinked them into service, then played havoc with their hopes and dreams before dispensing with them, leaving their families to grieve. They’d then carved their figures out in stone or bronze, and as a cynical afterthought, always draped them in their combats.
To end up dying for a squalid government you could never respect nor revere is the crushing height of folly. In this regard, the sheer depths of my own relief remain absolutely unfathomable 40 years later.
In their headlong pursuit of power and influence, the practised psychopaths seated on top of the military industrial pyramid have left a long trail of corpses in their wake. And they never pause to look back, around, or where they came from.
Neither do they get their hands dirty fighting. Through blind, unthinking arrogance and bloodlust, they’re at liberty to squander more lives on all sides, and to dodge or obliterate each and every peace threatening ‘obstacle’ as it blocks their path.
The utilitarian notion of the ‘greater good’ is scant consolation to those about to be sacrificed in its name, which never happens to be those eagerly pushing the idea. The anonymous shits who occupy the shadows whilst backing armed conflict – all failed excuses for human beings – would sooner pick an easy war than be forced into carving out a difficult peace.
I emerged from this conflict as a man with high hopes and fingers crossed for a peaceful, more secure existence:
- A world turning with a purpose and promising us all a brighter future
- A world that could produce courageous figureheads, fired up and ready to eke out a genuine, attainable peace
- A world that could learn from the mistakes, stand proud and move forward, neither glorifying nor celebrating past conquests
- A world that could respectfully remember the war dead, grasp the opportunity to learn lessons and stop adding to their numbers
- A world where we could defend ourselves effectively and honestly when called for, and not pre-emptively, under false pretexts or phantom threats
- A world of opportunity, one that could deliver safe, harmonious, prosperous times for everybody, including our children and all who come after us
None of this was permitted to happen.
The subsequent carnage, plunder and sacrificing of thousands of young lives on an altar of fake patriotism is not working.
In the year 2022, have the recruiting sergeants grasped and delivered our dreams, or just the same old nightmares? I’ve witnessed little progress in all this time. And currently, the hope for a new era of robust, genuine defence, no more permanent wars and no more proliferation of far-flung military bases seems like a distant pipedream.
Meanwhile the dead-eyed, 11th November phantoms, when not busy with their latest PR stunt, will soon be along to haunt us again, queueing for their chance to publicly tarnish the memory of thousands of lost, largely working class forces members.
Heedless of the living and bereft of life themselves, this bunch of damaged, shuffling ghouls are drawn to the same, easy photo opportunity every year. They disgust me. And if you’re an honest, dignified human being, you should be disgusted too.
Return to Bomb Alley 1982 – The Falklands Deception, by Paul Cardin
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Wirral In It Together 