Contribution to the 8th International Communist Seminar, Brussels, 2-4 May 1999

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The Military Aggression of the UK and Nato in The Malvinas in 1982

Sergio Ortiz, Liberation Party of Argentina

1. The first British Aggression - 1833

The Malvinas Islands were sighted and occupied by Dutch, English and French mariners, until the French acknowledged Spanish sovereignty over the Islands. Even then the UK had ambitions to control the archipelago, for as Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty, stated in 1766: "The Falklands are the key to the whole Pacific." This was the value he placed on controlling the entry to the Magellan Straits which connect the two great Oceans.

After having been under Spanish sovereignty, the Islands began between 1820 and 1829 – as did the rest of the River Plate area – to link up with the nascent Argentine nation. On 10 June 1829, Martín Rodríguez, Governor of Buenos Aires province, laid down that "the Malvinas Islands and those adjacent to Cape Horn in the Atlantic Ocean shall be governed by a political and military leader to be nominated forthwith by the government of the Republic." The person designated was Luís Vernet, who established himself in Puerto Soledad.

The first attacks were made by marauding schooners flying the flag of the US. This caused the American warship, the Lexington, under Captain Silas Duncan, to capture Puerto Soledad, where he disembarked with a force of marines. After looting and setting fire to the area, the Lexington withdrew, leaving the field clear for the next act of aggression, which was to come from the direction of Britain.

In January 1833, the English war frigate, Clio, arrived, under Captain John Onslow, who hauled down the Argentinean flag and occupied the main square, claiming to be acting under orders from His Majesty’s Admiralty. All this proves that right from the start of the conflict, Washington and London were colluding against Argentina’s interests in the South Atlantic.

Since that time Argentina has never ceased, albeit in vain, to demand from the UK the return of the Malvinas.

After the Second World War, when the so-called process of de-colonisation had begun, the international climate of opinion was favourable to Argentinean claims. In 1960 the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 was passed on "the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples", including the Malvinas by name. This climate of opinion became stronger and in 1965 the UN passed Resolution 2065, reiterating the "heartfelt aim of putting an end to colonialism in all its forms, one of which encompasses the Malvinas Islands". The General Assembly asked the governments of Argentina and the UK to resolve the problem by engaging "without delay in the negotiations recommended by the Special Committee in charge of investigating the situation" of the colonial countries and peoples.

The UK did not vote against these resolutions. It simply abstained. In its actions it sabotaged all negotiations after the Conservative Party and the kelpers in 1968 frustrated an attempt by the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to negotiate the return of the archipelago to be effective in 10 years from then.

There had also been an earlier attempt in 1940 consigned to a document classified by the Foreign Office to be kept secret until 2015, but cited by Arthur Gavshon and Desmond Rice on page 253 of The Sinking of the Belgrano. Apart from these two occasions - in 1940 and 1968 - successive British administrations, Conservative and Labour alike, supported by the kelper lobby and by the Admiralty in particular, refused to negotiate with Argentina the return of the Islands.

The Malvinas consist of several islands and islets, the most important of which is Soledad, to the east, and Gran Malvina to the west, separated by the Straits of San Carlos. They cover a total of 12,000 square kilometres and are situated 600 km from Tierra del Fuego and 14,000 km from Great Britain. They have no great sources of wealth, other than sheep, fishing in the surrounding waters, mineral deposits in the sea bed and, eventually, oil. Even though the 1970 Shackleton report raised hopes that oil reserves lay below the sea, in the Durdwood Bank, latest explorations have failed to confirm the forecasts.

Beyond its economic worth, the Malvinas have always had military-strategic importance for the colonial power in occupation. Our South Atlantic islands form a kind of triangle which together with India are logistically useful to Britain for launching distant operations and maritime expeditions.

From the Argentine point of view the importance of the Malvinas is above all political, i.e., the need to reclaim a part of its national territory which had, since 1833, been usurped by colonialism. The feeling is similar to that felt by the Chinese people as regards the return of Hong Kong which took place in July 1997.

