While researching this book I interviewed a former minister in the Thatcher government. As we sat in his private members club, sipping tea and balancing biscuits on delicate china saucers, he told me that British ministers had given little thought to the human rights abuses being committed by the Argentine dictatorship in the years before the Falklands war. It was the Cold War he reminded me. I was surprised and impressed by his frankness, but when I wrote to him afterwards asking for permission to cite his exact words, he refused and instead supplied me with an anodyne quote which bore little relation to his previous remarks.

Interviewees can be unreliable sources for historians. It is hard for anyone to remember accurately events from decades before. Politicians, especially, can be prone to embellish or omit facts to ensure that they are remembered in the best possible light. But after a war, the temptation to embroider or erase is particularly great. It is therefore vital that we go back to the contemporary records to find out what government ministers and officials actually said at the time.

Using the newly-opened British government papers at the National Archives, this book looks at Britain’s relations with the Argentine dictatorship that came to power in 1976. It not only gives the most complete picture of British arms sales to the regime, providing evidence that ministers violated their own guidelines on human rights, but also outlines the political and military links between Britain and the junta. Neither Labour nor Conservative governments imposed any sanctions on the Argentine military government before the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Both governments promoted trade and sold military hardware that was later used against British forces.

In contrast, the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan (1974–1979) imposed a series of measures against the regime of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile that represented an early example of an ‘ethical’ foreign policy—an arms embargo, a refugee programme, the cutting of export credits and the withdrawal of the British ambassador. These measures were overturned when Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government came to power in 1979. While the British labour movement barely noticed the coup in Argentina in 1976, it had been horrified when Hawker Hunter planes bombed the Chilean presidential palace on 11 September 1973. Thirty years later, the Chilean coup still aroused passionate divisions among British politicians. Speaking to the Labour Party conference in 1999, Tony Blair confessed that he found General Pinochet ‘unspeakable’, while Peter Mandelson, an architect of New Labour, which sought to eradicate naïve leftism from the party’s ideology, declared that it would be ‘gut-wrenching’ if the former Chilean dictator evaded extradition to Spain. 1 Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her ex-chancellor Norman Lamont, meanwhile, spoke out in defence of Pinochet as a ‘friend of Britain’.

The opening of the archives has also made it possible to investigate whether the British government had economic or strategic reasons for retaining sovereignty over the Falkland Islands —a longstanding debate between Argentine and British academics and politicians. While the documentary record suggests that fear of a domestic political outcry over ‘selling-out’ the Islanders was the primary reason British politicians failed to reach a sovereignty deal with Argentina in this period, the evidence presented here shows that the British government and British oil companies were very interested in exploiting the oil in the waters around the Islands and that whenever cabinet ministers discussed the Falklands dispute, securing Britain’s access to the hydrocarbon and other marine resources was part of the calculations. This book also presents exclusive evidence that, during the Falklands War, ministers feared that losing the Islands could set a precedent for Britain’s territorial claim in Antarctica .

But this is not a history of the Falklands dispute, nor is it simply an account of Britain’s relations with two South American dictatorships; it is an investigation into the making of foreign policy. Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, it assesses the factors that influence policy-makers and considers the role of private companies and banks, politicians and party ideology, and the media. It gauges the extent to which human right groups, solidarity campaigns and other social movements can have an impact on policy.

The attitudes of British diplomats and officials are also looked at closely. British diplomats welcomed the coups in both Chile and Argentina and sought to dissuade Labour ministers from taking any type of sanction against the military regimes. In this Cold War period, they were profoundly suspicious of radicalism both at home and abroad. British business leaders shared these attitudes and were critical of any policies that might ‘sour the atmosphere’ for those who wished to invest or trade with these dictatorships. This book examines the narrow social background of British officials and traces the informal social networks between diplomats, officials, business leaders, and other influential figures such as newspaper editors, peers and Conservative politicians. It argues that theoretical approaches to foreign policy-making should not ignore the social class of state officials nor the social context in which they operate. Similarly, when analysing how social movements can influence policy, it is important to consider the existing biases of policy-makers and their informal links to the private sector or other influential societal groups.

One of the central themes of this work is the extent to which elected politicians have the freedom to implement policy and how far they are constrained by external factors: the agency-structure debate. One of the main divisions among international relations theorists is between those who focus on relationships between states and those who think it important to look at how decisions are made within states. Informed by foreign policy analysts who seek to ‘open the black box’ of the decision-making process, this study looks closely at how policy is made. 2 While acknowledging that policy-makers may be constrained by systemic factors, it accepts that there is, in Christopher Hill’s words, a ‘decisional space’ in which politicians can choose between different policy options or, as Gaskarth has put it: ‘The British government retains the capacity to make political choices and these decisions have important effects.’ 3 It accepts too, as Carlsnaes notes, that neither the individual (the national politician) nor the structure (the international area) is an immutable separate entity: each continually influences and shapes the other. 4 The book is based on the premise that the state remains a legitimate focus of study for understanding international relations, despite the growth of transnational organisations, such as multinational corporations or international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Certainly, during the period under study—the 1970s and 1980s—and to a large extent today, nation states retain a capacity to shape the rules of the international game, formulating policies on key areas such as trade, tax and immigration. 5

A politician may have the freedom to make foreign-policy choices within the constraints of international circumstances, but there is another aspect of the agency-structure debate that is looked at more closely in these pages and that is the extent to which a politician is able to pursue his or her chosen policies in the face of bureaucratic opposition from the civil service. Or to put it another way, it asks who makes policy: the democratically-elected politician or the appointed official? David Vital, for example, once suggested that the very excellence of the Foreign Office bureaucratic machine, its efficiency and its competence, made its influence so formidable that the role of any Cabinet or Foreign Secretary could become marginal. 6 The question has been of particular interest to the left wing of the Labour party which, from Harold Laski and Stafford Cripps in the 1930s to Richard Crossman and Tony Benn in the 1960s and 1970s, has long held the suspicion that a conservative civil service will seek to undermine left-wing governments. 7 Crossman’s diaries were one of the sources of the BBC TV comedy Yes Minister, which portrayed Machiavellian civil servants as the real power behind the throne.

