Thatcher & Reagan episode 1
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00:00She wasn't the first Prime Minister to turn a fashion accessory into a trademark,
00:11but Margaret Thatcher made the handbag her own.
00:14This is one of the famous Thatcher bags, and they're famous because they're what she used
00:19to express her power as the one and only woman in almost all these situations.
00:25And therefore, in the Thatcher era, if you said, he's been handbagged,
00:29the verb to handbag meant the exercise of her power.
00:33Wielding it.
00:36Swinging it around and whacking a cabinet minister.
00:40My name's Charles Moore, and as a journalist, I covered the whole Thatcher period.
00:46Actually, I became a journalist because she became Prime Minister,
00:49because she came into office and froze all recruitment to the civil service,
00:53which I was trying to get into, so I got a job as a journalist instead.
00:58In 1997, when she was trying to decide about what might happen about her biography,
01:03she came and asked me if I would like to do it.
01:08It was very apparent from almost the earliest days
01:11that her relationship with Ronald Reagan was important.
01:16Everything was sort of framed by that on the world stage, I think.
01:22What I hope to be able to do is to focus very strongly on this relationship,
01:28these two people, all the time, and balance them,
01:32and see how they work together and occasionally against one another.
01:37She's actually reacted with a waving handbag.
01:41She would speak 90% of the time, and there were a lot of yes, Margarets.
01:47Reagan came to really admire and respect,
01:50and even to some extent fear Margaret Thatcher.
01:54British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan
01:59were in power together for eight years, most of the 1980s.
02:05They saw the beginning of the end of the Cold War
02:08as the world emerged from the shadow of nuclear Armageddon.
02:14I believe they were central to this turning point in history.
02:19So to understand it, I'm going to mine the records
02:22Thatcher and Reagan left behind...
02:26..and meet witnesses who can help me get to the heart
02:29of this special relationship.
02:33I put my hand over the phone and I said,
02:35it's the President of the United States,
02:37and she picked up the phone and said,
02:40hello, Ron, in this melting voice.
02:44So I indicated I was leaving the room, not my place,
02:48and I walked up.
02:59Hello. Crawford, how are you?
03:01And where am I sitting? Am I sitting here?
03:04So, Crawford, you began working for Mrs Thatcher in 1978,
03:08and you never really ceased to work for her for the rest of her life,
03:1235 years. No.
03:13Tell me about your first day working for Mrs Thatcher
03:17and what happened that day.
03:18I went in and I really didn't know where I was going to be starting
03:22and what I was going to be doing first.
03:24So I thought, well, I'll put the kettle on.
03:27And I heard this voice behind me saying, who's that?
03:31And I turned round and it was Mrs Thatcher.
03:34And she says to me, would you mind laying a tray?
03:37Because I've got a guest coming in at 10.30.
03:40And she didn't say his name straight away.
03:43He stayed for an hour and a half.
03:45And when he came out, Mrs Thatcher saw him herself out to the door.
03:51She came back in and she said,
03:53oh, he's got such a wonderful soft voice and he's so kind.
03:57And she said, by the way, it's Ronald Reagan.
04:04There's a photo of this meeting in Mrs Thatcher's personal papers,
04:07which are now all in Cambridge in the Thatcher archives.
04:11A place I got to know well when writing her life story.
04:18By 1978, Reagan, a former Hollywood film star,
04:22had been the governor of California,
04:24then failed in his first attempt at the presidency.
04:28Mrs Thatcher was leader of the Conservative Party
04:31but was still in opposition.
04:34It's the second meeting of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
04:38and the one you're seeing in this picture,
04:41this is a lady in her early 50s longing to be in government.
04:46And it was quite possible that it wouldn't happen.
04:49There's a sense in which she hadn't yet achieved anything.
04:52This low middle-class woman,
04:54Grocer's daughter, outside the charmed circle.
04:56If she fails next time, that would be the end of her
05:00because, as she herself used to put it privately,
05:02there's never any second chance for a woman.
05:05Reagan, though he'd been considered
05:07a successful governor of California, he's quite old
05:11and you wouldn't have got many people in 1978
05:14to bet on Ronald Reagan being the next president.
05:17They were both in adversity, which is a very important point
05:21to bear in mind when you think of how a friendship starts,
05:24because it was not really a friendship of convenience very much.
05:28The man who photographed that meeting in 1978
05:32was Reagan's foreign policy adviser, Dick Allen.
05:36Hello. Welcome to Denver.
05:39Thank you. Great.
05:41This photograph demonstrates two people
05:45enormously at ease with each other from the get-go,
05:49from the very start.
05:51It quickly became Margaret and Ron, or Ron.
05:55As she would say.
05:57And bingo, the personalities sparked.
06:01It was a sparking session.
06:03They were two peas in a pod, which is a way, a crude way
06:07of expressing how close their views were nearly about everything.
06:14Though they strongly agreed about economics,
06:17if Thatcher and Reagan won power,
06:19they'd mainly work together on international politics.
06:23Against a shared enemy.
06:26Hundreds of millions of human beings
06:28either have been killed or enslaved by communism.
06:31The list of nations and peoples engulfed by communism
06:34grows ever faster.
06:38By the late 70s, the Cold War between the West
06:41and the Soviet-dominated communists in the East was 30 years old.
06:46Though many feared it would never end,
06:50Thatcher and Reagan were determined Cold Warriors.
06:55The famous line that has come to characterise Ronald Reagan
07:00was his early declaration to me that his theory about the Russians,
07:05the Soviets, was that we win and they lose.
07:08Mrs Thatcher shared that view completely.
07:15Whatever you're comfortable with.
07:18Even as leader of the opposition,
07:20the term the Iron Lady had become identified with her,
07:23and as is well known, that was not her term.