2. The second British act of aggression, in 1982

On the basis of these widespread anti-colonialist sentiments among the popular masses, the military dictatorship of General Leopoldo Galtieri, Admiral Isaac Anaya and Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo, ordered the military recapture of the Malvinas on 2.4.82. This measure was supported by 99% of the people, from whom the military hid the most important reason for their action, i.e., their endeavour to perpetuate their dictatorship by giving it the prestige of recovering a portion of our country after 149 years of British occupation.

Besides these intentions, the fact is that the fundamental contradiction between third world nations and Anglo-American imperialism was very much on the international agenda. On the HMS Hermes internal newspaper, as it sailed towards the Malvinas, appeared the following revanchist words: "Let us hope that any other ramshackle nation thinking of trying to tweak the old lion’s tail will take note of what is hopefully about to happen to this particularly shaky dictatorship".

The well-known author Ernesto Sábato, whose bourgeois-democratic politics separates him from us by the width of an ocean, correctly said at the time: "This is not the struggle of a democracy against military dictatorship - it is the struggle of an empire against a whole people".

The countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America expressed their solidarity with Argentina. Specially notable were the offers of help coming from Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba. The non-aligned movement also lent its support to the recovery of the Islands in its meeting of foreign ministers that took place on 2.6.82 in Havana, Cuba, at which the host President Fidel Castro made an outstanding speech.

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government took two simultaneous measures: it asked Ronald Reagan to put pressure on Galtieri to leave the Islands by means of the good offices of Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, while at the same time dispatching forthwith a powerful task force to recapture the territory.

The fleet set out from Portsmouth under Admiral John Woodward in the flagship HMS Hermes, with General Jeremy Moore in charge of the ground troops. Woodward was answerable to the fleet Commander-in-Chief, Admiral John Fieldhouse, whose headquarters were at Northwood in London. Other ships and units set out from Gibraltar and from Ascension Island. Altogether the fleet numbered over 118 ships, taking into account logistical support and transport vessels, with some 24,000 men aboard.

When the ‘mediation’ of Haig and of Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary General of the UNO, broke down, there took place between 1st and 6th August 1982, a last peace effort led by the Peruvian President, Fernando Belaunde Terry. This mission was literally torpedoed by the British Prime Minister committing of a war crime - the sinking she ordered on 2 May of the cruiser, the General Belgrano, at a time it was sailing outside the exclusion zone unilaterally imposed by London. The nuclear submarine, Conqueror, commanded by Christopher Wreford Brown aimed 3 mark-8 torpedoes at it, causing 368 deaths among the Argentine crew.

The Labour MP, Tom Dalyell, accused Thatcher in the House of Commons, of having given the order for the sinking of the ship in order to frustrate the Peruvian government’s peace mission. According to this British MP, the Prime Minister’s popularity was very low and she was seeking to increase it – in anticipation of the 1983 elections – by means of achieving victory in the South Atlantic. At the same time, this would enable British world power, reduced after the Second World War, in part to recover its prestige and lost glory. Mrs Thatcher indirectly confirmed these accusations by forbidding the publication of the Conqueror’s log book, classifying it as Top Secret.

The Task Force led by Admiral Woodward and General Moore, strongly supported by the Reagan-Bush administration, formally opened its operations around the middle of April 1982 with the aerial bombardment of Puerto Argentino. There is no doubt, however, that the major starting point of its aggression was the sinking of the cruiser, the General Belgrano.

With air and sea superiority in a theatre of war predominantly aerial and naval, they blockaded the Islands, prevented supplies reaching them from the mainland and systematically bombed the various Argentine positions. Between 21 and 28 May a military action took place which was to prove decisive for the course of the war. British infantry and paratroops landed in San Carlos Bay, where they set up a strong beach head.

Despite the fact that the area was one of the easiest landing sites available, it was not adequately defended by Argentine troops. Nor were the troops of the 12th Infantry Regiment based in Darwin ordered to the area; nor were reinforcements sent by helicopter. In other words, there was no mustering of the force necessary to overcome the beachhead.

The result? Within days the British were able to occupy the heights of Dos Hermanas, Harriet, London, Wireless Ridge, Tumbledown and Williams and then swoop down like a tornado on Puerto Argentino.

