This is an edited version of a paper that originally appeared in Autour de la guerre. Les archives, de précieuses alliées. » La Gazette des archives. Paris: Association des archivistes français, 2024.
On 2 April 1982, a force from Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic. Three days later, the UK government sent a naval taskforce – comprising 127 warships, submarines and merchant ships carrying troops and equipment – to take back the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with an Argentine surrender on 14 June, returning the islands to British control. Over 900 people lost their lives.
The Guardian was only one of two British national newspapers to take an anti-war stance. The story of how the paper covered the conflict is preserved in the Guardian News & Media archive.
Islas Malvinas
The first indication that Buenos Aires was showing signs of readiness to take military action to press Argentina’s claim to the Falklands was reported in the Guardian just over a month before the conflict began. But the paper had been interesting itself in the islands for many years before that. An editorial (giving the paper’s ‘official’ opinion) on 15 July 1976 had stated “Within a few years, if Argentina plays its cards right, the British Falkland Islands will have become the Argentine Islas Malvinas.” This leader was written by Richard Gott who in 1968 had accompanied British government minister Lord Chalfont on a fact-finding visit to the islands. In one of a number of pieces, Gott reported that the British government was thinking of severing the Falklands colonial ties to London.
Traditionally, newspaper editorials remain unsigned, but ‘leader books’ held by the archive indicate who the writer is (although the editorial line taken is usually a collective decision). These are closed to external researchers for 20 years after creation. On the morning of the Argentinian invasion, an editorial written by Hugh Stephenson set the tone for Guardian coverage, noting that from the start the affair “has had heavy comic opera overtones.” Its headline, ‘Far away, forgotten and now filched’ was written by Guardian editor Peter Preston, who was to write most of the Falklands related leaders during the conflict.
‘Pens or bayonets?’
The naval taskforce began to be assembled as soon as the Argentinian invasion began. The one objective of the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) was to regain the islands and as such arrangements for the press and television were given low priority. Admiral Sir Henry Leach, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, and who was instrumental in convincing British prime minister Margaret Thatcher that retaking the Falkland Islands was feasible, reportedly asked whether he was expected to load his ships with “pens or bayonets?” This meant that initially only 10 places to travel with the taskforce were offered; five to television and the remaining five to newspaper journalists, to be allocated by the director of the Newspapers’ Publishers Association (NPA). He in turn asked his wife to draw the names out of a hat. Those not selected in this lottery – including the Guardian – immediately complained and the decision was reversed, leading to almost every national newspaper being given a place on one of the Royal Navy ships sailing to the South Atlantic.
This was welcome news but it left very little time for the Guardian reporter selected to travel south to prepare. Gareth Parry, an experienced foreign correspondent, was telephoned at 9.30pm on the Sunday evening and told to make it to Portsmouth, the port where the taskforce was leaving, by midnight to board HMS Invincible. As such he had less than an hour to grab a few items of clothing such as a jumper and lightweight raincoat, a thin sleeping bag, and a paperback to read on the train. This was hardly the equipment required for several weeks in the winter of the South Atlantic and among the many hardships Parry was to suffer covering the conflict, hunting decent clothing and a warm sleeping bag were to dog his time there. He later wrote: “To be ill equipped both against the killing cold of the Antarctic nights and the enemy bombs was an unexpected challenge.”
Parry and the other members of the press were given an MoD minder who was the first of three links in the chain of censorship, the others being the censor on board ship and the duty office at the MoD in London. The Guardian accepted this, but Parry was ‘devastated’ when he eventually returned to the UK to discover that much of his filed copy either didn’t arrive, was blue-pencilled (censored) or altered. For example, on the journey south to the islands, references to mist and heavy seas were removed, ostensibly because it might betray a position – even though a satellite phone could easily reveal this.
Throughout the entire campaign, Parry only managed to make contact with the London office three times and the office with him not all. One attempt was disconnected. Detailed background to these problems, including the sometimes strained relations between the press and the MoD can be found in a number of records and collections in the archive.
