Confronting the Icon: Portrayals of Margaret Thatcher in The Falklands Factor, Sink the Belgrano! and If …

Abstract

By the end of the Falklands War, as we saw in the previous chapter, Margaret Thatcher had not only manufactured a vision of the nation that perfectly matched the Conservative Party’s political agenda but, by taking on a role comprising part warrior queen, part Winston Churchill and part mother of the people, had put herself in an almost unassailable position. Challenges to the Thatcherite interpretation of the Falklands War were not likely to have much success, therefore, without a radical reassessment of Thatcher’s dual function as maker and hero of the Falklands myth. In this chapter I will look at three works — Don Shaw and Colin Bucksey’s television play, The Falklands Factor (broadcast on BBC 1 in 1983), Steven Berkoff’s stage play, Sink the Belgrano! (performed in 1986 and published in 1987), and Steve Bell’s cartoon strip, If … (published in the Guardian April–June 1982 and in book form in 1982 and 1983) — that have taken on this daunting task. Although their revisionist views of Thatcher are remarkably similar in broad outline, in that they all locate a deceitful and self-interested politician in the space previously occupied by an honourable and inspirational national leader, each work approaches its subject from a very different direction.