07:26It was one actually first appearing in a Soviet military newspaper
07:30in response to some very hard-line speeches she had been making.
07:35She with brilliant perception realised, far from being an insult,
07:39this was an enormous badge of her identity and used it ever since.
07:44I stand before you tonight in my red star chiffon evening gown.
08:00My face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved.
08:05My face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved.
08:14The Iron Lady of the Western world.
08:20Her instincts and her basic convictions about the world as a whole
08:26and how society should be operated and so forth
08:29made her very, very determined to take a firm, strong position
08:34before she ever became Prime Minister.
08:37Britain has swung decisively to the Conservatives
08:40in the general election,
08:42and later today, Mrs Thatcher will become Prime Minister.
08:46In 1979, Reagan was still out of office,
08:50but he said he couldn't be happier about Britain's first woman PM.
08:56I was at university then.
08:58I'd just voted for the Liberal Party
09:01and I didn't in that sense welcome Mrs Thatcher's victory,
09:04but I do remember being very, very interested in it.
09:06You could tell that everything was changing.
09:09Everything about it seemed new and exciting.
09:12Not necessarily new and good, but new and exciting.
09:17But one mustn't forget that she couldn't be very confident at this moment.
09:23I mean, she tried to project confidence,
09:25but the general expectation was that this wasn't going to work,
09:27that she wouldn't even last one term.
09:29And I'll strive unceasingly to try to fulfil the trust and confidence
09:34that the British people have placed in me
09:37and the things in which I believe there is now work to be done.
09:43We're going to see Bernard Ingham,
09:45who was Margaret Thatcher's press secretary
09:47from almost the beginning right to the end.
09:50So he was what would now be called, wasn't then called, a spin doctor.
09:55He was a legendary figure.
09:57His famous bushy eyebrows, his Yorkshire accent, his aggressive charm.
10:05Well, let's face it.
10:07For those first few years, things were dire.
10:12She was fighting her own side, the wets,
10:16who disagreed with her economic policy.
10:20She had got the union round her neck,
10:24inflation, soaring unemployment,
10:28and ITN reporting every night further factory closures.
10:34Today's unemployment figures are, quite frankly, frightening.
10:37There are now persistent murmurings on the Tory backbenchers
10:39that enough is enough.
10:41But so far, not a single Tory backbencher wants to go public
10:44in condemning his leader, Mrs Thatcher's economic policies.
10:48She was not the safest bet in Western democracy.
11:01As Mrs Thatcher struggled in office,
11:03Reagan was crisscrossing the US on his campaign to be the next president.
11:09Like the Iron Lady, he always talked tough on communism.
11:13Russia will take us back to the Dark Ages, and everyone knows that.
11:18And it is the Western world must make up its mind
11:21whether it wants to preserve
11:23what has been 6,000 years of mourning in civilisation.
11:27I think I first really noticed Reagan
11:30as he began to become a national figure in Republican US politics.
11:35And everybody said, Reagan is just an actor
11:38and hasn't got much of a brain.
11:41Well, politics is very much a performance art, isn't it?
11:44It has to be.
11:46And if you can't do that in Democratic politics,
11:49you're not going to get anywhere. You have to persuade people.
11:52It seemed to me that just by watching him on the news,
11:56you could see a person of extraordinary communicative gifts.
12:01I could sense that, in a few words, he could say a lot.
12:07In January 1981,
12:09Reagan followed Mrs Thatcher onto the world stage.
12:15We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.
12:19And let there be no misunderstanding.
12:22We are going to begin to act, beginning today.
12:28When he gave the speech, he said,
12:31We are going to begin to act, beginning today.
12:36When he became president, there were internal discussions
12:39about who should pay, which foreign leader should pay the first visit.
12:44Well, we were in the Oval Office.
12:46I was giving a briefing and I said,
12:48Now, Mr President, the important thing is
12:52that we have to make some decisions
12:54about the sequence which leaders would be received.
12:59And our first thought was Mrs Thatcher.
13:06In late February 1981, Thatcher and Reagan got their first chance
13:10to see how they'd work together
13:12and if they could develop a personal side to the special relationship.
13:18I've heard the president say many times
13:21that the first time he met her as president,
13:25he wasn't nervous because he felt like he was going
13:28just to see an old friend.
13:30But I also think that the two of them
13:32shared just an innate understanding of each other.
13:38The political affinity between the two leaders
13:40made the so-called special relationship seem a reality today
13:44at the start of an official welcome
13:46that sounded off with a 19-gun salute.
13:59Ronald Reagan is at his best when there's a woman in the room.
14:03And if there's a woman in the room,
14:06you can see him adjust himself just slightly.
14:09Now, part of this is because he was a movie star.
14:12He spent a lot of time answering fan mail
14:14and most of the fan mail came from women.
14:16He felt that women were in some way with him, were his supporters.
14:20But it's also the case that his father was an alcoholic
14:23and a difficult man, we know that in all kinds of ways.
14:26He was very close to his mother,
14:28who was clearly a very strong, compelling figure.
14:33He's drawn to compelling women.
14:38And in Mrs Thatcher, he meets one.
14:47During her 1981 visit, Mrs Thatcher spent time with Reagan
14:51at not one but two gala dinners.
14:54Here she is looking pretty glamorous, actually.
14:58This being Reagan, there's good showbiz.
15:02She's talking to Bob Hope as well as President Reagan,
15:05so that's three showmen together.
15:08One of the things that came out very clearly
15:11when I first studied her letters that she wrote to her sister
15:14as a young woman was how much she liked male glamour.
15:18And this is, I think, one of the reasons she enjoyed politics,
15:21cos this is a man's world and she liked the glamour of power.
