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Fighting Fictions : War, Narrative and National Identity

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In this fascinating book, Kevin Foster looks at the ways in which Britain experienced the Falklands war. He makes sense of the vast number of accounts, and of the various themes rehearsed.

The Thatcher Government portrayed its decision to fight, and its conduct of the campaign, as expressions of the essential national character, the `true Britain'. The mass media at once swung into line. In fact, the war primarily served a purpose hostile to the nation, Thatcher's political survival.

Government and media equated Argentina's initial recovery of the Islands with the Nazi invasion of Poland, as they immediately identified the war with the Second World War, and Thatcher with Churchill. They saw the Falklands as the image of Britain, a ravished island Eden. They ignored the harsher similarities, of economic dependence, under-investment and social inequality.

The media depended on the military for information, which turned the journalists into what one called `troopie groupies'. The media became a single, responsible voice speaking for `our common cause'. According to their account, 'our' Government never faltered, `our' flawless heroes carried out a perfect campaign. On the other side, their corrupt, undemocratic Government and its murderous thugs waged a campaign of Latin incompetence.

The war was supposedly unavoidable. There was no alternative; the British Government, guileless innocent in a naughty world, was forced into war by the Satanic enemy. Our supreme temptation was the serpent `appeasement', diplomacy a cunning trap set by wily foreigners. Peace demonstrators were described as pro-fascist, dissenters as collaborators. In practice, this meant rejecting in principle all ceasefire proposals and negotiations; it meant war without compromise. The only acceptable ethical outcome was the enemy's total surrender.

Government and media celebrated the war as the source of national salvation, even, in Thatcher's memoirs, of world salvation. War was rebirth, welfare, humanitarianism.

This presentation of the Falklands war has become the media model for all subsequent wars. Kevin Foster's book is a model of sanity; its publication now is especially timely.