I haven't seen a thread on this so yeah. Presumably the significance many British attach to the colony is notably less than post-1982, and the Argentine junta could get the USA to back it up, claiming that the Argentine government is unstable and might fall to communism if it does not successfully pursue this nationalist cause, etc.
WI: Britain transfers the Falklands in the 70's-1981?
- Thread starter Ismailov
- Start date
Garrison
Donor
Well if the Argentines could have sat on their hands for a year they might have been able to pick the Falklands up fairly easily. The Callaghan government wouldn't have responded any better to pressure. They dispatched a warship to the area in response to previous Argentine sabre rattling in 1977 I believe.
A leaseback scheme was ministerially proposed at least once that I know of, (It was the FO's prefered solution) but it was just too contentious to pass. If recent unpleasantness hadn't interrupted though, who knows what might have come about a few decades down the line; you might, and I emphatically stress might, have got a joint partnership-style oil exploitation arrangement thrashed out, that kind of thing.
Outright giving the thing to Argentina though? Forget that.
Outright giving the thing to Argentina though? Forget that.
Last edited:
From Clive Ponting’s '1940 Myth and Reality' Page188-189
In other areas, though, Britain did consider making significant concessions in order to obtain support. British possession of the Falkland Islands had long been a sore in relations with Argentina, an important source of wheat and beef for Britain’s wartime food supply. Argentina has never recognised Britain’s claim to sovereignty over the islands. In the decade before 1940, the British consistently refused to submit the issue to any international tribunal because of doubts as to whether their claim would be upheld. As one senior Foreign Office official wrote in 1936: ‘The difficulty of our position is that our seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1833 was so arbitrary a procedure as judged by the ideology of the present day that it [would not be] easy to explain our position without showing ourselves up as international bandits.’ Exactly what happened in 1940 is yet another closely guarded secret, since all the relevant Foreign Office files remain closed. It seems clear, however, that the Churchill government did consider giving the title of the islands back to Argentina under a leaseback scheme. The contemporary index to the closed files refers to ‘[an] offer by HMG to reunite Falkland Islands with Argentina and acceptance of a lease’. Doubts about the British title are confirmed by the use of the word ‘reunite’ to describe the transfer of the islands to Argentina
It might give the Argentine junta legitimacy, but chances are they will distract from domestic problems with a foreign adventure somewhere else. Who in the area would make an easy target for takeover? Stroesser's Paraguay? The mess that was Bolivia in the late 70s/early 80s? Somehow I doubt Uruguay or Chile would be on the "plausible" list, though who knows.
Cook
Banned
The Islanders themselves were dead against any transfer of sovereignty; what are you going to do, have the British government ignore the wishes of the islanders and unilaterally hand over the islands to a right wing junta with the worst human rights record* in South America? Does it really need to be explained how politically damaging that would be to the government that tried it?
*Which in the 1970s was a region with some serious competition.
*Which in the 1970s was a region with some serious competition.