In the Islands’ capital on 14 June 1982, the capitulator General Mario B Menéndez, whose previous experience had been limited to repression of the people of Tucumán and the PRT-ERP guerrillas operating in that province in the 1970s, surrendered unconditionally to General Moore.

Mrs Thatcher had secured the prize she was after. On 9 July the following year, her South Atlantic victory enabled her to win the General Election with an increased majority. As is known, her strengthened position was put to use by the neo-liberal ("Thatcherite") elements in the UK and elsewhere: closure of mines, redundancies in mines and docks, cuts in social security, a general increase in unemployment, continued military occupation of Northern Ireland and iron-fist policies applied there, and a re-invigorated alliance with the US – these are but a few of the political consequences of that victory.

It must be stressed that in view of the neo-colonialist objectives and imperialist nature of the UK, Thatcher’s assault on the Malvinas represented aggression – it was an unjust war of conquest. Far from defending ‘human rights’, the UK sent its Navy to the ends of the South Atlantic to recover a possession originating in times of piracy.

Although the Prime Minister sought to play the ‘democrat’ in opposition to the Argentine military junta, London had since 1979 been selling military equipment to the value of £200 million to our country. The then Minister for Trade, Cecil Parkinson, visited Buenos Aires in August 1980 – at which time he showered praise on the dictatorship of General Jorge R Videla.

It was the Argentinean people, our Party and other anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other human rights organisations, militant trade unionists, youth, pro-third world clerics, etc., who stood up to, and would continue to stand up to, the fascist dictatorship. This was how things were, notwithstanding the transitory broad and heterogeneous convergence of forces between April and June 1982 to oppose the colonialist actions of Perfidious Albion in the South Atlantic.

3. The UK is supported by the US and the rest of NATO

On 30 April 1982, the US Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig, announced the end of his ‘mediation’ and stated outright:

"The UK is our closest ally. President Reagan has also ordered that the US should respond positively to the requirements of the British forces for the supply of materials."

Washington provided to its ‘closest ally’ aeroplanes, missiles and valuable NATO intelligence. Thatcher never tired of thanking the US for this support, declaring that "without the Harrier jets and their immense manoeuvrability, equipped as they were with the latest version of the Sidewinder missile, supplied to us by US Defence Minister Caspar Weinberger, we could never have got back the Falklands."

Ascension Island, although formally British, has been conceded to the US, who were nonetheless all too happy to make it available to Woodward’s fleet as a stopover and for re-provisioning en route to the Malvinas. Four Nimrod surveillance aircraft were based on Ascension Island, equipped with high frequency Marconi AD470s, similar to those installed in the aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible in the invasion force. This island was also home to the US satellite stations, DSCS 11, which shared intelligence with the British allies.

Thanks to US help, the English fleet had at its disposal Nimrod aircraft teams, the said aircraft carriers (one of which, the Invincible, was the NATO anti-submarine force flagship. Its transmitters enabled it to intercept all Soviet signals even from a long distance away, and, better, still, the much closer Argentinean signals.

The data picked up by UK planes and ships were transmitted to the communications centre at Cheltenham, the home of SIGINT, the world signals intelligence network. SIGINT, in turn, collaborated with its US counterpart, NASA, based at Fort George Meade, Maryland.

US collaboration came not only in response to its traditional alliance with London but as a result of its regard for its own strategic interests in the South Atlantic region. According to secret documents released in 1988, the US had, since the cold war. been favouring the creation of a SATO, as a kind of caricature counterpart to NATO.

The UK had other allies in this war. The ‘socialist’ President of France, Francois Mitterand, refused to hand over to Argentina any more of the Exocet missiles and Super Etendard aircraft that had been purchased beforehand from French manufacturers. "The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French socialist government, Clause Cheysson, demanded the withdrawal of Argentina from the Malvinas Islands in a message to the National Assembly; and on top of that President Mitterand’s decision to suspend delivery of war material to Argentina was announced. The arms deliveries he embargoed extended to various aircraft and spare parts for anti-aircraft missiles. All this was in response to requests from London". (‘The Secret Malvinas Plot, p. 147, Cardoso-Kirschbaum-Van der Kooy).