Foreign Office documents show that Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials welcomed the overthrow of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and were critical of British activists and Labour politicians who campaigned against the coup. Thus, the election of a Labour government determined to take radical measures against the Pinochet regime provides an opportunity to examine the power of the elected politician versus the bureaucrat. The governments of Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher shared with the Foreign Office a similar attitude towards the Pinochet regime, so there was little debate or antagonism between politicians and officials on policy towards Chile and there is therefore little scope to examine the power of the politician against the bureaucratic machine during those Conservative administrations.

In the case of Argentina, Labour did not seek to introduce tough sanctions against the junta, so once again there was less conflict in the policy-making process, although whenever Labour politicians did consider taking measures on human rights, the Foreign Office advocated moderation, warning of the risks to commercial and political relations. The politician versus bureaucrat debate does arise in the context of Argentina, however, as some British politicians and historians have accused the Foreign Office of pursuing, in an underhand manner, policies that were aimed at transferring the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands to Argentina, against the wishes of both Labour and Conservative governments. This claim is explored and judged to be unfounded.

One of the central propositions of this book is that the attitudes of British diplomats and state officials reflected, at least in part, their social class: their upbringing, education, their socio-economic and cultural status, and the social circles in which they moved. Theorists of Foreign Policy Analysis—the sub-set of international relations which has looked most closely at the decision-making process—have considered many attributes that might affect the decisions of policy-makers, including their psychology, their belief systems and the political culture in which they operate. Much useful work has been done on the functioning of bureaucracies, their structures, inter-departmental rivalries and the nuances of group dynamics. 8 But social class is a factor that has been overlooked. 9

The ‘critical’ approach to foreign policy-making proposed by Dunne, Hadfield and Smith, which emphasises the need to look at both agency and structure, and advocates a theoretically-informed reading of the primary sources, could allow for the class background and informal social networks of state officials to be considered; however the case studies in their collection have not done so. 10

There is a neo-Gramscian critique of international relations, following the work of Robert Cox, which introduces the idea of class and class conflict into the field of international relations; however, this work has been largely theoretical, rather than empirically or historically based, and it focuses on the international level rather than the national decision-making process. 11 Marxist-inspired dependency theorists, meanwhile, did seek to study class formation in both the metropolis and the periphery, but the state and decision-making were not their main focus of study. 12 If it is accepted, however, that national governments have the power to shape the framework within which countries interact and within which private companies operate, then the study of the decision-making process is a crucial question for those interested in power and social class. And by taking account of the social context in which these decisions are made, we can begin to identify the individuals or societal groups which have most influence on policy—accepting, of course, that these state-societal relations will vary in different historical periods and from country to country.

The Foreign Office has long drawn its recruits from a narrow stratum of society. Originally recruited from the aristocracy, by the end of the nineteenth century, officials were increasingly being drawn from the class which Cain and Hopkins have described as ‘gentlemanly capitalists’, consisting of landowners and rich professionals from the fields of finance, law or other services who had re-invested in land and through their wealth, inter-marriage and public-school education had been elevated into the social elite. 13 This southern-centred elite, which dominated the ancient universities, the civil service, the armed forces, the church, the City and the major professions, was socially separate from, and may have looked down upon, the manufacturing magnates of the great northern cities such as Manchester and Liverpool. However, after the Second World War, the financial and industrial elites became more socially intertwined, as the City became more involved in financing large scale industry, as corporations became more important wealth creators than individuals, as productive manufacturing businesses came under the control of banks, and as industrialists themselves invested in land and adopted the lifestyle of the ‘gentlemanly capitalists’. 14 One illustration of this social transformation is the change in careers of Oxford graduates: in 1917 no graduate went into industry or commerce (all were employed in education or public service), whereas by 1958, as many as 50% found employment within industrial or commercial firms. 15

Labour party intellectual Harold Laski memorably described the Foreign Office in the 1930s as a ‘nest of public school singing birds’, and throughout the twentieth century, the proportion of recruits who attended fee-paying schools remained high, despite the reforms following the Fulton Report of 1968, which aimed to make it easier for people from humbler backgrounds to reach top jobs in the diplomatic service. 16 In the period 1950–1954, 83% of recruits to the Foreign Office had attended private school. Ten years later, the proportion had fallen to 68%; but the figure for the top-ranking posts was higher: more than 80% of ambassadors and senior FCO officials in 1961 had attended fee-paying schools (and these public-school educated ambassadors took all the most prestigious postings, such as Paris, Berlin and New York). 17 Even by 1993, 66% of the fast-track entrants to the FCO—those destined for the top posts—had attended public school. 18 They were also overwhelmingly male: in 1991, only 3.4% of the top grades in the FCO were women, which added to the clubbish nature of the Foreign Office. 19 A survey conducted for this book of diplomats dealing with policy towards Argentina and Chile in the 1970s and 1980s found that more than 75% had attended fee-paying schools. 20 Most Foreign Office officials were also graduates of Oxford or Cambridge; in 1966, 84% of successful applicants for the diplomatic service came from these two universities; by 1989, this had fallen only slightly to 73%. 21 When a senior diplomat claimed in 1977 that recruitment to the Diplomatic Service was wide open, Labour MP Neville Sandelson retorted: ‘Like the Ritz’. 22

