OT The 1970s

[ARWadsworth]

And had the Falklands fallen then Gibraltar would have been next.

[ARWadsworth]

The Army. OK, so she made the decision to retake, but they had the final say IYKWIM.

[Tim Streater]

Well only in the sense that they had to agree whether it was feasible or not.

[Nick Odell]

Hastings & Jenkins (the Battle for the Falklands, 1983) suggest that the decision-making process might have been more muddled and that unauthorised decisions made by the navy might have paved the way for later actions.

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary made the decision to send nuclear-powered submarines on March 29th. The First Sea Lord and Chief of the Navy Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach started assembling a task force from the 31st and in the early hours of Friday, April 2nd, as the Argentine fleet was moving into position off East Falkland, he issued the directive that the task force was to be made ready and sailed.

As Hastings and Jenkins say: "It is perhaps no more than a constitutional curiosity that at this stage such an expedition had been approved by neither the British cabinet nor the British Parliament."

Nick

[Tim Streater]

Yes I have that tome but haven't looked at it recently.