In other words, the refusal to supply these armaments was due to a request from London, which had been alarmed by the efficient combination of the Super Etendard aircraft with Exocet missiles when they sunk the frigate Sheffield on 4 May 1982, resulting in 21 deaths.

Nor should the dirty role played by the Vatican be forgotten. John Paul II arrived at Buenos Aires 48-hours in advance of the surrender of Puerto Argentino, for the purpose of inspiring defeatism in the hearts and minds of Catholic and non-Catholic alike. The Pole, Karl Wojtyla, came to prepare the ground for the Argentine capitulation.

Others who helped Thatcher included Chile’s military regime under General Pinochet, which provided information the instant Argentine aircraft took off from their bases in the south of our country. In her recent appeal to Prime Minister Tony Blair for the release of the former dictator Augusto Pinochet, the former Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher) argued that Pinochet was a ‘great friend’ of the UK’s and that during the war he had collaborated to save ‘many British lives’.

4. The aggressors pay a heavy price

Despite the conciliatory approach and static defence strategy adopted from the start by those directing the Argentinean campaign, who suffered from the delusion that London would never go to war over the Malvinas, the British fleet still suffered great losses during the course of the war.

A heavy blow to the Crown’s prestige was struck by the above-mentioned sinking of the Sheffield. Later other ships, such as the Atlantic Conveyor, the Sir Galahad, the Coventry, the Ardent and the Antelope also went down, and the Glasgow, the Brilliant, the Antrim, the Broadsword, the Glamorgan, the Argonaut, the Sir Tristram, the Sir Percival, the British Wye, etc., were damaged.

According to British sources, 255 of their personnel died and 777 were injured, while $1.5 billion’s worth of materials were destroyed during the conflict.

These losses occurred not only on board the ships that were struck, but also among the troops landing in May at San Carlos, in the struggle for the control of the Longdon, Tumbledown and William Heights, which took place in June. In these confrontations British paratroops and infantry also suffered losses as a result of the action of Argentine artillery and some battalions who put up resistance. Among the units who fought most doggedly was the Marine Infantry Regiment 12 and Infantry Regiment 4. As Brigadier Anthony Wilson of the British 5th Infant Brigade admitted: "We have lost an awful lot of men."

As far as Argentina itself was concerned, our broad popular masses were able to see that, while the dictatorship was boasting of being ‘Western and Christian’, the Yanks were joining hand-in-hand with the British aggressors to kill Argentine soldiers. Let it be said in passing that it was fully confirmed that the main enemy of our people and of other peoples of the Third World is imperialism headed by US imperialism.

Theories to the effect that ‘Russian social-imperialism’ was dominant in Argentina and was the dominant superpower on a world scale – as was being claimed by the PCR and its allies on the Peronist right – were exposed as totally ridiculous. They were besides putting forward theories similar to those favoured by General Ramón Camps and Luciano Benjamin Menéndez – the most recalcitrant section in the military dictatorship.

It came to be known that imperialism, despite its ‘democratic’ mask, was nothing but a war machine directed against third-world nations, which was capable of mobilising battalions of Nepalese Gurkha mercenaries for the purpose of re-establishing its control over the Islands.

It came to be understood that Argentina’s real allies were the peoples of Latin America and other continents, including nations such as Libya, Cuba and other socialist countries which previously the dictatorship had demonised yet who offered us help during our struggle.

It was seen that the Argentine military had been trained for a different kind of war, i.e., the anti-insurgency war, in the US School of the Americas and that they were no use at all when faced with a modern army.

It was confirmed that the naval exercises codenamed ‘Unitas’, which had been conducted with the US Navy had in reality served only to enable the US to gather intelligence about the Argentine Navy, which it passed on wholesale to the British, who made use of it during the conflict.

Washington proved to as treacherous as the Inter-American Treaty for Mutual Assistance of 1948, which supposedly committed its signatories to the common defence of any American country attacked by any outside force. This Treaty had obviously only been intended to save any American signatory from the Soviet ‘menace’, not to defend Argentina from a punitive raid from London and NATO.