While few deny that FCO officials are recruited from a narrow social base, Theakston and others have argued that it is hard to draw a straightforward connection between diplomats’ class backgrounds and their views. 23 Certainly, a number of caveats need to be made. Working class Jim Callaghan got on better with FCO officials than the young middle-class upstart David Owen, although Callaghan did make sure he distributed Labour Party manifestos to FCO staff on becoming Foreign Secretary. 24 Similarly trade unionist Ernest Bevin—who liked to boast that he was educated ‘in the hedgerows of experience’—was well-respected, even loved, by the FCO, while aristocrat Tony Benn was always highly suspicious of the civil service. 25 So clearly social class—particularly that of a single individual—cannot be the only indicator of a person’s views and cannot be the only indicator worth evaluating.

There was also a range of views among FCO officials, although this remained within a narrow spectrum from conservative to conservatively moderate and all new recruits imbibed the ethos of gentlemanly capitalism that permeated the institution. But, the Foreign Office always kept a certain autonomy; diplomats prided themselves on seeing the ‘overall picture’ and certainly did not act as the ‘arm’ of the business-owning class. In fact, other government departments, such as the Ministry of Defence sales section, had a much closer relationship with the private sector, sometimes acting as virtual lobbyists for arms companies and chafing against any restrictions on sales opportunities. The Departments of Energy and Trade also had close links with the oil and manufacturing companies. To some extent, the FCO saw itself as an arbitrator between departments and these bureaucratic rivalries—or differences of institutional perspective—are explored throughout the work.

It should also be emphasised that Foreign Office attitudes evolved during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the social composition of recruits changed. Otte, who accepts that the mindset of officials did reflect their social class and, in particular, their public-school education, concluded in his study of the nineteenth-century: ‘Foreign Office Mind’ that it was elitist, non-intellectual, had a strong code of honour and a belief in public service. While it understood that security underpinned Britain’s status in the world, it concentrated on political aspects of policy and did not narrowly reflect the financial or commercial interests of the class from which it came. 26 Jones too emphasises the nineteenth-century British diplomat’s reluctance to become a direct advocate of British merchants and bankers in Argentina. 27 The Foreign Office ‘mind’ may have changed again in the late twentieth century as the recruitment base widened and Britain’s manufacturing sector shrank. But this study suggests that in the decades following the Second World War, the Foreign Office shared the business community’s outlook that trade and investment should be promoted regardless of the nature of the recipient regime, and shows that many diplomats—and businessmen—thought military governments were beneficial for British business because they brought stability. Did this view reflect the class outlook of diplomats? A number of objections may be made. Firstly, most of the population shared the view that promoting British exports was in the national interest; it was the hegemonic view, and certainly Labour ministers—particularly the ministers for employment, trade and industry—argued vigorously for trade with the Argentine military regime. Another objection is that it was the job of the Foreign Office to promote trade. At least since the nineteenth century, one of the aims of British foreign policy had been to ensure security for British trading interests. It was a short step from protection to promotion and the Committee on Overseas Representation (the Duncan Committee) in 1969 specifically urged diplomats to promote British business abroad, leading to complaints that ambassadors were to become little more than ‘travelling salesmen’. 28 In this post-war period, it was a central objective of successive British governments to avoid balance of payments deficits and the dangers to sterling that these could bring. Securing contracts to protect British manufacturing jobs was also an important concern.

In the case of Chile, however, when a class-conscious trade union movement at the height of its militancy in the 1970s, backed by Labour politicians, demanded action against the Pinochet regime, there was a clear difference between the outlook of Foreign Office officials and the labour movement, and this may be attributed to differing class outlooks. The Foreign Office favoured stability over radicalism, criticising the chaos under Allende and predicting that the Pinochet regime would be better for British business. The FCO was staunchly anti-Communist in this Cold War period; many officials were critical of human rights campaigners and Chile Solidarity activists, suspecting that they had underlying ‘political’ motives, by which they meant left-wing or pro-Communist objectives. The Foreign Office believed that Britain’s commercial interests should be put above ethical considerations and were against ending arms sales, cutting export credits and withdrawing the British ambassador.

There was less of a clash of views between the labour movement and Whitehall in the case of Argentina, because the left had not taken up Argentina as a cause in the same way. The Labour Party regarded Peronism as akin to fascism and did not mourn the overthrow of the corrupt and repressive government presided over by Juan Perón’s widow. Chile, on the other hand, was viewed as a clear-cut case of a democratically-elected socialist being ousted by a fascist dictator. Nevertheless, the pro-business attitude of the Foreign Office can be seen in its consistent advocacy of closer commercial ties with the Argentina junta, despite the growing awareness of the gross human rights abuses being perpetrated by the regime. Indeed, in the absence of a strong lobby, the de facto policy of the Foreign Office towards all the military regimes of South America, including Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, was to impose no sanctions and to continue to promote trade, including arms sales. Britain had a particularly strong relationship with the military regime of Brazil, inviting dictator General Ernesto Geisel on a state visit in 1976 and providing the Brazilian armed forces with British military training manuals. 29

Henry Fairlie, the Spectator journalist who coined the phrase ‘the Establishment’ wrote: ‘By its traditions and its methods of recruitment the Foreign Office makes it inevitable that the members of the Foreign Service will be men…who “know all the right people”.’ 30 Using primary sources, this study traces the informal social networks between Foreign Office officials and business leaders, financial executives, newspaper editors and some Conservative politicians. They were often members of the same private clubs—such as the Athenaeum in Pall Mall or the Carlton in St. James’s Street—and they attended the same seminars, lunches and drinks parties in Belgravia. Business executives had numerous informal channels of access to the Foreign Office; officials regularly reported conversations with representatives of—for example BP, Rothschild or GEC —whom they had met at a function or had spoken to on the phone. This elite often shared a common social and educational background, having attended the same universities and fee-paying schools, and bought property in similarly wealthy parts of cities or affluent villages. They often had common cultural interests, reading the same newspapers or following the same sports, such as horse racing or cricket. These repeated informal and semi-formal encounters therefore had a dual role, reinforcing existing social and political affinities, as well as giving private sector representatives direct access to policy-makers.