Oral history collection
A first-hand account of life in the newsroom during the conflict is given by David Fairhall, Guardian defence correspondent in 1982, in a series of interviews carried out as part of the archive’s oral history collection. Started with the creation of the archive, it comprises of about 180 interviews conducted with former members of staff including journalists, photographers, editors, the first professional librarian, as well as production staff and compositors who set the text for printing. Track listing for most of the interviews helps identify key passages. More recently, new tranches of interviews were carried out to capture the experiences of journalists reporting the Iraq war and to mark the paper’s 2021 bicentenary year. Many are open to external researchers.
In Fairhall’s conversations, he describes the communication problems, lack of satellite phones and MoD censorship. Other members of staff also mention military and communication difficulties in their interviews.
Peter Preston’s papers
A more granular picture of how editors navigated their way around censorship and communication difficulties, as well as discussions about the paper’s editorial decisions, can be found in the archived papers and memos held, and in particular those of Preston who was editor from 1975-1995. This includes correspondence with members of staff as well external individuals. Some files and parts of files contain confidential and personal information and thus are restricted in line with the UK Data Protection Act and business confidentiality.
Those relating to the Falklands conflict are open and they include documents concerning the editor’s evidence submitted to the House of Commons’ Defence Committee on the handling of press and public information during the Falklands conflict, October 1982, and also the Falkland Islands Review Committee, September - October 1982, an internal government inquiry into its relationship with the press during the conflict. Records in the files include memos, information and the thoughts of key journalists sent to Preston.
For example, Peter Cole, Guardian news editor, wrote in a memo to the editor in July 1982: “The relationship between the MoD and the press got off to a bad start with the decision to allow the NPA to ballot for just four newspaper journalists to sail with the taskforce … it ‘smelt’ as though only the over jingoistic popular prints were being allowed to go. Much time was wasted at the outset in rectifying this”.
He also talks about a misunderstanding in the MoD that papers like the Guardian were happy to report on the taskforce but not the actual fighting: “We sent a reporter to cover a war, and yet saw him kept aboard various ships when many other reporters were on East Falkland with the troops. This caused us continuous frustration and we found the excuse that the commanders in the field had so many important things to worry about than the press unconvincing when so many press, some from local papers, were ashore and seeing the action at first-hand.”
Richard Norton-Taylor, a senior reporter specialising in security matters, talks in his memo about the British system of “grey censorship,” operating at different layers and different levels of the MoD, leading to inconsistencies in approach. He gives an example of this where. “The MoD seemed perfectly happy to include refs to what the British forces were doing in certain kinds of weather conditions, for instance, while deleting info about the Guards’ grumbling about their food.”
Fairhall, as well as talking about the problems surrounding Parry, also notes the “lack of real information” from the government, particularly off-the-record briefings for defence correspondents. This lack of communication sometimes led to speculation about tactics. As he put it, “The British were instinctively more secretive than other military authorities I have dealt with”
Preston, concluding his submission to the MoD says, “I think the Falklands episode, perhaps understandably, revealed extreme difficulties and unpreparedness in the organisation”.
Gemini
The archive also holds a selection of newspaper cuttings relating to the Falklands which are part of the Gemini News Service collection. Gemini was an independent news agency specialising in the field of international and development journalism, owned by the Guardian from 1973 to 1982. After the service ceased operation in 2002 its records were donated to GNM. The records are open for researchers to view.
Comment and opinion
The Guardian’s chief commentator during the conflict was Hugo Young, who wrote a twice-weekly column for 18 years until his death in 2003. He was one of the country’s most respected and trusted journalists and throughout his career made meticulous typed and handwritten notes to record conversations and informal (off the record) interviews with experts, politicians and civil servants. The archive holds these and while a number are closed for privacy reasons, there are enough available to give an insight into how he formulated his columns during the conflict.
For example, on 23 April 1982, notes after a meeting with a senior government minister record “he is not in the War Cabinet, but is senior and sensible” and that the governing Conservative party is much more divided over the war than the opposition Labour party. There are notes from a conversation with John Nott, the defence secretary, as well as Neil Kinnock (22 April), leader of the Labour party, who is noted as saying there are “major questions to ask after it’s all over about the cock-up that began it”. A collection of Young’s notes was published as The Hugo Young Papers in 2009.
Cartoons
The Guardian’s cartoonists offered a critical take on the conflict and the archive holds many original pieces of work by a variety of illustrators and cartoonists.
