On the day in 1982 the Prime Minister announced to a packed House of Commons that a ceasefire has been agreed between the British and the Argentinian forces. Those were the days, when Prime Ministers and members of the Cabinet made important announcements in Parliament not on TV.
Mrs Thatcher told the Commons land forces commander Major-General Jeremy Moore had decided to press forward to the capital last night after a series of successful attacks on enemy troops.
"Large numbers of Argentine soldiers threw down their weapons - there are reported to be flying white flags over Port Stanley," she said.The report goes on:
The prime minister was welcomed outside Downing Street by a jubilant crowd cheering and singing when she returned from Westminster.
Mr Hanrahan - who is with the UK troops close to the frontline - said the Falklands felt strangely quiet after weeks listening to the noise of war.
"The sound of the heavy guns, the bombs, the machine-gunning is gone. The island is still and once again Stanley is under British control," he said.Today, the Metro newspaper and others report that while the Falkland Islands are celebrating the ending of the war and their own liberation, the Argentinian President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is heading to New York to address the somewhat ridiculous and anachronistic UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (one wonders whether they ever discuss the case of Tibet) on the subject of the Falklands (known to the Argentinians as Las Malvinas) and British "colonization" in 1833. It will be interesting what the UN Special Committee, whose existence will now be better known than it has ever been, will decide.
Meanwhile Tom Chivers, not one of my favourite columnists but talking a reasonable amount of sense for once, asks what exactly is President Fernandez de Kirchner hoping to achieve.
0 comments