Ambassadors and embassy staff in Chile and Argentina socialised in an even more tightly-knit social milieu, comprising the British business community, many of whom were virulently right wing and in favour of military rule, along with upper-class Argentines and Chileans, including military officers. Embassy functions, drinks funded by private companies, polo matches, dinner parties, as well as the more formal tasks of hosting trade missions or meeting Argentine or Chilean government officials, were all part of the British diplomat’s life in South America. The common upbringing and education, socio-economic status and social connections, may not have been the only factors determining the views of Foreign Office officials, but there is a strong case for arguing they contributed to the convergence of views between the Foreign Office and Britain’s financial and commercial elites. Certainly, the Foreign Office, as an institution, articulated a conception of the ‘national interest’ which reflected the interests of the dominant industrial, financial, professional and landed groups of post-war Britain.

The term elite has been used loosely in this work to describe individuals who hold economic or political power, including the executives of large private companies and financial institutions, people who hold great personal wealth or land, government ministers, influential back-benchers, peers, the monarchy, editors of influential broadsheets, magazines and broadcasting companies, and those populating the higher ranks of the civil and foreign service, the military, the judiciary and the Church of England. The language of elites sits uneasily with that of class, the two coming from distinct intellectual traditions. Certainly, elite is not used here with any of the normative connotations of the early elite theorists, Mosca and Pareto, who saw elitism as both inevitable and necessary in all societies. 31 But viewing the elite as the people within a class who are most active in public life, or who act on behalf of powerful economic sectors, is not necessarily incompatible with a class-based analysis. 32 It is not suggested here that members of the elite coordinated their actions in a conspiratorial way, rather that the elite shared an anti-egalitarian, pro-business outlook in this post-war period, which in foreign-policy terms translated into the promotion of British manufacturing and financial interests abroad.

However a simple binary opposition between the class outlook of the labour movement and that of the pro-business elite—while useful to describe differing perspectives on the Pinochet regime—has not been found adequate to describe the political debates on the Falkland Islands during the 1970s and 1980s, not least because the trade union movement and the Labour Left had no coherent position on the sovereignty dispute. Political divisions on the Falklands, particularly during the Thatcher years, are best ascribed to splits within the elite and these are analysed in the final chapter of this book.

Social Movements and Policy-Making

This study also looks at the circumstances in which non-parliamentary campaigning groups can be successful. It explores why the Chile Solidarity Campaign had a much wider appeal than the groups lobbying for human rights in Argentina. It also considers the impact of the Falkland Islands Committee, an organisation that campaigned for the rights of Falkland Islanders. The two political science approaches that look most closely at how social movements can influence policy-making are political process theory, which uses the concept of ‘political opportunity structures’, and the veto-player/gate-keeper approach, which is derived from game theory. 33 The merit of these approaches is that they examine the nature of the governing structures and do not just consider the characteristics of the campaigning organisations. In Guigni’s terms, both the ‘external’ and ‘internal’ are considered. 34 While there are a number of factors which help determine the success of a social movement, including the clarity of its message, the breadth of its appeal and its tactics and strategies, it is arguably crucial for a lobbying organisation to have some sort of leverage over key policy-makers (or ‘gate-keepers’). So, for example, the Chile Solidarity Campaign successfully persuaded the Labour government to impose sanctions on the Pinochet dictatorship because it not only had the support of sympathetic ministers, but also had institutional links to the government through both the party and the trade unions. Its leverage was particularly strong because Labour held only a small majority, then a minority, of seats in parliament. The Chile campaign had less influence on the Thatcher administration because it had no supporters in cabinet and no institutional links to the governing Conservative party, which had a large majority in parliament.

But neither political process theory nor the gate-keeper approach analyses the social context in which policy is made, so do not consider the potential biases of state officials stemming from their social class or their informal social networks. Political process theorists have considered a range of variables, including the relative repressiveness of a regime, its openness to new actors and the multiplicity of power centres within in it. 35 Some have adopted a narrower focus on institutional arrangements and compare features such as: federalism versus centralism, the electoral system, the relationship between the legislature, executive and judiciary and availability of referenda. 36 But the role of state officials and their biases has not been considered. The veto-player approach has considered the role of unelected officials, suggesting that they will have more autonomy when there are more key policy-makers (veto-players), because as the number of veto-players increases, the chain of command becomes less clear and officials may play ministers off against each other. 37 There is no attempt, however, to discern the preferences or motives of officials; unsurprisingly because in game theory all actors are divorced from their social context and are ultimately reducible to quantifiable variables.

