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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Hagel Approved for Defense in Sharply Split Senate Vote - New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to break a filibuster against the nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, clearing the way for his confirmation despite Republican complaints about his readiness for the job.

More than a dozen Republicans joined Senate Democrats on the 71-to-27 vote to cut off the debate. Republicans who opposed Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, had insisted that they needed more time to examine his record.

The Senate scheduled a vote on the nomination for Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Hagel requires a simple majority of 51 to be confirmed.

Democrats said that Mr. Hagel was a strong pick for the job, considering his background in public office and as a soldier in the Vietnam War. They said that the Senate needed to clear Mr. Hagel’s nomination so he could get to work at the Pentagon, given national security issues around the world and pending budget cuts at home.

Republicans said they believed that a shaky performance by Mr. Hagel at his confirmation hearing and his past statements on Israel and a variety of other issues had disqualified him.

John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Mr. Hagel’s worldview was “dangerously misguided,” and he warned that the nominee was ill prepared to handle such a major post. “I don’t think we want a secretary of defense that has to learn on the job,” he added.

But Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, accused Republicans of stalling the nomination earlier this month for political gain.

“What has their filibuster gained? Twelve days later, nothing has changed,” he said. “Senate Republicans have delayed for the better part of two weeks for one reason and one reason only: partisanship.”

The action in the Senate on Tuesday will help bring to a close one of the most unusually contentious cabinet-level nomination fights in years, a clash that surprised many in Washington for how personal and bitter it became considering that Mr. Hagel, a Republican senator for two terms, worked alongside many of his antagonists until just four years ago.

But even before Mr. Hagel takes office, questions are growing about whether the fight will wound his ability to lead the Pentagon at a time of upheaval both at home and overseas. With a series of huge budget cuts known as the sequester set to go into effect at the end of the week — cuts that will fall hard on the Defense Department if Congress cannot negotiate a compromise — Mr. Hagel will inherit myriad challenges.

Further, the tension between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill will not end with Mr. Hagel’s confirmation. Republicans have already trained their sights on the next nominee they see as vulnerable: John O. Brennan, who is President Obama’s pick to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have threatened to hold up Mr. Brennan’s nomination over questions about the attack last year on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Both men made similar demands of Mr. Hagel, who, unlike Mr. Brennan, has had no role in formulating the Obama administration’s defense and national security policies.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has asked Mr. Brennan to answer questions about a topic that has been thrust to the forefront of the debate over national security: the government’s use of drones.

But even if a handful of vocal Republicans succeed in temporarily blocking Mr. Brennan, they face the reality that they are unlikely to be able to hold up his nomination indefinitely.

The Hagel vote came as the Finance Committee agreed by a margin of 19 to 5 that the Senate should confirm Mr. Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, suggesting that the president’s cabinet picks were moving ahead.

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