The Falklands look to the future

12 April 2012
Evening Standard editorial comment

The commemoration of the 20th anniversary of sending our task force to the Falkland Islands has been muted, and rightly so. Nobody would wish to deny the remarkable achievement of Britain's armed forces in conducting and winning a small war thousands of miles away against a well-armed nation whose troops had already occupied the disputed territory. Logistically it was a triumph for the Admiralty to assemble a fleet of 92 ships and 53 aircraft within less than a week.

The fortitude of the Navy under missile attack, and the bravery and endurance of the Gurkhas, guardsmen, paras and marines who went ashore, were eloquently acknowledged in the number of decorations awarded to the invasion force. Our victory nevertheless owed a good deal to luck: the Argentines penetrated six British vessels with missiles which failed to explode, and in the words of the Marshal of the RAF, Lord Craig, "Six better fuses and we would have lost". Had that happened, the Tories could deservedly have been forced out of office - because, as we now know, war might have been avoided altogether had it not been for the refusal of Margaret Thatcher and her key ministers to take the Falklands problem seriously.

The decommissioning of HMS Endurance, and the Prime Minister's refusal to open discussions with Buenos Aires, sent all the wrong signals to Argentina, and the failure of the Thatcher Cabinet to react even after the Argentinians had seized South Georgia and despatched a large and hostile fleet towards the Falklands explains why, to this day, Argentinians believe that Britain "pulled them onto the punch".

The Falkland Islanders are now prospering, largely on the sale of squid licences, and would undoubtedly wish to stay British. But 20 years on, it should be possible at least to have a sensible discussion about the Islands' future. The Falklands cost Britain a relatively huge amount of money each year, out of a military budget which is permanently being squeezed. If this Labour government is prepared to be tough about Gibraltar, should it not also be considering a future for the Falklands - perhaps along the lines of the joint sovereignty agreement between Britain and France for the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu - which takes geography into account?

Dunce's cap

The thought that people like these are responsible for educating our young is dispiriting; the NUT, it seems, is unchanged from the bad old days of reflexive radicalism and surly manners. It is not as though Mr Green did not have constructive things to say. His suggestion that part of schools' problems lie with the Government's over-prescriptive approach to education will strike many teachers as being demonstrably true. The difficulties facing the profession are indisputably grave: in particular the recruitment and retention of qualified teachers.

But the response of the NUT to the crisis will aggravate, not resolve, these problems. It threatens to reduce the school week to four days if its demands for fewer hours are not met; and promises further strikes if there is not instant action to deal with staff shortages - a course of action which can only harm the children whose interests teachers are meant to protect. Not only is this a policy which will harm pupils, it will fragment an already divided profession. An unthinking resort to strikes by the NUT will be bound to jeopardise the proposed formation of a comprehensive alliance between the teaching unions which could give the profession a more authoritative voice than it has at present.

The best interests of teachers would be served by a moderate and unifying policy on the part of their representatives; the NUT is showing itself unequal to the challenge.

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