The actions of state officials may not always be the factor which determines whether a social movement is successful. However, overlooking the social matrix in which officials operate risks underestimating the resistance to campaigners’ demands from the state machinery and the subtle ways in which officials try to dissuade ministers from taking action. In the case of a weak lobby group, such as the Argentina human rights campaign, the result was that no sanctions were imposed and business links with the military regime were pursued. Even in the case of a strong campaign, such as Chile, policy-making was a constant process of negotiation between FCO officials, who advised caution, and ministers, who were in turn under pressure from their base. While the Labour government did succeed in introducing a policy that was radically different from that of its Conservative predecessors, officials successfully persuaded ministers against taking the most extreme measures demanded by activists such as the breaking of existing arms contracts with the Pinochet regime. Meanwhile, the Falkland Island Committee, which had the support of influential figures such as peers, high-ranking former military officers and business leaders, had enhanced social access to policy-makers; for example its supporters hosted private dinners and drinks parties for FCO officials and the campaign’s secretary belonged to the same private club as the head of the FCO’s Falkland Island Department (see Chapter 5). This informal social nexus, complemented its more traditional lobbying techniques such as writing to MPs. By taking an inter-disciplinary approach, using the methods of a social historian and reading the primary sources critically, this study aims to show that officials cannot be regarded as neutral players and that their attitudes and social networks must be taken into account when analysing decision-making in government.

Informal Empire

‘And so behold! The New World established and if we do not throw it away, ours’, proclaimed Foreign Secretary George Canning in 1825. 38

Britain became the dominant economic power in Latin America in the nineteenth century until it was superseded by the United States from 1900 onwards. Britain controlled almost a third of Latin America’s trade in 1870 and, by 1913, 50% of all foreign investment in Latin America came from Britain. 39 Even these figures mask the greater relative economic weight Britain had in the Southern Cone economies of Brazil, Chile and Argentina, where British companies and investors built railways, held controlling shares in banks and public utilities, had large holdings of government bonds and bought substantial amounts of land. In Chile, British companies controlled the lucrative nitrate-mining industries, while in Argentina they dominated the banks, transport industry and import trade. In both Argentina and Chile, there was often a convergence of interests between the British and Latin American landed elite, who favoured free trade and welcomed foreign investment. The British did not create this elite—it was a legacy of Spanish colonialism—but they did help to strengthen it and ensure that it remained dominant for longer than might otherwise have been the case.

The British dominance of the economy of Latin America, and in particular Argentina, has led to a debate about the extent to which Britain profited at the expense of Latin Americans and distorted Latin America’s development path. Robinson and Gallagher argued that Argentina was part of Britain’s ‘informal empire’, exploited economically like a colony but through informal means. 40 Some historians, such as H. S. Ferns, rejected this argument on the grounds that the relationship was mutually beneficial to Britain and Argentina. 41 But while there may have been a convergence of interests between the Argentine elite and the British in the nineteenth century, it was clearly an asymmetrical relationship. British investment in Argentina reached a peak in 1913 of 10% of total British overseas investment—a not insignificant figure for a country that was not even a colony—but in Argentina, it had far greater weight, representing 60% of all inward investment. 42

D.C.M. Platt and others attacked the concept of an ‘informal empire’ on the basis that it was not the British state that was investing or interfering in Latin America, but British firms. Platt argued that business imperialism should be the focus of study and that the impact of British investments in each country or sector should be examined to see whether or not they were detrimental to indigenous interests. 43 So Colin Lewis, for example, maintained that British investment in the railways was beneficial for Argentine economic development and that the counterfactual argument that Argentine development would have been more balanced without the British could not be proven. 44 Charles Jones, on the other hand, argued that although state imperialism did not exist because the British state did not encourage or help investors overseas, British banks did ultimately undermine the authority of the Argentine state. 45 A new generation of historians have looked at the cultural impact of British involvement in Latin America placing greater emphasis on the subjectivity of experiences. 46

British influence in Latin America declined in the twentieth century. In 1870, Latin Americans bought 32% of their imports from British merchants; by 1950 this had fallen to just 6.5%. 47 But the concept of an ‘informal empire’ has some relevance to this study in helping to explain the disjuncture between the attitudes of Britons and Argentines—for example, among politicians, journalists and members of the public—towards the Falklands dispute. While in Argentina, there is a strong historical memory of British ‘imperialism’ among nationalists on the right and left of the political spectrum, in Britain there is little awareness of Britain’s ‘imperial’ past in Argentina.

Although the concept of ‘informal empire’ was intended to encompass Britain’s relationship with all of Latin America, the vast majority of the scholarship has focused on Argentina and there is less work on Anglo-Chilean relations. 48 Perhaps this is unsurprising given that by the turn of the twentieth century, British trade and investment, which had been quite evenly distributed between Latin American countries in the 1860s, was overwhelmingly concentrated on Argentina. But as Miller points out, ‘what looked marginal to the British could be central to a small Latin American country. 49 From a Chilean perspective, the British were the dominant foreign presence in the second half of the nineteenth century and remained Chile’s most important trading partner until 1914. In 1895, 74% of Chilean exports went to Britain and almost half its imports came from there. 50 Despite the potential for anti-imperialist resentment, however, the image of the British imperialist has not become such a potent hate-figure in modern Chile as it has in Argentina. This is partly because the ongoing dispute over the Falklands Islands has been a source of nationalist anger in Argentina throughout the twentieth century. But it also stems from the fact that British economic dominance lasted longer in Argentina than in Chile. It lingered throughout the 1930s, in large part due to the Roca–Runciman pact which gave Britain preferential treatment in the Argentine market, whereas in Chile, British influence was eclipsed by the United States after the First World War. Chilean progressives therefore directed their ire at ‘Yankee imperialists’ rather than the British in the twentieth century, while the Chilean elite ‘the English of Latin America’, remembered the Anglo connection with rose-tinted nostalgia. Pinochet, of course, had a fondness for old England; during the days before he was arrested in London in 1998, he had shopped at Burberry, lodged at a Park Lane hotel and dined at Fortnum and Mason.