5. The Argentine generals were capitulators

The Military Junta (Galtieri, Anaya and Lami Dozo) and specially those assigned to the Malvinas Theatre of Operations – first and foremost among these the Supreme Commander, General Menéndez – made no serious plans to counter an armed attack with the second strongest world power assisted by the very strongest world power, i.e., the US. Their calculation was that the White House would pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them, as a way of repaying the help given by the dictatorship to the anti-Sandinista Contras trained in Honduras and for other dirty operations in South America.

At the moment of surrender the Argentine Generals handed over the main square of Puerto Argentina, along with 8,351 prisoners, to whom must be added those handed over in Fox and Howard, Darwin and Goose Green, making a total of 11,337. A like number of troops, with the tons of arms and equipment they carried, should have provided a good material basis for offering much more effective resistance. As General Barahona, the director of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies, was later to point out:

"With 10,000 well-equipped trained men willing to defend themselves, no air-sea borne force could successfully invaded the Malvinas." In that same month of June 1982, Palestine Liberation Organisation combatants fought back successfully against the Israeli army’s siege of Beirut. The balance of forces was 6:1 against Yasser Arafat’s men, yet from his fighting base he was nevertheless able to preserve the nucleus of his army, and transport it by ship to Tunis.

What happened to enable to British invasion to succeed?

The main obstacle arose in the realm of politics and ideology. The behaviour of the Military Junta had always been oligarchic and pro-imperialist, and he Junta had only been led by the coincidence of special circumstances to confrontation with those they considered their friends, i.e., Anglo-American imperialism. For this reason they did not want to open a ‘second front’ in mainland Argentina, which they could have done by confiscating British banks, assets and properties.

On top of that, it was at the height of the armed conflict that the Minister for the Economy, Roberto Alemann, dreamt up the idea of privatising the bulk of public enterprises (a pro-imperialist measure which would many years later be carried to fruition by the Peronist Carlos Menem).

The Argentine military had been trained to suppress the people. They were good at the night-time sequestration of popular militants, at torturing young people and pregnant women in the clandestine extermination centres, stealing the babies of the women who ‘disappeared’. But the were no good at confronting a professional army such as the British army.

In a recorded interview (August 1982) with the journalist Oriana Falacci, General Galtieri admitted that he had never been trained for an air-sea war. The conduct of these ‘leaders of failure’ was marked by lack of planning, co-ordination, basic precautionary measures needed to win the war.

The ‘Rattenbach Commission’, who investigated the war on behalf of Argentina, produced a report critical of the Military Junta (and its 3 members were sentenced to 12 years in prison, though they were pardoned in 1989 by Menem). In one paragraph the Commission maintains that "with respect to the initial defence of the recovered territory, there was no pre-existing plan, because the British reaction had not been foreseen and it was considered that the operation would be over on ‘D-Day + 5’ when the invasion force would evacuate." (Special supplement to the daily La Voz del Mundo, 24 August 1983).

During the trial of those responsible for the Malvinas war, General Menéndez was accused of having mounted a passive and static defence, remaining rooted to the spot in the Islands’ capital while the British were landing at San Carlos where they were allowed more or less undisturbed to build their beach-head and prepare for their final assault.

According to John Elliot, professor at the London Institute for Strategic Studies, Menéndez acted "as if it was the Middle Ages, when only castles were fortified and other parts of the territory were ignored."

While the invaders armed the San Carlos beach head, General Fernández Torres refused to jump with the paratroopers of the 4th Airborne Brigade, and General Omar Parada, head of the 3rd Brigade, would not agree to install himself at Darwin-Goose Green before confronting General Thompson’s troops, on the pretext of the ‘prevalent bad weather.’

After the war General Jeremy Moore declared to the Argentine magazine Somos that the first mistake made by his adversaries had been "not to have occupied San Carlos beach. The more I think about it, the more I realise that San Carlos is the only beach where we could have landed."

