Gerry Hassan: The Continued Legacy of Britain’s South Atlantic Adventure
Gerry Hassan is a writer, policy analyst and researcher.
The 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands war is today, a conflict that continues in its importance.
Like many at the time, I had to first find the South Atlantic islands on a map, then put them into my leftist anti-Thatcherite view of the world, and then observe the mood of a Britain I barely recognised.
The Falklands war raised so many questions then and now. Was this a war of principle or pride? What did this say about Britain’s self-image and who ‘we’ were as a ‘people’?
Would Margaret Thatcher have survived without retaking the islands? And would the Tories have won in 1983 without military victory? Definitely not and arguably; Thatcher herself concedes the former in her memoirs...