Britain and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s

Latin America was a low priority for Britain after the Second World War. The Duncan Report of 1969 defined it as an ‘outer area of concentration’ for policy-makers and Britain recognised that the region was a US sphere of influence. 51 Foreign Office reviews of British policy in Latin America in 1975, 1978 and 1982 saw British interests as primarily economic, combined with the geopolitical desire to keep Latin American countries on the ‘right side’ during the Cold War. These interests were identified as:

  1. 1.

    Latin America as a source of raw materials

  2. 2.

    Latin America more visible at the UN and international fora

  3. 3.

    Technological advances of Argentina and Brazil, particularly steps towards nuclear power

  4. 4.

    Latin America as an export market

  5. 5.

    Latin America as a capital hungry area. 52

These themes were strikingly similar to those highlighted by Victor Perowne, the head of the South America Department at the Foreign Office in his 1945 paper ‘The Importance of Latin America’: (i) Raw materials; (ii) British investment in Latin America; (iii) Latin America as an export market; (iv) The significance of Latin America for US strategic interests; (v) The prospect of Latin American nations emerging with a distinct identity in the new world order. 53

After the Second World War, British politicians and policy-makers frequently lamented Britain’s loss of economic influence in Latin America and periodically launched export drives, but Britain’s overall share of the Latin American market continued to fall, until by 1988, it was just 1.2%. 54 There was one industry, however, in which Britain secured a significant share of the Latin American market: the arms industry. During the 1970s, Britain was the second-largest provider of armaments to South America, supplying 25% of the total, compared with 29% for the United States, the market leader. 55 It was such a lucrative market that the Foreign Office came under strong pressure from the Departments of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Defence’s sales department and from British companies to allow arms trading with the military regimes of the Southern Cone, despite human rights concerns and the potential threat to the Falklands.

British investment in the region, despite suffering an overall decline over the twentieth century, experienced a mini boom in the 1970s—British net outward investment flows to Latin America rose from 1.9% of total British outward investment in 1970 to 8.2% in 1977—and a number of British banks found themselves dangerously exposed when the Latin American debt crisis broke in 1982. 56 Although investment in Chile fell during the Allende years, by 1981, Chile and Argentina were among the top three destinations for British investment and exports within Latin America. 57

Latin America, Human Rights and Solidarity Campaigns

While Latin America was a low priority for British policy-makers in the post war period, there was a growing public interest in the region. The Cuban revolution sparked interest in Latin America among British progressives and Che Guevara became an icon to the student radicals of 1968. Meanwhile, the Latin American literary ‘boom’ of the 1960s brought worldwide fame to authors such as Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes. The growing cultural and academic interest was reflected in the Parry Report of 1962, which assessed the state of Latin American studies in British universities and led to the creation of five specialist Latin American studies centres in Oxford (1964), London (1965), Cambridge (1966), Liverpool (1966) and Glasgow (1967). Academics founded the Society for Latin American Studies in 1964. The Latin American Newsletter was established in 1967 to provide specialized news to the growing audience, while the quantity and quality of mainstream media reporting on Latin America increased, culminating in the 1980s in numerous documentaries on the region, particularly after the creation of Channel Four. 58

British governments in the 1970s and 1980s faced an array of pressure groups trying to influence policy on Latin America. The Chile solidarity movement was the largest and most successful, encompassing a broad array of trade unions, political parties, human rights groups, religious organisations, student groups and refugee organisations. The Argentina campaign was much smaller, consisting mainly of human rights groups, individuals with a prior interest in Argentina, and exiles. Revolt and repression in Central America in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to the creation of a new generation of solidarity organisations, including the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and the El Salvador and Guatemala Committees for Human Rights. The Latin America Bureau, a publishing house funded by NGOs, was founded in 1977 to ‘raise public awareness on social, economic, political and human rights issues in Latin America, especially in relation to British involvement in the region’. It provided an alternative nexus of human rights campaigners, progressive academics, journalists and Labour politicians, which rivalled the traditional institutions for Anglo-Latin interchange such as Canning House, whose members tended to be diplomats and notables from the worlds of banking and commerce. 59

Ethical Foreign Policy

The British labour movement had a history of internationalism and had, in the past, been inspired by international events such as the defence of the Spanish republic against Franco—a cause to which events in Chile were often compared. There was also a long tradition of humanitarian organisations taking up the cause of subjugated peoples overseas. After the Second World War, however, in most Western countries, the number of NGOs seeking to influence foreign policy proliferated and they acquired a growing legitimacy among the public, press and politicians. 60 The idea that human rights should play a part in foreign policy considerations became more widespread following the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the European Convention of Human Rights (1953) and the creation of rights-based lobbying organisations such as Amnesty International (1961).

The 1974–1979 Labour governments’ policies towards the Pinochet regime can be seen as an early attempt at an ‘ethical foreign policy’, although the term is anachronistic as it did not become common usage until the announcement in 1997 by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that New Labour’s foreign policy would have an ‘ethical dimension’. Britain had only imposed peacetime sanctions on a foreign government for ‘ethical’ reasons twice before, and in both of these cases, the UK had come under strong pressure from the United Nations to do so. Harold Wilson’s Labour government (1964–1970) applied sanctions on the British colony of Rhodesia in 1965, when Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence for a white minority regime, and after the UN Security Council had urged Britain to take the strongest possible action. The Wilson government also imposed an arms embargo on South Africa in 1964, but this followed the UN Security Council’s 1963 call for all states to impose voluntary arms embargoes. Britain’s sanctions against the Pinochet regime were unilateral and not a result of pressure from the UN. While campaigners were less successful in persuading the British government to impose sanctions on Argentina, they nevertheless convinced the Labour government in 1979 to introduce guidelines on weapon sales, which advised against the sale of arms that could be used for internal repression. Such a formula had only been used once before (on South Africa in 1961) but became increasingly common in later years. These measures can be seen as part of a growing trend by governments, in Britain and internationally, to consider the human rights impacts of overseas policies.