The Argentine troops most experienced in mountainous terrain and colder climates, according to the reactionary General Rodolfo Mugica, were not sent to the Islands for ‘fear’ of an attack by Chile. Instead a large number of conscripts were sent, whose military training was limited to two months, or troops of the 5th Infantry Regiment, who came from Corrientes Province and were used to a hot climate.

We are in no way blaming these raw recruits who, in many cases, fought better than their officers. We reiterate that the main fault lay with the highest level of command. Moreover, when assigning officers for given tasks and responsibilities, they chose torturers of nuns and political militants, people like the sadly notorious Lieutenant Alfredo Astiz, who surrendered at Gritviken, South Georgia, without firing a shot.

The Navy led by Admiral Isaac Anaya, one of the keenest commanders in the Malvinas landings, remained in port after the cruiser the General Belgrano was sunk and played no further positive part in the actions which took place. The exceptions were the naval pilots who attacked ships like the Sheffield and the infantry of the 5th Marines battalion defending Mount Tumbledown.

In the curse of the trial of the Malvinas ringleaders, it was shown that, despite the time that had passed since 2 April, the 155 mm cannon needed to fire on targets up to 20 km away had not been transported to the Islands. Two cannons did arrive at the end of May, but they had only 40 missiles between them. Because of their absence, the British were able to attack our positions at will, since shots from the Argentine 105mm cannon could not reach them.

Even though General Menéndez and the Military Junta argued that they were insufficiently equipped – for nocturnal combat, for example – the truth is that they were not only equipped but extremely well equipped. But the equipment remained in its packing cases, unopened and unused.

Soldiers lacked proper clothing and food, while in the officers’ mess there were supplies to spare. These shortages were quite unjustifiable, given that large quantities of state resources and large contributions collected from the people by means of the ‘Patriotic Fund’ had been dedicated to the war. It is, however, generally alleged that corruption did away with much of these resources.

In addition, cases arose of Argentine soldiers immobilised by their own officers in freezing temperatures. The British commander, Moore, put on a mask of ‘humanitarianism’ in commenting that the Argentine military had treated its soldiers "like animals, without the least consideration," as if the British had shown any consideration for its own paratroops, infantry or Gurkhas! It must be remembered that besides shooting prisoners, the victors forced Argentine conscripts to transport munitions and de-activate mines – contrary to the Geneva Convention!

6. Continued usurpation

In a few months’ time, 17 years will have passed since the recapture of the Malvinas and South Georgia. Equally, it is 166 years since the spoliation committed by the crew of the frigate Clio.

Even so there is still no prospect of the UK being willing to negotiate the return of the Islands, not even after a given length of time as was done in the case of the People’s Republic of China over the question of Hong Kong. The former Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, and the present Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, have both confirmed that ‘British sovereignty is non-negotiable.

Obviously the British government is a winner as a consequence of the dirty ‘de-Malvinisation policies pursued in Argentina with effect from the first day of the military dictatorship’s surrender and adopted – with minor adjustments – by Raúl Alfonsín’s government, culminating in Carlos Menem’s blatant treason.

Menem decided in February 1990 to re-establish diplomatic relations with the UK, at the end of negotiations with Madrid, using the ‘umbrella’ slogan to mean ‘without discussion of the issue of sovereignty’. To this day, this remains his position, much to the delight of the British Foreign Office.

President Menem travelled to London at the end of October, 1998, and failed to raise either with Blair or with Queen Elizabeth II the question of sovereignty over the Malvinas. His trip was made for the purpose of total sell-out. It was aimed at advertising the wonders of Argentina’s present neo-liberal, privatising, regime – with a view to attracting British investment. The bankers of HSBC, Lloyds and the Midland, as well as executives from British Gas, British-American Tobacco, Eagle Star, Glaxo and others interested in investing in our country, warmly applauded him, impressed by such a sepoy mentality.

From failure to failure on the Malvinas question, in January 1999 the Menem government unofficially offered the kelpers a promise to freeze for 20 years all claim to sovereignty over the Islands. This is the last word in capitulationism. The Islands’ governor, Richard Ralph, asked him to formalise his offer to the British government, so that it could be considered.