15:25Reagan fitted into that category.
15:28He was her sort of man, the easy charm,
15:31the big build, the smart clothing.
15:36She wanted, despite her incredibly dominating personality,
15:39she wanted to look up to a man,
15:41I mean, literally, in the sense of higher rather than lower,
15:44and also she wanted to admire a man,
15:47and I think she found that easy to do with him.
15:51Reagan said, we will lend strength to each other,
15:54and that's partly chemical, if you like,
15:57and it's partly ideological and it's partly pragmatic.
16:01But this is the first visual embodiment of it.
16:05This is the first time you can see they've both got the power,
16:08they've got the will, they've got the friendship,
16:11and there it is, photographed.
16:16The visit was not all fanfare.
16:18Reagan and Thatcher also met in private in the Oval Office.
16:24Was there much content to the meeting
16:26or was it just a sort of friendly chat when they explore things together?
16:31No, it was very substantive,
16:33and what to do about Eastern Europe was an important consideration.
16:38And Mrs Thatcher made it plain that the diplomatic revolution here,
16:42the new direction of American foreign policy,
16:45needed the full backing of the British government.
16:49Thatcher and Reagan were ready to confront the Communists.
16:54Their predecessors had failed to stop Soviet Russia
16:57expanding its nuclear arsenal.
17:05Talks were still going on, but the West's security was under threat.
17:15Thatcher and Reagan both believed that the West had to deal
17:18with the Soviets from a position of strength.
17:23This would require a massive expansion of the US nuclear arsenal.
17:29Our deep ties and perceptions we share give us much to talk about.
17:33Together we're confronting an extremely grave international situation.
17:38We do so with determination and optimism.
17:42Of course we take the same view in the United States and Britain,
17:46that our first duty to freedom is to defend our own.
17:55The Cold War always constituted a tremendous threat
17:59to the future of the planet. It wasn't stable.
18:02And I think many people thought that you couldn't win the Cold War,
18:06by which I don't mean that the West would therefore lose it.
18:09I think many people thought it was a sort of a given about the modern world
18:13and you couldn't really imagine it ending.
18:15And Reagan and Thatcher I think thought that they could,
18:19and this made them unusual.
18:22I think a lot of leaders were sort of treading water about the Cold War,
18:26and they didn't think about how everything could open up and change.
18:30So Reagan and Thatcher were on to that, and that made them different.
18:36The other thing is that they had the time.
18:39They didn't know they were going to have the time, of course,
18:42because it's a time of great uncertainty.
18:44This late movie will begin immediately following this special broadcast.
18:48At 25 minutes after 2 this afternoon,
18:51President Reagan emerged from the Washington Hilton.
18:56Ronald Reagan, President of the United States,
18:59suffered a wound in his left chest from a single .22 caliber bullet.
19:03Where inches count, that bullet missed his heart by inches.
19:08No one on the scene seemed to know that the President had been shot.
19:12Even he did not realize it at first.
19:15The suspect, John Hinckley, had apparently been standing in the press area
19:20just behind where I was standing with other news people.
19:23Hinckley was instantly subdued, sped away,
19:26left there, the victims of this senseless afternoon drama.
19:32Well, she was horrified, to be quite honest. I think we all were.
19:35She was very, very upset and was desperate to speak to anyone at the White House.
19:43I was holding the emergency meeting after the assassination attempt,
19:49and one of the first messages to come in was from Mrs Thatcher.
19:54It was one of the first messages I took to the President
19:57in the hospital as soon as I was able to see him.
20:02Later that year, his recovery complete,
20:05Reagan appeared to be a man on a mission to turn the tide in the Cold War.
20:14Thank you very much.
20:16Back in April, while in the hospital,
20:19I had, as you can readily understand, a lot of time for reflection.
20:23Today, I wish to reaffirm America's commitment to the Atlantic Alliance
20:29and our resolve to sustain the peace.
20:32I would like to discuss more specifically the growing threat to Western Europe,
20:37which is posed by the continuing deployment
20:41of certain Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
20:45The great cities, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin,
20:50and so many more, all within range of these missiles.
20:54The only answer to these systems is a comparable threat to Soviet targets.
20:59These missiles are to be deployed in several countries of Western Europe.
21:09This plan, which would lead to American cruise missiles being based in Britain,
21:14actually predated Reagan and Thatcher.
21:17What was new was the determination of them acting together to make it happen.
21:24As Reagan's advisor on arms control, Ken Edelman, explained to me.
21:29Charles, good to see you again.
21:31Up in the sky, lovely to see you.
21:33It's been too long.
21:35The whole idea of the Euromissiles, the INF, Intermediate Nuclear Force,
21:39started because they had the missiles aimed at our allies' capitals
21:44and therefore we're going to have to threaten their capital.
21:48It was a very, very bold decision
21:51and Prime Minister Thatcher supported that decision.
21:55Well, the posting of the intermediate nuclear weapons
22:00was an operation to which Margaret Thatcher attached great importance
22:05because it went to the heart of her belief
22:08that you negotiated with the Russians through strength.
22:13APPLAUSE
22:16We face in the Soviet Union a power whose declared aim
22:21is to bury Western civilisation.
22:24We have no choice but to retain sufficient nuclear weapons
22:29to make it clear to any would-be aggressors
22:32that the consequences of an attack on us would be disastrous for them.
22:37Of course, there was a good deal of resistance to that
22:40from the campaign for nuclear disarmament in Britain.
22:47Support for a nuclear-free Europe, opposition to cruise missiles.
22:52It's we who represent the majority of the British people.
22:57In 1981, a quarter of a million people marched through London
23:01to protest against Thatcher's acceptance of US nukes on British soil.