In the United States, President Jimmy Carter’s (1977–1981) advocacy of human rights as a foreign policy goal transformed the international debate and ensured that ethics became part of the rhetoric of policy-making. Trans-national human rights campaigns on South Africa and Chile, as well as other Latin American countries, also helped to ensure that during the 1970s the language of human rights became an integral part of international politics. 61 It is noteworthy that both Labour foreign secretary David Owen and the Conservative MP Richard Luce (who went on to become a minister in the FCO), published books on human rights and foreign policy in the 1970s, while Labour MP Stan Newens initiated a debate in parliament on ‘foreign policy and morality’. 62

During the Cold War, both superpowers used the issue of rights to discredit the other, which led politicians from opposing sides to distrust the motives of their opponents; in Britain, for example, Conservative and Labour attitudes towards the abuses of the Pinochet regime often divided along Cold War lines. Nevertheless, these international discussions cemented the idea that human rights could be a legitimate element of foreign policy. 63 Academic work on ethics and foreign policy has grown dramatically since the 1990s. 64 Chandler and Heins date the rising interest in ethical foreign policy from the end of the Cold War, suggesting that the collapse of faith in broader explanatory frameworks, such as Marxism or modernization theory has led to a demand from the public for ethical action from governments. 65

But while the language of ‘ethics’ has become more widespread in government, the dilemmas of weighing economic, geopolitical and strategic concerns against human rights issues remain as sharp as ever. Just as the most contentious aspect of Labour’s 1970s Chile policy was the decision not to break contracts to supply warships and submarines to the Pinochet regime, so Cook’s ethical policy fell into disarray when his government honoured agreements to deliver Hawk jets to Indonesia, which had invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975. Similarly, Britain’s prioritising of economic and strategic interests over human rights in its attitude toward the Argentine and Brazilian dictatorships in the 1970s, has clear echoes in British policy towards Saudi Arabia or Yemen in recent years. But the new global architecture of human rights laws and institutions—from the European Court of Human Rights (1959, sitting permanently from 1998) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (1979) to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (1993)—as well as the public’s acceptance of ethics as a legitimate or even necessary facet of foreign policy, allows social movements and civil society to apply pressure on governments at multiple levels in both the domestic and international arenas. The campaigns on Chile—and to a lesser extent Argentina—were an important early step in the construction of these new institutional and conceptual frameworks for global human rights governance. 66

Europe and the United States

Chile, then, was an international cause. Across Europe, broad and popular solidarity movements were formed. Of the 200,000 political exiles who fled the Pinochet regime, a half to a third settled in Western Europe. 67 The highest numbers of refugees settled in France, Sweden, Italy, and—after the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975—Spain. The overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile revived memories of the anti-Fascist struggle in Europe during World War II and parallels were drawn with the anti-dictatorial cause both in Spain, and in Portugal, where civil and military resistance to the repressive Estado Novo erupted into revolution in 1974. The parties of the left and centre in Europe had strong sympathy for the opponents of Pinochet; the socialist prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, was a particularly prominent critic of dictatorships in Latin America. Meanwhile Italy, governed by Christian Democrat prime ministers during the 1970s, became the main place of refuge for the leaders of Chilean Christian democracy. Even in countries not governed by the centre left, the large socialist and communist parties, and their affiliated trade unions, pressured their governments to welcome Chilean refugees. France, which had a tradition of welcoming people fleeing political persecution, was headed by centre-right president Valéry Giscard D’Estaing (1974–1981). His government granted thousands of Chileans asylum—by 1983, up to 15,000 Chileans were residing in France. 68 The Chilean coup profoundly affected the thinking of some European politicians. It convinced the Italian Communist Party leader, Enrico Berlinguer, of the need for compromise with other parties and played a part in his conversion to Euro-communism: the idea that European communist parties should not follow a ‘line’ from Moscow but adopt positions suited to their national circumstances. Chilean political parties based their exiled headquarters in Europe: the Socialist Party in Berlin, the Christian Democrats in Rome and the Communist Party in Moscow. Rome was also the base for Chile Democrático, the coordinating body of Popular Unity parties set up to liaise with solidarity movements around the world, while the Chilean trade union confederation, the Central Única de Trabajadores (CUT) had its office in Paris. Chilean leaders were, in turn, influenced by the moderating arguments of European social democracy and Euro-communism; these convinced them of the need to create the broad cross-party alliance, the Concertación, which went on to govern Chile after the fall of Pinochet. 69

The British Labour party was aware of the groundswell of anti-Pinochet feeling across Europe and this reinforced its desire to take a strong stance on Chile. Labour politicians kept in touch with European opinion through the Socialist International. The Foreign Office too kept a close eye on the positions taken by other European governments. Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, a decision that was ratified in a referendum in 1975. Before advising the British government on any policy decision on Chile, FCO officials considered what the other nine members of the EEC were doing.

The coup in Argentina, however, did not generate large solidarity movements in Europe. Just as activists in Britain had been confused by the complex Argentine political scene, not easily explicable along Cold War lines, so too in Europe there was a lack of awareness of events in Argentina, at least until the late 1970s, when the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo began to draw the world’s attention to mass disappearances.