Les Gibbard was the Guardian’s political cartoonist from 1969 to 1993 and most of his collection is held at Kings Place. Eighteen are related to the Falklands, with depictions of politicians on both sides of the conflict.
In a cartoon called The Falkland Fiasco from early on in the conflict (6 April 1982), UK defence secretary John Nott is seen standing atop The Falkland Fiasco while the rest of the ship is submerged under water – the sunken vessel suggesting the country’s attempt to take back was looking like it was going to end in failure. However, the captain of the ship, foreign secretary Lord Carrington, remains on board, underwater and saluting.
The archive also holds many of Gibbards ‘ideas books’ – sketches derived from that day’s headlines. These give a fascinating glimpse into the creative process. His work was not popular with all though, and in particular the more pro-government press, with the Sun newspaper alluding to Gibbard in a leader about ‘traitors in our midst’ on 7 May 1982.
Another Guardian cartoonist was Steve Bell, known for his grotesque parodies of politicians. For the Falklands, he developed his own naval vessel with its own offensive caricatures of a commander and padre. The only sane people on board were the insubordinate AB Kipling and his adopted penguin. The archive holds eight pages of Bell’s If cartoon strips as well as books that include his Falklands output.
Pictures
In the pre-digital era the Guardian and Observer both maintained hard-copy picture libraries. This collection, comprising of the papers’ copyright photographs and negatives plus others, was transferred to the archive in the 2000s. Some pictures have been digitised, but the Falklands files of prints are arranged as follows:
Islands: Falklands: Argentinian Troops
Islands: Falklands: British Task Force: Return Home
Islands: Falklands: General
Islands: Falklands: Port Stanley
Islands: Falklands: Royal Naval Task Force: Casualties
Islands: Falklands: Royal Naval Task Force: Embarkation
Islands: Falklands: Royal Naval Task Force: General
Islands: Falklands: Royal Naval Task Force: In Action
Islands: Falklands: Royal Naval Task Force: Protests and Demonstrations
While the Guardian did not have one of its own photographers covering the conflict, staff took plenty of images of the taskforce fleet leaving for the Falklands, the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible and also returning wounded soldiers.
The Observer
When Argentine forces landed on the Falklands on 2 April 1982, Ian Mather, the Observer’s defence correspondent, was in the US and from there was dispatched to Buenos Aires. The war had not yet started, and the prevailing view was that there would be a diplomatic solution before the British taskforce arrived in the South Atlantic. Thus, Mather decided to try to be the first journalist to reach the Argentine occupied Falklands. Along with Observer photographer Tony Prime, and Simon Winchester of the Sunday Times, he headed to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, the most southerly town in the world, to try to find a pilot willing to fly to the Falklands. They had little success and so decided to return to Bueos Aires, but at the airport, as Mather was to later write, “an Argentinian naval officer accompanied by armed marines marched up and arrested us. ‘For you the war is over,’ he said sneeringly in English.” The three were charged with espionage and held for 11 weeks before being released on 30 June 1982.
The archive holds a number of records about the incident and the ‘The Ushuaia Three’ as they were nicknamed. These include: a letter Mather wrote while in prison, including extracts from his prison diary to Donald Trelford (Observer editor), about life in jail, descriptions of the different prisoners and prison officials, and trying to contact friends and family; memos from Times Newspaper Limited relating to activities to try to release the men; copies of court papers relating to the bail applications for the journalists (in Spanish); transcripts of the grounds put forward by the prosecutor opposing bail of the journalists, and the grounds of the defence; transcripts of the interrogations of Tony Prime and Simon Winchester; press releases from Free the Journalists Committee or Committee for the Release of the British Journalists held in Argentina, which was specifically set up to campaign for their release; booklets from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). There are also numerous letters both from Mather and correspondence relating to his release. There are also telex (a text-based message service over public switched telephone network reports) and typescript and carbon copy drafts of articles written by Ian Mather on a wide range of issues. The correspondence of Trelford is also held which contains information about the incarceration.
Ian Mather recounted his experiences in Argentina for War Stories, a series of two documentaries made by the Observer Film Company Ltd (1988-1995) for the BBC in 1992. Copies of the programme are held by the archive, as well as transcripts.