In line with this policy of surrender, Menem has twice sought the mediation of Bill Clinton. The first time he did this was at the end of the First Americas Summit in December 1994 and the second was in his interview with the leader of the US government in January 1999. The result, as predictable, was negative and disappointing.

The British have fortified the Malvinas in order to turn them into an impregnable citadel in the event of any Argentine attack. They have built a new airport and other military installations at Mount Pleasant at a cost of approximately £750 million.

Instead of the 68 infantry men who defended the previous governor, Rex Hunt, there are now 2,500 troops stationed there, whose maintenance costs the UK some $100 million a year.

|Unlike the old patrol boat, Endurance, there are nowadays two new ships, radar systems and more planes. In January last year the Commander of the British forces on the Island, Brigadier Ian Campbell, gave information about the acquisition of a batch of Tornado aircraft and a radar system valued at $500 million. He stated that with this material, "the air defence capability of the Falklands will be improved for the next 15 years." In his statements he revealed that one of the factors now of interest to his country was that the Islands were a ‘suitable place of entertainment for the British troops."

Exactly one year before the then British Defence Minister, Michael Portillo, had visited the Islands and made most emphatic statements to the effect that London did not intend to give them up. "The government is determined to defend the Islands and maintain their security. There is no exclusion clause, exception or time limit to this commitment", affirmed Portillo, concluding that "the UK has always made it clear that sovereignty not only to be shared or surrendered, but the question is not up for discussion either." (La Voz del Interviú, 31 January 1997).

General Charles Guthrie, Defence Chief of Staff of Great Britain, visited Buenos Aires at the beginning of May, 1998. He told journalists that "there is no intention of reducing the British garrison on the Falklands. The Islands will continue to be armed."

In view of British intransigence, we are, just as we were in 1965 when the UN was exhorting both sides to work for a peaceful solution, at an impasse. In fact we are worse off now because the anti-people and anti-national Menem government undertook on 1989 to withdraw the question of the Malvinas from the agenda of the UN General Assembly – which had hitherto been considering it. It was crossed off the business of the major UN forum only to be sidelined to the Decolonisation Committee, a low-level forum.

It is clear then that every attempt to secure British goodwill by means of the tired old method of bending the knee to the British Royals and Buckingham Palace and to the Prime Ministers occupying 10 Downing Street have failed totally.

7. The line for the recovery of the Malvinas

In April 1982, when Argentina re-took possession of the Malvinas, the Liberation Party took the view that the main contradiction at this political stage (i.e., the people versus the military dictatorship) had temporarily shifted to being that of the Nation against imperialism. On the day of 2 April itself we issued a public statement and a leaflet which was headed: ‘The Malvinas belong to Argentina and Argentina belongs to its people.’

This title made it clear that from that moment in time the principal direct confrontation was with the British Task Force, but at the same time to concessions were made to the military dictatorship because we maintained: Argentina belongs to its people.

In its correct position the Liberation Party maintained that "the defence of our sovereignty requires national unity, and that unity demands that the repressive measures being taken against workers, students and the whole people should cease; that the state of siege should be lifted; that political prisoners should be released; that those who have been arrested and disappeared should return alive."

At this juncture the dictatorship had to relax momentarily its internal repression, a fact taken advantage of by our Party and other popular trends, to lift our heads over the parapet, participate in mass mobilisations, intensify our propaganda and enjoy the opportunities offered by having legal status.

At the end of the day, the Malvinas conflict, from this point of view, did enable the forces of popular resistance to the dictatorship – hitherto almost exterminated – to prove in the streets that they were still alive and well and that they still maintained an unwavering anti-imperialist stance. Those who had switched targets for the time being were the Argentine military admirers of NATO.

On 2 June 1982 the Liberation Party distributed a leaflet in various cities demanding the opening of a ‘second front’ in mainland Argentina in order to win the war while fighting in the Archipelago.

In this leaflet four immediate measures were proposed, and these are still relevant today in the context of the struggle against the Anglo-US side:

a) expropriation of British monopoly-capitalist subsidiaries in our country;

b) cancellation of external debt owed to that country’s banks and companies;

c) banning of companies owned by US capital, as a first warning measure, and

d) suspension of all payments to US banks and businesses.