23:06Greenham Common Air Base, one of Britain's two proposed sites,
23:10was surrounded by a headline-grabbing all-women peace camp.
23:18Demonstrations at Greenham have made clear the feelings of many people here
23:22that they do not want to be a prime nuclear target,
23:25and opinion polls show that a majority in the country as a whole
23:29would now like to see the cruise banned from Britain.
23:32It had to be faced, and she did face it.
23:37And you could also be sure that if she had set her hand to something,
23:42she wouldn't be put off by any opposition.
23:46And to those who want us to close down the American nuclear bases in this country,
23:51let me say this.
23:54We in Britain cannot honourably shelter under the American nuclear umbrella
24:01and simultaneously say to our American friends,
24:05you may defend our homes with your home-based missiles,
24:09but you may not base those missiles anywhere near our homes.
24:15The determination, the resolution she showed,
24:18I think that was an important thing in her relationship with Reagan.
24:22I think that established her, to the extent that it wasn't already established,
24:29the spirit and the determination that he admired.
24:35Mrs Thatcher said something like,
24:38the best thing for a friendship is to work on something together.
24:43That's what they did. That's what they did.
24:47Of course, I'm talking to somebody who knows more about Margaret Thatcher
24:50than anyone else, but my impression of Margaret Thatcher is that she's a very,
24:56I won't say lonely, but she is alone.
24:59No-one knows what to make of her.
25:01And Ronald Reagan, he is also politically alone.
25:05So I believe they validate each other.
25:10Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are about to take on the world,
25:15but neither one is ever alone again.
25:20As with any relationship, Thatcher and Reagan had their ups and downs,
25:24and in early 1982, with their new strategy for the Cold War barely begun,
25:29they had their first big falling out.
25:35I'm going to speak to someone who saw their argument as it happened, Bill Martin.
25:40Good morning, Charles. Good morning, Bill. Great to see you.
25:43Pleasure to have you at our home. Lovely to be here.
25:46I began in my era with Margaret Thatcher to see conflict,
25:50but if you go back to the reason for this, it was sanctions.
25:54Can you tell us about that?
25:56Part of the reason I was brought into the White House at that point in time
25:59was to develop an economic plan to destroy the Soviet Union.
26:03Ronald Reagan, right in the beginning, said,
26:05we don't need to fight a Cold War here, what really matters are the economics.
26:10How can this Soviet Union, who meets us as a superpower,
26:13how do they get their money?
26:15And we basically had to follow the money.
26:19More than half of the Soviet Union's foreign currency
26:22came from selling oil and gas.
26:25And a vast new pipeline was being planned
26:28to pump even more gas from Siberia to Western Europe.
26:35Reagan wanted quick results, and if we could stop that pipeline,
26:39we could stop a major cash flow to the Soviet Union.
26:42Call the City Desk, I've got a story that will crack this town wide open.
26:47I imposed an embargo on selected oil and gas equipment
26:51to penalize this sector of the Soviet economy
26:54which relies heavily on high technology.
26:57It's no secret that our allies didn't agree with this action.
27:00I went to Europe at least four times, to the UK, France, Germany.
27:05I heard the European outcry over this.
27:08They thought Reagan was a man of free trade,
27:10and here the first thing he does is to come out against free trade.
27:14I told this to President Reagan in the Oval Office.
27:16The President said that the Europeans were not standing up,
27:20and he said we have to show our displeasure,
27:23and one way to do it is to continue to try to stop the pipeline.
27:27Margaret Thatcher said,
27:29I resent these attempts to tell the United Kingdom
27:34who we should trade with.
27:36We all decide that. We're a sovereign government.
27:38We resent the fact the United States is threatening sanctions.
27:41And she said that publicly.
27:43And naturally we feel particularly deeply wounded by a friend.
27:50I would just like to say one thing.
27:52We've been a staunch friend to the United States,
27:55and we must continue to be.
27:57The alliance must hold, because that is in our interest.
28:01But from that basis, we must be pretty frank with our American friends.
28:06This is quite strong language.
28:08She was his friend.
28:10It's hard when leaders meet other leaders.
28:12They're not friends.
28:14Mrs. Thatcher reacted with a waving handbag.
28:20It's quite wrong to suggest that however supportive she was of Reagan,
28:26and however much she felt it was her duty to be supportive,
28:31it was no subservience at all.
28:36It was a very robust relationship.
28:39She was fierce on this particular issue.
28:42Mrs Thatcher was deeply worried
28:45that sanctions would hurt the British economy.
28:48And she reminded Reagan that a damaging split
28:51between America and Europe
28:53could undermine their agreed strategy for the Cold War.
29:01His reaction to her logic can be found here in Simi Valley, California,
29:05Reagan's home state, and where his archives are kept.
29:12Here's a meeting that takes place 26th February 1982
29:16in the National Security Council.
29:18More discussion about the Siberian pipeline,
29:21and the president says,
29:25I must take the blame for having been careless.
29:28Now Maggie Thatcher has made me realise that I've been wrong.
29:32He's belatedly realising that this isn't just US domestic policy.
29:37This is across the alliance,
29:39and therefore he has to consider that dimension.
29:42And he's much more likely to consider it from that dimension
29:45if Mrs Thatcher tells him to than if the European allies tell him to.
29:51The pipeline spat rumbled on for many more months,
29:55until Reagan decided to find another way to hurt the Soviet economy
29:59and cancelled all sanctions.
30:02The special relationship had passed an important test.
30:06They'd had their first big fight.
30:10Every one of those disagreements or disputes or difficulties was honest.
30:16They were always trying to do the best by each other
30:19in this cause of reviving the West
30:25and bringing an end to the Soviet danger.
30:33Because we can't be divided.
