When my phone started ringing and my watch started buzzing yesterday morning, after reports that the US plans to review Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands to “punish” us and other Nato allies for not coming to its aid on Iran, I was heading to the hospital. Sir Galahad – the Royal Navy boat I was on in 1982 when it was hit by a number of bombs from Argentine Skyhawks – is still the gift that keeps on giving after all these years, and I was having the dressing done after another recent surgery. So I had time to read all this information about what I can only call Donald Trump’s hissy fit with great dismay and sadness.
A veteran's perspective on the Falklands
I was part of the second wave that went to liberate people from a leader, General Galtieri, whose economic and social programmes in his own country had fallen to rack and ruin. And what did he do, as a lot of politicians do when they’re right up against it? He went abroad. Galtieri came to the Falklands. He imprisoned people in their own homes. He took the islands by force. And alongside many other excellent human beings from the British armed forces, we were successful in driving him off.
And then 44 years later on to have the legacy that the islanders have created, the peace, tranquillity, the success financially and economically, and everything else that goes with it, thrown into turmoil and uncertainty by the words of a man who is the self-proclaimed leader of the free world, it beggars belief. It’s so unnecessary. It’s so unfair.
Innocent pawns in a political game
It’s got to be classed as a cruel joke. The Falkland islanders are innocent pawns in a political game. Everyone can see that the islands have nothing to do with Mr Trump, and he cannot play the role of schoolyard bully forever. Yet now everyone who doesn’t agree with Mr Trump’s foreign policy is rounded on, ridiculed, and attacked. Nato is certainly not Mr Trump’s plaything. It’s not Mr Trump’s toy. It’s not a US toy. It is a part of all the nations who make it up.
What we are seeing is a huge lack of genuine leadership all over the world. We are in desperate need of at least one leader who might just get others to realise that’s how it done, and we follow on. We had a time in 1982 when we had a leader like that. And America had a leader like that, too. To demand that we join his fight is like an idiot going out on a Friday night, getting in a drunken brawl and then going around all his friends and saying, “I got a hiding last night, everybody come on, we’ll go and beat those people up tomorrow night.” Thats not how it’s done. That's not how grown-ups behave.
The right to self-determination
The only people who should ever change sovereignty of the Falkland Islands are the islanders themselves. That is their right, their choice, their freedom, their right to self determination. It’s their democracy in action. And as long as they stick with that, good for them. It's not a right that anyone should throw that into uncertainty.
We lost 48 men aboard the Sir Galahad. Most of them I knew. They were my good friends. The attack killed another 10 or so outside of the ship, so over 60 men died that day. My injuries kept me in hospital for many years. I’ve had surgeries right up until four weeks ago, and I’ve lost relationships. The toll it took on my mother, my step father, my extended family was horrendous. But out of all of that, I thought it was done. I thought people would accept that the fighting didn’t need to happen again.
What was it all for if somebody 44 years later can bring all that back? Everything that, and all my injured colleagues, and all the friends and families of the dead soldiers and airmen, all the Argentinians who needlessly died, the three civilians who died. What was that for? Unfortunately, by Mr Trump’s words could spark his friends in Argentina into starting something like that again. I despair.
