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Unthinkable? No Falklands war Unthinkable? No Falklands war
(6 months later)
Narrative history loves watersheds, moments that shift the course of events from their established path. The Falklands is often seen as one. Suppose Margaret Thatcher had heeded the doubters who, her personal papers this week revealed, pressed her to find another way. How different would it all have been? The myth is that the Falklands won the Tories the general election. In fact, in 1983 the party got 43% of the vote, two points down on 1979 – but the opposition was split and the SDP/Liberal alliance nearly beat Labour into second place. After the taskforce sailed, Labour successfully defended five seats, and lost three, one to the Tories, but Glasgow Hillhead to the SDP's Roy Jenkins, and Bermondsey to the Liberal, Simon Hughes. Mrs Thatcher's biggest battles were won before the Falklands: the wets had been sacked in 1981, Norman Tebbit was rewriting employment law while unemployment, only 5% in 1979, had more than doubled by 1981 causing Mrs Thatcher to declare she was not for turning. The Thatcher settlement was already emerging. Trade union membership was falling. But pay kept pace with inflation, people could buy their council homes and the stock market had begun its ascent. It is not winning wars that changes the course of history, but losing them. Defeat in Las Malvinas marked a new direction in Argentina, the beginning of the end of the junta's reign of terror. At home, the Falklands is less a watershed, more the expression of Mrs Thatcher's political persona.Narrative history loves watersheds, moments that shift the course of events from their established path. The Falklands is often seen as one. Suppose Margaret Thatcher had heeded the doubters who, her personal papers this week revealed, pressed her to find another way. How different would it all have been? The myth is that the Falklands won the Tories the general election. In fact, in 1983 the party got 43% of the vote, two points down on 1979 – but the opposition was split and the SDP/Liberal alliance nearly beat Labour into second place. After the taskforce sailed, Labour successfully defended five seats, and lost three, one to the Tories, but Glasgow Hillhead to the SDP's Roy Jenkins, and Bermondsey to the Liberal, Simon Hughes. Mrs Thatcher's biggest battles were won before the Falklands: the wets had been sacked in 1981, Norman Tebbit was rewriting employment law while unemployment, only 5% in 1979, had more than doubled by 1981 causing Mrs Thatcher to declare she was not for turning. The Thatcher settlement was already emerging. Trade union membership was falling. But pay kept pace with inflation, people could buy their council homes and the stock market had begun its ascent. It is not winning wars that changes the course of history, but losing them. Defeat in Las Malvinas marked a new direction in Argentina, the beginning of the end of the junta's reign of terror. At home, the Falklands is less a watershed, more the expression of Mrs Thatcher's political persona.
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