30:36Our relationship and the alliance is far too staunch
30:40and far too deep for that.
30:44As Reagan and Thatcher entered their second year in power together,
30:48their special relationship was close.
30:53But achieving their shared goals for the Cold War
30:56seemed as remote as ever.
30:58And then one of Reagan's Latin American allies invaded British territory.
31:11Good evening.
31:12Tonight, a naval confrontation between Britain and Argentina
31:15looms in the southern Atlantic,
31:17after the Falkland Islands, a British possession for 150 years, are invaded.
31:21In the past hour, the Argentine government has reported
31:24to have issued a statement saying that the British governor
31:27of the Falklands has surrendered unconditionally to Argentine forces.
31:31In her whole time in office, conceivably even in her life,
31:35the Falklands War was when Mrs Thatcher lived most intensely.
31:38She was absolutely passionately caught up in this,
31:41both for personal reasons and patriotic reasons,
31:44and her feelings about the servicemen involved.
31:47So she always remembered how people had behaved at that time,
31:53and whether they'd been supportive and helpful
31:55or whether they'd sort of tried to run away from it or block it or whatever,
31:59or be what she would sometimes call a faint heart.
32:01It suddenly appeared, the whole thing,
32:04and everyone was absolutely shocked by what had happened,
32:09and she was very stressed about it.
32:14Reagan was one of the first people that she got on to,
32:18outside of this country.
32:21Although Argentina was ruled by a military dictatorship,
32:25to Reagan, it was an ally in the fight against Communism
32:28on America's doorstep.
32:34And he announced his neutrality at a press conference
32:37five days into the crisis.
32:41It's a very difficult situation for the United States
32:44because we're friends with both of the countries engaged in this dispute.
32:49And we stand ready to do anything we can to help them,
32:52and what we hope for and would like to help in doing
32:55is have a peaceful resolution of this
32:58with no forceful action or no bloodshed.
33:05Ready to go?
33:07OK, well, we'll talk mainly about the Falklands, I think.
33:11When you think about all this, the Falklands,
33:14did you then have a strong sense of what President Reagan
33:17really wanted about this?
33:19Ideally, Reagan would have wanted to get this all sorted out nicely.
33:25I mean, after all, the Argentines were on the same side as us
33:28when it came to the Cold War.
33:30Can you enlighten us a bit on that?
33:34The invasion started on a Friday.
33:37The reason I know that is because my wife at the time was British,
33:41and I got home and she said to me,
33:43what are you doing about those bloody fascists?
33:46I said, what are you talking about?
33:48Well, they've invaded British territory.
33:51This goes on the entire weekend, you should know.
33:54I come back on the Monday, my boss was a man named Richard Pearl.
33:57I went to Richard and I said, what are we doing about the Falklands?
34:00He said, what do you care?
34:02I said, if you were home this weekend, you would care too.
34:05Well, he wasn't all that terribly interested.
34:08Britain's Falkland Islands Armada was setting sail from Portsmouth,
34:11led by two of the Navy's most powerful ships,
34:13the carriers Invincible and Hermes.
34:15They're being joined in the South Atlantic
34:17on the three-week 8,000-mile voyage
34:19by a second fleet sailing from the Mediterranean.
34:24From day one, Mrs Thatcher was clear-cut.
34:27If the Argentines would not abandon the Falklands,
34:30Britain must try to recover them by force.
34:35But as I found out in America,
34:37there were real doubts she could pull this off.
34:40And where do you want me?
34:42I think we want you there, please, opposite.
34:45The distances were enormous.
34:48The forces that the British could commit in this enterprise
34:52were relatively small.
34:54There was a view in parts of the State Department
34:58that it wasn't at all clear
35:01that the British were going to be able to prevail in this conflict.
35:05One reason the United States might have been a bit slow
35:08to engage on the British side
35:10is that this was such a tremendous shock for Britain,
35:13and therefore it could be that it were all going to go wrong for Britain,
35:16that Mrs Thatcher, untested in war,
35:18would be unable to do this, or politically unable to do it.
35:21And, you know, maybe it would actually be more prudent
35:24just to let Britain lose gently, get some sort of UN solution.
35:29My sense is what you're probably characterising is Hague's,
35:33something close to where Hague was.
35:37Alexander Hague was Reagan's Secretary of State,
35:40in charge of his foreign policy.
35:43Hague arrived in London shortly after Britain's task force sailed
35:47and tried to undermine everything Mrs Thatcher was striving for.
35:53Do you accept that Britain has the right
35:55to try to regain what it regards as its territory?
35:58I'm here not to provide value judgments in public,
36:02but to see what I can do to assist.
36:04But do you think that the British fleet...
36:07I think the situation is very tense and very difficult.
36:12Hague, I think, was more interested in winning, frankly,
36:16with all due respect to his memory,
36:18was more interested in winning a Nobel Peace Prize than anything else.
36:21Convince the Brits that this isn't really going to succeed terribly well.
36:26Convince the Argentines, don't go too far.
36:30Sort of patch it all up and win your Nobel Peace Prize.
36:33But, you know, the President wasn't going to undercut Hague.
36:38Barely a week had passed since the Falklands crisis began,
36:41but Thatcher and Reagan, otherwise closely allied,
36:44found themselves at odds with each other.
36:51I'm going to speak to a witness to this difficult moment,
36:54Mrs Thatcher's number two diplomat in Washington, Robin Rennick.
36:59Very good to see you. Thank you very much.
37:01Hague, you know, came up with a series of proposals,
37:06every single one of which, as he later confessed
37:10in the National Security Council,
37:12was intended to achieve a disguised,
37:16delayed transfer of sovereignty to Argentina,
37:20which she didn't fail to notice in every one of these proposals.
