Thatcher papers show Falklands split

21 March 2013 Last updated at 19:57 ETBy Bridget Kendall Diplomatic correspondent, BBC News

Lady Thatcher was known to rise at 3:30 am for frontline reports from the Falklands

Senior Tories were initially sceptical about going to war over the Falklands, newly released papers from Margaret Thatcher's personal archive show.

A note from the whips' office following Argentina's 1982 invasion reported solid support for military action from some Conservative MPs, but others were privately hostile.

The papers have been published by Churchill College, Cambridge.

They show for the first time how deeply split the party was over the Falklands.

One Tory MP is quoted by the Whips as having said "we're making a big mistake, it'll make Suez look like common sense".

Another suggested letting Argentina have the Falklands with as little fuss as possible.

Others reportedly expressed hopes that "nobody thinks we are going to fight the Argentinians. We should blow up a few ships but nothing more".

The archive is her personal collection of what she thought worth keeping, and includes artefacts as well as documents and papers.

Among other new releases from the Falklands crisis are Mrs Thatcher's handwritten draft notes (including numerous crossings out) for her historic speech to the House of Commons on 3 April 1982, where she had to explain to MPs how the invasion had been allowed to happen.

Under fire

There is also a copy of the Daily Mail, dating from just after the crisis broke, with a headline wondering whether "she had the stomach for it".

Speculating as to why she might have kept that particular newspaper, Lord Cecil Parkinson (who was a member of her war cabinet) told the BBC he was sure she was always aware she was being tested.

As Britain's first woman prime minister, he said, she would have known that people would be looking to see how she rose to the challenge of taking the country to war.

Other personal papers released today offer intriguing new insights into her state of mind at the time.

Notes on life at Number 10 showed that much of her day - and nights - were taken up with the war. A diary entry from one of her closest advisors, Sir Alan Walters, revealed she was up at 3:30 am, apparently waiting for front-line reports.

A copy of one thank you note she sent to a constituent at the end of April confessed: "I left knowing that we had a tense day ahead. The phone call over breakfast indicated that the airstrip at Port Stanley had been bombed by Vulcans, successfully. During the last week there has been an activity and tenseness I never thought to experience."

But she ended the letter with typical fortitude, adding: "This has happened throughout history and it falls to us to make our contribution to history under the law."

Private grief

As the fight to take back the islands began in earnest, grim reports began to come through of ships being hit and the inevitable casualties. The archive includes the handwritten notes from duty clerks there were passed to her with the bad news.

She sometimes, apparently, could not control her grief. Her former aide Harvey Thomas remembers her breaking down in tears backstage at a constituency event on receiving the news that HMS Sheffield had been hit with an Exocet missile. It took her 40 minutes to pull herself together.

"She had received the news either immediately before she came or when she arrived," he told the BBC.

"She was deeply upset that she had to send British sailors to be killed and she was just quietly crying. Then somebody came in to the room and said: 'We have to get out there.'

"When she got back out on the platform she had pulled herself together, she was the prime minister, and she had a country to lead."

Iron Lady

But there is also plenty of the famous Thatcher steely determination reflected in the documents. One draft letter to the US President, Ronald Reagan, shows the no-holes-barred approach she used to rebuff the United States's attempts to broker a peace deal.

Her handwritten initial draft reveals a refusal to compromise, and even a hint of outrage: "Throughout my administration I have tried to stay loyal to the United States as our great ally." she wrote.

"In your message you say that your suggestions are faithful to the basic principles we must protect. I wish they were, but alas they are not."

That draft was never sent. Her ministers persuaded her to tone it down. The strident passages were replaced with more diplomatic language.

But the fact Mrs Thatcher kept it, and scrawled on the typewritten version of her first draft "the letter to Reagan that was never sent" suggests she felt it reflected her real strength of feeling over the conflict.

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Papers seek legal advice on watchdog

19 March 2013 Last updated at 01:24 ET

Papers are currently self-regulated voluntarily through the Press Complaints Commission

Continue reading the main story

• Q&A: Press regulation deal
• Reaction to regulation deal
• Beneath the skin of the Leveson law
• Robinson: Why the deal was done

A number of national newspapers are taking "high-level legal advice" about whether to co-operate with a new press watchdog established by royal charter and backed by legislation.

While the Independent welcomes the move, most papers are hostile and are holding back on making a decision.

They complain they were not represented in a meeting on Sunday night at which the three main parties struck a deal.

Press reform campaign group Hacked Off, meanwhile, had four members there.

Party leaders said the independent regulator - with powers to demand upfront apologies from UK publishers and impose £1m fines - would protect victims of press intrusion and preserve press freedom.

It will replace the current system, in which the press is self-regulated voluntarily through the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

The deal follows Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into press ethics which called for a new independent press watchdog, backed by legislation to ensure it was it was doing its job properly.

The inquiry found that journalists had hacked thousands of phones.

A joint statement from Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, The Sun and Times publisher News International, the Daily Star and Daily Express publisher Northern & Shell, and the Telegraph Media Group said they would wait to decide if they would join the new regulator after consulting lawyers.

"No representative of the newspaper and magazine industry had any involvement in, or indeed any knowledge of, the cross-party talks on press regulation that took place on Sunday night.

"We have only late this afternoon [Monday] seen the royal charter that the political parties have agreed between themselves and, more pertinently, the recognition criteria, early drafts of which contained several deeply contentious issues which have not yet been resolved with the industry."

On Tuesday, the Times said in its editorial it had been "a bleak episode in the story of freedom of the press in Britain" and that "the principle that a free press not subject to Parliamentary statute has been conceded".

The Newspaper Society, representing local papers, said the proposals agreed by the three parties would place "a crippling burden on the UK's 1,100 local newspapers, inhibiting freedom of speech and the freedom to publish".

That was, in part, because of the "huge financial penalties for newspapers which choose to be outside the system and an arbitration service which would open the floodgates to compensation claimants", president Adrian Jeakings said.

But Chris Blackwood, editor of the Independent, told BBC News: "We don't think it's too bad - it could have been a lot worse."

He added: "I think we have to recognise the mess the industry got into. I mean, the industry did some very bad things and our existing regulator just wasn't up to the task."

The 57-nation Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), meanwhile, warned that "a government-established regulatory body, regardless of how independent it is intended to be, could pose a threat to media freedom".

Prime Minister David Cameron said the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour had agreed on a new system of "tough independent self-regulation that will deliver for victims and meet the principles set out in (Leveson's) report".

He said a new system would ensure:

• upfront apologies from the press to victims
• fines of 1% of turnover for publishers, up to £1m
• a self-regulatory body with independent appointments and funding
• a robust standards code
• a free arbitration service for victims
• a speedy complaints system

The charter defines publishers as newspapers, magazines or websites containing news-related material.

But there remains confusion about moves to extend the new regulation to the internet, with Downing Street conceding it is not clear exactly which websites would be covered under the new rules.

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