Six months before the invasion of the Falkland Islands, British intelligence looked at the situation and – not for the last time – made a wrong call. “The Argentine government would prefer to pursue their sovereignty claim by peaceful means,” they reported.
That unhelpful advice from the spooks is one of many revelations in the latest batch of Margaret Thatcher’s private papers, released today, which also shed light on the political turmoil that the invasion created among Conservative MPs and the contradictory advice given to Mrs Thatcher – ranging from a demand for blood to be split, to a suggestion that the islanders should be generously bribed to accept Argentinian rule.
Top brass were happy to hear that they need not fear a military invasion of the islands, because they worried that they would not be able to get them back by force. “Such a deployment would be very expensive,” a secret memo from the defence chiefs warned in September 1981. “Their geographical advantage and the relative sophistication of their armed forces would put our own task group at a serious disadvantage.”
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