37:25The American Secretary of State finds Mrs Thatcher
37:28in uncompromising mood on the Falklands.
37:33We warned Hague before he set off
37:35what he was going to encounter at the other end,
37:38which was Thatcher saying,
37:40this is naked aggression and we're expecting your support,
37:44not your mediation.
37:46Now, she couldn't stop them trying to mediate, but she didn't like it.
37:50Thattle Hague was a confounded nuisance
37:53trying to achieve a settlement.
37:56From Mrs Thatcher's point of view, that was out.
38:00Britain declared that effective Friday morning
38:03its war zone around the Falklands would be totaled.
38:06Britain said it would shoot down or sink
38:09any unauthorised plane or ship that approaches the island.
38:12The total blockade would be a logical preliminary
38:16to an assault on the islands.
38:1820 days' supply of ammunition
38:20has been distributed among the fighting ships.
38:23The ships in the task force are now lined up in battle formation.
38:27The Pentagon assessment actually was
38:30that it would be extremely difficult for us to recover the islands.
38:33I mean, they weren't at all confident we could do it.
38:36We had no RAF cover.
38:39Our base was 6,000 miles from us.
38:42When you're staging an opposed landing,
38:45your forces are supposed to be 3 times the size of the enemy.
38:49It's not one-third the size of the enemy.
38:52Potentially more dangerous to the British
38:55are the 80 Argentine Skyhawk fighter bombers.
38:58Like these American Navy Skyhawks, they're American-built and equipped.
39:02With these, the Argentine Navy and Air Force
39:06could carry out massive missile attacks on the Royal Navy.
39:11So the British military attache at the time says to me,
39:15we've got a problem, and the problem was
39:18that, you know, you desperately needed our stuff.
39:22So I suggested to him, I said, look,
39:25we share Wide Awake Airfield on Ascension Island,
39:28which, of course, they had to go through to get to the Falklands.
39:31I said, suppose you tell us what you want.
39:34We'll put them in our warehouses, all the equipment,
39:37and then whatever you take, you pay for, but nothing else.
39:40Well, he loved the idea.
39:43I would go to London, find out what MOD wanted,
39:47and I would take a cab from Heathrow.
39:50And invariably, the cabbies would give me hell.
39:53We fought alongside you in World War II,
39:56and you bloody Yanks won't lift a finger for us.
39:59Here I am going to the MOD to do just that.
40:02And you couldn't say, of course. No.
40:06Did we know what we wanted?
40:08Well, I assume that after all these years,
40:11not all of this is classified anymore,
40:14but I'll give a couple of examples.
40:17One was essentially landing mats, which are temporary airfields.
40:21Very, very important, because you didn't have the airfields.
40:25And then there was a request for Sidewinder missiles.
40:29We were able to take to them the request
40:32for 105 AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles, state-of-the-art missiles.
40:38Without the Sidewinder missiles,
40:41we could not have recovered the Falklands.
40:44Where did Pentagon draw the line about what Britain could be given?
40:48To my knowledge, I was never told no.
40:51Weinberger, who at the time was the Secretary of Defence,
40:54he let me do what I needed to do,
40:57because the objective was that Britain won this war,
41:00would win this war, absolutely.
41:02And do you know whether Weinberger
41:05sought the agreement to the President, or did he just do it?
41:08I don't think he just did it.
41:10I don't think he did things like that behind the President.
41:13And, you know, he...
41:15Remember, he had a close relationship with the President.
41:18They went back a long way.
41:20The President himself had this to say about military aid to Britain.
41:24At this moment, we've had no request for anything of such help
41:28from the United Kingdom.
41:30I think there were sort of, basically,
41:32inconsistent policies being played out.
41:35Militarily, on a covert level,
41:37we were doing a lot to support the British.
41:40So that was going on.
41:42But I think the President was supportive
41:45of the potential diplomatic solution.
41:49If he came to war, Reagan wanted Britain to win it.
41:53But his preferred solution remained a negotiated settlement
41:56between his two allies.
41:59Peace is our common cause.
42:02In the interest of finding a solution,
42:04I've asked Secretary Haig
42:06to return shortly to Argentina for further talks.
42:09The last time you spoke, you said that both sides were our friends,
42:13and you implied that there was a certain even-handedness in our attitude.
42:16Is that still our position?
42:18We are still trying to be a fair broker in this.
42:21On three occasions,
42:23he was egged on by Haig to ring her up
42:26and urge her to make peace not war, and so on.
42:30And she explained to him in excruciating detail
42:34why she wasn't going to do that.
42:36Mrs Thatcher made the point very strongly to him
42:40that dictators cannot be allowed to invade territory,
42:46otherwise no small country is going to feel safe.
42:53Throughout the day of Friday, May the 21st,
42:56helicopters shuttled backwards and forwards,
42:58bringing in more men and supplies.
43:01Later that day, the Argentines realised that the landing had taken place,
43:05and the first aerial attacks began.
43:09Argentine Skyhawk jets came in time and again
43:12to bomb British positions and British ships.
43:15The frigate HMS Ardent was hit in one of those raids.
43:19Her crew tried for hours to control the damage,
43:22but ultimately they had to abandon her.
43:24HMS Ardent sank later that night.
43:2722 members of her crew perished, 17 were injured.
43:31For a long time, she was very agitated.
43:36In her bedroom, there was a lovely fireplace
43:39with those two little bars of electricity that go along,
43:43and we sat on each side of that.
43:45I'd probably sort of be dozing off.
43:48She was sleeping in her clothes, dropping off,
43:51because the reason that she wouldn't go to bed at night
43:54was because all the information about what was happening down in the Falklands
44:00came in overnight.
44:02It was like that for the entire war.
