Oh What a Lovely Post-modern War: Drama and the Falklands

Abstract

In 1982, if the British right is to be believed, the Lion roared once more over an obscure group of islands usually described as ‘windswept’, ‘barren’, and ‘inhabited mainly by sheep’. The Falklands became the site of the war which put the ‘great’ back in ‘Great Britain’, and the ‘united’ back in ‘United Kingdom’. That unfailing barometer of ultra-right-wing sentiment, the British Football Fan Abroad, was still celebrating this notion even when the England team was being defeated by Argentina (through a typically-dago dirty trick) in the World Cup of 1986. The so-called ‘Falklands Factor’ not only put Margaret Thatcher back in Downing Street the following year (and again in 1987), it also made the post-Falklands Conservative Party a very different animal from the pre-Falklands version. The war gave the party, if not 007’s licence to kill, a licence to rule apparently indefinitely.

Argentina, Argentina, what’s it like to lose the war?

What’s it like to lose the war?

(World Cup Football Chant 1982–1986. Tune: ‘Bread of Heaven’)