On 14 June, when General Menéndez’s surrender at Puerto Argentino became known, the people converged on the Plaza de Mayo in front of Government House in order to repudiate this capitulation. There they were set upon by the Federal Police.

The Liberation Party was present at this demonstration and has since that very day not ceased to condemn the policies of de-Malvinisation and ‘repentance’ pursued by General Reynaldo Bignone (the dictator who replaced Galtieri), the re-constituted Military Junta, the US embassy and politicians such as Raúl Alfonsín, Arturo Frondizi, Alvaro Alsogaray, etc.

From that time until the present, our political line on the question of the Malvinas has been clear and precise:

That in 1982 the Argentine flag should have flown for 72 days over Puerto Argentino at the end of an operation mounted by the military operation was an extraordinary event indeed. But because of that regime’s oligarchic, pro-imperialist nature, the venture did not prosper. The final recovery of the Malvinas can only come about through a revolutionary people’s government led by the working class, and, equally, through new people’s armed forces at the service of national and social liberation – instead of the present armed forces who caused the disappearance of 30,000 people’s militants and who surrendered the Malvinas without significant resistance.

This is why the question of the Malvinas is not an isolated item on the political agenda of Argentina’s Marxist-Leninists. It is an integral part of the programme for national and democratic people’s revolution at this stage of development. It is not just a question of claiming back the Malvinas in the way the nationalist oligarchydo, or the crypto-fascist tendencies within the armed forces (such as ‘guerrillas’ like former Lieutenant-Colonel Aldo Rico and Colonel Mohammed Ali Seineldin). The solution to the Malvinas question must be inscribed on the banner of the people struggling against national and foreign monopolists, Anglo-US imperialism and national governments who apply their recipes for hunger and repression.

In the struggle for Argentinean rights over the Islands of the South Atlantic, it will be important to be able once more to rely on solidarity from the people of the Third World and their revolutionary forces, as happened in 1982, as well also as that of European workers and left-wing political organisations in the UK and the rest of the European Union and other countries of the world.

In the common struggle against imperialism, and especially against NATO 50 years after its creation, it is important that all communist, anti-imperialist and progressive elements struggling in developed capitalist countries should help us shake off the British yoke from the Malvinas Stronghold – that throwback to colonialism. It will be a lesson in practical internationalism.

We in turn must support their democratic and political demands to recover their rights – full employment, against labour ‘flexibility’, for the defence of welfare gains, for an end to state repression and neo-Nazism, for socialist revolution in Europe. This too is internationalism.

Our claim to the Malvinas is not made from the narrow outlook of bourgeois nationalism but is part and parcel of a general anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist programme based on Marxism-Leninism and its application to the concrete reality of the Argentinean revolution.

28 February 1999

Sergio Ortiz, General Secretary of the Liberation Party of Argentina

 

Annex

British companies to confiscate

British companies /sector

Lloyds Bank Finance

HSBC-Roberts Finance

Roberts-Alpargatas Textiles

British Gas Distribution

Metrogas Gas

British Gas

Central Dock Sud Energy

Bacbook Energy Energy

National Grid Transmission Electricity

Imperial Chemical Paints

Glaxxo Laboratories

Hospital Británico Health

Northumbia-Therapia Health

Eagle Star Insurance

BAT-Nobleza Piccardo Tobacco

Shell Petroleum

Unilever Cleaning

Schroeders Consultancy

British Sudamericana Consultancy

KPMG Consultancy

Intertek Testing Trading

Service (ITS) International

Ladbrokes Group Hilton Casinos and Hotels

Reebock Shoes

Cadbury Feeding

Allied Domecq-Balbi Bodegas Mendoza

Allied Domecq Export mostos en San Juan

British Telecom 15% of IMPSA Satelital

ADtranz y 11 Cías. británicas Argentine Public Transport Contracts

Farms in Patagonia (aprox.500 mil has.) Agriculture

Source: Investigation and archives of LIBERACION

 

(Published in Liberación n° 142, March 1999)

Contribution to the 8th International Communist Seminar, Brussels, 2-4 May 1999

Theme: Imperialism means War

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