44:06Tonight, the British flag is flying over two settlements
44:09as the strike force widens its bridgehead.
44:12An area of at least 10 square miles is now under British control.
44:16It's the first step in a long process.
44:19Two servicemen died during the landings.
44:21Two were missing, and 27 were wounded.
44:24Now, the final conversation, 31 May,
44:27was when we'd already landed on the Falklands.
44:31The State Department gave Ronald Reagan talking points,
44:34asking her to support a UN initiative
44:38that would have withdrawn the British forces,
44:41would have replaced them with a UN presence,
44:44and would have had some sort of a face-saving surrender for the Argentinians.
44:50She strongly pushed back.
44:54And she said, we have lost ships,
44:57we have lost servicemen to get these islands back,
45:01and that is what we're going to do, Ron, and nothing else will do.
45:05And Ronald Reagan collapsed.
45:08He completely agreed with Margaret Thatcher,
45:12and that idea disappeared.
45:15And it was badly timed, and it ran straight into Margaret Thatcher
45:20and couldn't possibly survive.
45:23To the Prime Minister, any compromise that left the Argentinians
45:27with any involvement in the Falkland Islands was utterly unacceptable.
45:32During the landings at different points, there was persistent naval bombardment.
45:37The air was thick with cordite.
45:40Only one of the units encountered resistance ashore.
45:44We fight for peace with freedom and justice,
45:47and our people down there have had their peace shattered,
45:50their freedom taken away, and they have no justice.
45:53And it's always expensive in life as well as in money,
45:58and it's the life that's more important than the money to restore it.
46:02Our forefathers did it for us,
46:05and we mustn't flinch from doing the same.
46:09Thatcher's indomitability was intended to stiffen spines at home.
46:15But it was noted across the world on both sides in the Cold War.
46:20If I were sitting in Moscow, I would have taken notice.
46:24The Soviets realised that she was one tough lady
46:27and wouldn't back down easily.
46:29Yes.
46:30And given that she had this relationship with Reagan,
46:34that was very important.
46:37But in her archives is evidence that Mrs Thatcher did compromise.
46:43In early May, with British victory far from certain,
46:46Reagan had pushed her into agreeing a potential peace deal.
46:51Mrs Thatcher found herself in the position where she felt
46:54she had to accept it, but she also felt that it was unacceptable.
46:58While she was sort of wrestling with this,
47:01she drafted this letter to President Reagan.
47:04Perhaps you will now see why I feel so deeply about this.
47:08That our traditional friendship should have brought me
47:11and those I represent into conflict
47:14with fundamental democratic principles
47:16sounds impossible while you are at the White House
47:20and I am at Number 10.
47:22Because one of the things about these proposals
47:24was they would have left Argentine troops in the Falkland Islands
47:27and they would not have respected the rights of the islanders
47:30to self-determination.
47:32But it's absolutely personal.
47:34It's only you, Ron, I can talk to about this.
47:37And we are friends and our countries are friends
47:40and we share these beliefs, and yet we're proposing to do this.
47:43Reagan had no doubted goodwill to her,
47:45but she's really, really laying it down on the line
47:48about how much this matters and how disappointed she is.
47:52The letter was overtaken by events,
47:55as the Argentines rejected the peace plan it discussed.
48:00And on 7th June, with the Falklands War still going on,
48:05Mrs Thatcher welcomed Reagan to Britain,
48:08his first visit to her since becoming president.
48:11There will be opportunities for talks with Mrs Thatcher.
48:14There's going to be a speech to the combined Houses of Parliament
48:18and no doubt behind the scenes there will be a lot of discussion
48:21about the Falkland Islands crisis.
48:23I think by this stage in the Falklands War
48:27there wasn't really a problem any more about winning.
48:31What was important, though, to Mrs Thatcher
48:33was to get the leader of the free world to endorse what had happened.
48:38Victory had pretty well been accomplished
48:40and she could see the opportunity to take advantage of that.
48:44TRUMPET FANFARE
48:56My Lord Chancellor, Mr Speaker,
48:59on distant islands in the South Atlantic,
49:02young men are fighting for Britain.
49:06And yes, voices have been raised
49:08protesting their sacrifice for lumps of rock and earth so far away.
49:14But those young men aren't fighting for mere real estate.
49:18They fight for a cause,
49:20for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed
49:25and the people must participate in the decisions of government.
49:31Reagan's speech went down extremely well with Mrs Thatcher
49:34and she felt that he had firmly come down on the right side
49:37after a bit of wobble.
49:39She could not have been more pleased
49:41and he turned her victory into the great narrative of the Cold War,
49:45if you like.
49:48Thatcher and Reagan always maintained
49:51that in standing up to the Soviet Union,
49:53they were fighting for freedom.
49:56The Falklands War had appeared to threaten their joint project.
50:00But in the end, they emerged closer than ever.
50:12I have just heard that the white flag is flying over Stanley.
50:19When our flag was flying again over the islands
50:23and she went out into the main street,
50:26she was out in the street.
50:28It was after dark, if you remember.
50:30I never had any doubts.
50:32I never had any doubts that we had to do it.
50:34I never had any doubts in our armed forces.
50:37I knew it would be difficult, but I knew that they would do it.
50:41When she came back in,
50:43there was a certain amount of conversation in the front hall
50:46and we went up to the flat, ostensibly to have a drink,
50:51and she broke down.
50:58What do you think happened to the Reagan-Thatcher relationship
51:02as a result of the Falklands?
51:04I would say two things happened.
51:06One, Margaret Thatcher came to recognize
51:08that she could have some real influence on Reagan,
51:11that if she worked on Reagan, invested in that relationship,
51:15she could really influence him.
51:17She could have an impact.
