Mar 30, 2019 3 min read

In 1981, two years into her first term as Great Britain’s first-ever woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher’s political future was grim. She and her Conservative Party had won election on a promise of real change, a rejuvenated British economy, and an end to the labor strikes that had crippled the nation, but under Thatcher that economy remained stalled, unemployment was rising, the labor unions were fighting hard against her privatization policies, and her approval rating was at 23 percent.

And then fortune smiled on her this week (April 2) in 1982 when Argentina invaded the British-held Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, claiming sovereignty over them. The invasion was launched by a military junta headed by Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, who was hoping to drum up patriotic fever among the Argentine people while diverting their attention from Argentina’s own economic problems and his government’s repeated human rights violations. Also, given the peripheral importance of the Falklands, which lay nearly 8,000 miles away from Britain, Galtieri figured the British wouldn’t respond militarily.

He may have been right had it been any other leader but Thatcher, who from the start committed Great Britain to retaking the islands, which had been British territory for 149 years. Thus, she ordered a polyglot British naval task force of submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships and even merchant ships to head for the Falklands and retake them. In doing so, she overruled many of her advisers, both military and civilian, who told her it was impossible to mount a counterattack over such a vast oceanic distance.

Luck was also on Thatcher’s side because, unbeknownst to the skeptics in the British Cabinet, the Argentine forces, having dismissed the likelihood of a British military response, were poorly prepared, and their military equipment was antiquated. Many of the shells they fired at the approaching British ships failed to explode, and halfway through the fight, the Argentine Navy, mostly comprising World War II-vintage ships, returned to dock and sat out the rest of the war. On June 14, 10 weeks after the war began, Argentina surrendered.

Had the Falklands War not occurred, Thatcher almost certainly would not have been re-elected prime minister. By June her approval ratings had doubled, and British morale – which had sunk to new lows throughout the 1970s thanks in part to the impression (shared by most Brits) that Britain was no longer a major player on the world stage – had skyrocketed.

“We have ceased to be a nation in retreat,” she said in a major speech in the war’s wake.

“Our Maggie,” as the British people began calling her, had proved that the British Bulldog still had a bite as well as a bark.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.