Tam Dalyell

A campaigning politician is wise to be ever-alive to the possibility of being set-up and made to look ridiculous. In the light of the Belgrano affair, I do not doubt that I have accumulated a large and distinguished number of enemies, who would be only too delighted to see me slip on the ice. If a campaigner is proved hideously wrong in one matter, those who wish to destroy his case can gleefully point to the possibility of error in a related matter. My interest in the callous death of Miss Hilda Murrell – for such I was left in no doubt that it was by the courteous and concerned officers of West Mercia Police – was kindled by an anonymous phone call. An authoritative voice came through to my Commons Office-cum-Cupboard, and rather peremptorily told me to read an article in the New Statesman, ‘The Death of Miss Murrell’ by Judith Cook. Some two days later, since I read the New Statesman and the London Review of Books on trains and aircraft between London and Scotland, I glanced at Mrs Cook’s piece, and was arrested by the following passage: ‘Yet the Police told Rob Green, Miss Murrell’s nephew, that his aunt’s body was found much later, and then that it was found at 7 a.m. Rob Green took voluntary redundancy from the Navy a short time ago, having been a high-ranking Naval Intelligence officer with a crucial role in the Falklands War, for which he received a special citation. He does not consider himself a fanciful person.’ It dawned on me why, in all probability, I had been told by my anonymous caller – I still have no notion who it was – to read Judith Cook’s article.

In the sticky heat of the Palace of Westminster, waiting for divisions of the House of Commons at hours when sane men and women are in their beds, I have been perusing Argentina: The Malvinas and the End of Military Rule by Alejandro Dabat and Luis Lorenzano. The authors are Argentine Marxists living and working in Mexico. I shall be interested to see whether the reviewer for the London Review of Books judges the work to be cant. I believe myself that it is full of real insight. Understandably, Dabat and Lorenzano loathe the Argentine military. But the point they bring home is that it is wishful thinking to believe that after Alfonsin’s victory the military have simply gone away. They haven’t! Macho officers who have seen their seniors humiliated can be very dangerous indeed. In human affairs, the desire for revenge should never be underestimated. Reckless? Yes. Costly? Yes. An increase in human misery? Yes. An increase that will be seen as unacceptable? Not necessarily. The class, race and nationality which have produced some of the greatest racing drivers, from Juan Fangio on, and remarkably daring pilots during their first-ever modern war, are not simply going to accept defeat in one cup-tie. Besides, let us never forget that before the elections which swept Alfonsin to power, senior officers were telling the Anglo-Argentine community in Buenos Aires: ‘We can destabilise the elected government after two years or so.’

This is the advice I shall give to those of my Parliamentary friends who have an interest in the American military presence in Britain, but who may have neither the time nor the inclination to read a 340-page book. ‘Go to the Oriel Room in the Commons Library, and having got the Unsinkable Aircraft-Carrier, turn to pages 76 and 77. There you will find a map of all the American bases and installations in Britain. You and I are meant to be public representatives in this land, but I’ll bet you had no more notion than I had of the sheer scale of the United States presence.’ I doubt whether Government sources will be able to deny much that Campbell says, since as Field Marshal Lord Carver has put it, ‘Campbell does not rely on emotion or distortion.’ I have reservations about only one point of fact. At the beginning of his book, he says:

Small inconsistencies tend to be part of larger inconsistencies. Seemingly small untruths are often part of larger untruths. The discrepancies of fact and explanation in the Government’s account of the Prime Minister’s actions over the sinking of the General Belgrano are authoritatively considered by Desmond Rice and Arthur Gavshon. In Paragraph 110 of HMG’s own White Paper, ‘The Falklands Campaign: The Lessons’, we read: ‘On 2 May, HMS Conqueror detected the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, accompanied by two destroyers, sailing near to the total exclusion zone.’ This was the scenario presented to us, not only in the official White Paper, but in the Commander-in-Chief’s no less official report, and endorsed by the Prime Minister. Indeed, when Denis Healey, from the Opposition Front Bench, and I questioned Ministers, in the Monday and Tuesday Commons exchanges immediately after the Sunday sinking, we were given the impression that one of our submarines had come upon the Belgrano in a threatening position, and had understandably taken immediate action. And this is roughly what Parliament, press and people imagined had happened, until two months later, in early July, when the Conqueror returned home to Faslane on the West Coast of Scotland, and its captain began letting various cats out of various bags by revealing to the Scottish press corps that he had sunk the Belgrano on orders from Fleet Headquarters at Northwood. Now we find the submarine commander, Christopher Wreford-Brown DSO, saying in Our Falklands War:

In the opening paragraph of their important book on the Falklands War, Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins write: ‘So extraordinary an event was it that, even after men began to die, many of those taking part felt as if they had been swept away into fantasy, that the ships sinking and the guns firing round them had somehow escaped from a television screen in the living-room.’ In their final paragraph the authors say that had Britain left the Falklanders to their fate on 2 April, the British people’s respect for themselves and their confidence in their political and military leadership would have experienced a severe blow. They concede that colonial wars can have dangerous side-effects on the nations which fight them. A people can turn to jingoism as they watch a distant game, played on their behalf by professionals safely out of reach of homes and loved ones. Hastings and Jenkins conclude by opining that the British people were reassured by the way the services performed, and were pleased that a job that had to be done was done so well. National pride and self-confidence were renewed.