51:20The second thing, though, from Reagan's perspective,
51:23I think he came to really admire and respect
51:26and even to some extent fear Margaret Thatcher.
51:30The word fear is interesting. Why would he fear her?
51:33Just personal dynamics.
51:35He was not a man who liked confrontation.
51:37He avoided it.
51:39You know, his whole story, his whole life,
51:42growing up with a difficult situation at home,
51:45the father who was apparently an alcoholic.
51:48You know, I think he just didn't...
51:51He never liked face-to-face confrontation.
51:58MUSIC PLAYS
52:01The women started a candlelit vigil at the main gate.
52:04Some have been at Greenham for two years.
52:07In that time, there have been hundreds of arrests,
52:09thousands of troops have been tied up guarding the base
52:12and millions of pounds have been spent policing the perimeter.
52:16A year after the Falklands,
52:18the special relationship faced another crucial test,
52:22because Reagan and Thatcher's Cold War strategy
52:25was in danger of unravelling.
52:281983, we call the year of the missile,
52:32or the year of the Euromissile,
52:34because this is when the five deployment countries,
52:37including the UK, were deploying the cruise missiles.
52:41The protests were, to put it in American terms,
52:45were similar to the kind of anti-Vietnam protests
52:49of the late 60s and early 70s.
52:53West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy
52:56had all initially agreed to join Britain
52:58in taking American cruise missiles.
53:01But as the protests spread across Europe,
53:04the Dutch indefinitely postponed accepting these nuclear weapons.
53:09If others pulled out, it might be seen as defiance of Reagan.
53:13This could have serious consequences.
53:17Ronald Reagan was as likely as any other American
53:20to dismiss certain Europeans as a feat or decadent.
53:24And if the sense of a shared enterprise began to fray
53:30and simply to evaporate,
53:34that would be a serious problem for the United States.
53:38It would find itself struggling to prevent itself
53:41from becoming isolated in the world.
53:43The American defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger,
53:46has made it clear to NATO defence ministers
53:49that Washington sees the cruise as a test of European willingness
53:52to shoulder the risks of Western defence.
53:55As the dispute over missiles threatened to tear
53:58the Western alliance apart,
54:00the strength of the special relationship
54:03was one of the few things holding it together.
54:08Mrs Thatcher, I remember the pressure she was under
54:12because the four other countries in Europe
54:15that had agreed to take those missiles
54:17were all in the process of having a kind of nervous breakdown.
54:23It all came to a head in May 1983.
54:28When Reagan welcomed the world leaders to Williamsburg
54:31for a G7 summit, Mrs Thatcher made a bold suggestion to him.
54:37To prevent the dispute over US nukes in Europe dividing the West,
54:41the G7 needed to get behind this plan.
54:47G7s basically focused on economics exclusively
54:52and a lot of preparation goes into economic growth and trade.
54:56When Margaret Thatcher suggested that nuclear missiles be discussed,
55:01it came as a surprise to Ronald Reagan.
55:04But instead of talking about interest rates,
55:07the leaders met in person, alone,
55:11at head of state meeting, chaired by Ronald Reagan.
55:15And if heads of state didn't agree to it,
55:18that would be the end of our deployment of missiles.
55:22Advisors were outside, one of them even said,
55:25Mr President, you're going to have to take notes.
55:28The president said, well, thank you, I can take notes.
55:32At the coffee break, the president comes out
55:35and he looks very worried, and I have a picture where you can see this,
55:38very concerned, he says, it's not working.
55:42What do I do?
55:44We basically say, just go back in there, Mr President, do the best you can.
55:48It was a wild scene.
55:51Just the seven heads were in the room arguing amongst themselves
55:55and I walked in there and everybody was milling around
55:59and the president, Reagan, was sort of in the corner, shaking his head,
56:04he didn't want to get in the middle of this.
56:06And the only person that stood solidly behind this
56:10and worked with us every step of the way
56:13were the British, led by Margaret Thatcher.
56:18Reagan comes out after that, smiling.
56:21It was done.
56:24West Germany had confirmed they'd take American missiles along with the UK.
56:28Italy had followed suit.
56:31And the G7 produced a statement unanimously backing the deployment.
56:36President Reagan was also joined by his wife, Nancy,
56:40for a celebration of the Williamsburg summit.
56:43The president said the summit had left him more confident than ever
56:46of the health of the freeway of life.
56:48He proposed a toast to the causes that had brought them there
56:51and to Williamsburg itself.
56:53We would not have been able to have deployed those missiles successfully
56:59without Mrs Thatcher's full support.
57:04Where would you put Margaret Thatcher's role?
57:08Well, she was indispensable.
57:10She was his best friend.
57:12She was his only confidant.
57:14Her constant advice.
57:16And, by the way, in these meetings, she would speak 90% of the time.
57:21And there were a lot of yes, Margarets.
57:27Mrs Thatcher thought that the special relationship
57:32with the United States was a key to Britain's successful presence in the world.
57:37By 1983, I would say, the relationship was accumulating strength
57:43and political power.
57:46So the message was, not only this is an important relationship,
57:52which was said very much in 1981, it was always said,
57:55but also we're winning.
57:57We're doing this together.
58:01And so it was ready, as people nowadays say, to be weaponized.
58:05That's not the right word when we're talking about war or Cold War.
58:10What it still lacked, though, even in 1983, was how do you do the next bit?
58:16You're installing the missiles, so what happens next?
58:21In the next episode, he has a change of heart.
58:24Ronald Reagan was just anti-nuclear.
58:27The beginning of a modern crusade for peace.
58:30She doesn't agree.
58:32He said, has the man gone mad?
58:35But as two becomes three, the Cold War begins to thaw.
58:40Yes, we can do business.
58:57We can do business.