British politicians and officials also watched carefully the changes in United States policy towards Chile and Argentina between 1973 and 1982. President Richard Nixon (1969–1974) and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger had sought to foment a coup against Allende and had heavily funded his opponents. Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford (1974–1977) were allies of the Pinochet regime, providing economic aid and technocratic advisors, while the CIA worked closely with the Chilean security and intelligence services. However, when a Senate investigation in 1974 revealed US attempts to undermine Allende, the US Congress began to place restrictions on US aid and, in 1976, imposed a complete ban on arms sales. Following the assassination of a Chilean former diplomat in Washington, President Jimmy Carter cut all military and economic aid to the regime and reduced the US diplomatic mission in Chile , but these sanctions were lifted when Republican Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981.

US policy towards Argentina followed a similar trajectory: the Nixon administration welcomed the 1976 coup, Henry Kissinger telling the Argentine foreign minister in October 1976, ‘Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed’. 70 On coming to office, Carter imposed a ban on military and economic aid, which was overturned by the Reagan administration. This neoconservative-influenced administration had a close relationship with the Argentine military regime; President Reagan welcomed junta leader Roberto Viola as an official guest to Washington and during his administration the US military worked closely with the Argentine armed forces, training anti-communist paramilitary groups in Central America.

The Foreign Office were anxious to ‘keep in step’ with the United States when considering, for example, when to recognise a new government or whether to impose sanctions. But there is no archival evidence to suggest that the United States sought unduly to influence British policy towards the Pinochet regime, or the Argentine junta, before the invasion of the Falklands Islands. After 2 April 1982, as has been well documented, the Reagan administration sought to avert a conflict between its two allies: Britain and the Argentine military regime. 71

Britain, Argentina and Chile

There is a large and rich body of scholarship on British relations with Latin America in the nineteenth century. There is, however, far less material on the twentieth century and very little on the years following the Second World War. Rory Miller’s seminal study of British-Latin American relations in the nineteenth and twentieth century ends its narrative in the 1940s. 72 Victor Bulmer-Thomas’s Britain and Latin America: A Changing Relationship (2008) is one of the few publications covering the more recent period. 73 All academic books on Chilean-British relations focus on the nineteenth century or the years preceding the First World War. Journalist Andy Beckett has written one of the few books on Britain’s relations with Chile in the twentieth century, an evocative book based on secondary sources and interviews. 74 There are no archival-based studies of Britain’s relationship with the Pinochet regime, although the arrest of the former dictator in London in 1998 prompted the publication of numerous texts on the legal implications of the Pinochet case. 75 There is also a growing academic interest in the Chile Solidarity Campaign and Chilean exiles in Britain. 76 This book, however, is the only work that uses primary material from the newly-opened British government archives to examine British-Chilean relations in the period 1973–1982.

The literature on Argentine-British relations extends further into the twentieth century reflecting the longer-lasting British influence in that country, but there are almost no accounts that go beyond Juan Perón’s first administration (1946–1955). 77 There is a vast literature on the Falklands war and a sizable body of work devoted to the origins of the conflict, but no academic study focused on Britain’s relationship with the Argentine junta of 1976–1982. Very few books on the origins of the Falklands conflict are based on official British government sources, which have only recently opened in line with the thirty-year rule. The Official History of the Falklands Campaign Volume 1: The Origins of the War (2005) by Lawrence Freedman, who had early access to the official sources, is an indispensable account of the British government’s position on the Falklands dispute in the years preceding the war. 78 Aaron Donaghy’s The British Government and the Falkland Islands , 1974–1979 (2014) argues convincingly that the Wilson and Callaghan governments took a more robust approach to the defence of the Falklands than the Conservatives. 79 The primary material examined for this book supports Donaghy’s conclusion that James Callaghan and David Owen kept a more watchful eye on defence deployments in the South Atlantic than did Margaret Thatcher’s ministers. The Falkland Islands Review (1983), the report of the official inquiry into the causes of the war chaired by Lord Franks is also an invaluable account of the British government’s actions in the years before the war, based on government papers and testimonies, and its text is far more critical of ministers than its anodyne conclusion would suggest. 80

This is a study of British policy-making and is therefore based on British primary sources. The Argentine official archives for the period covering the military dictatorship, 1976–1982, have largely remained closed and substantial amounts of material may have been destroyed. In 2015, however, the Argentine government announced the release of thousands of documents relating to the dictatorship, which will be a rich seam for future research. This book has, nevertheless, referred to a wide variety of Argentine secondary sources. 81

This book aims to give a much fuller account of Britain’s relations with the Argentine military regime than any earlier study, and to place Anglo-Argentine relations in the context of British policy towards the other Southern American dictatorships. It does not attempt to provide a detailed account of the origins of the Falklands war, which has been well covered elsewhere. It does, however, look closely at the attitudes of British business towards the Falklands dispute, an area that has been insufficiently studied. It also considers whether Britain had strategic, economic and commercial interests in the South Atlantic, a suggestion that has been discounted in much of the British literature, but overplayed in many Argentine accounts.

Among the British academics who downplay strategic and economic factors is the war’s official historian, Lawrence Freedman, who concludes: ‘Other than possible oil resources… the strategic and economic value of the Falklands to Britain was minimal…For Britain, it was the people who lived on the Islands.’ 82 Similarly George Boyce writes: ‘There was…no selfish economic or strategic British interest in the Falklands’, while Hastings and Jenkins say the Islands ‘were never of any great strategic importance—certainly not before the advent of coal-powered vessels’, but do not mention any subsequent strategic interests. 83 Many popular British histories simply ignore the question of British strategic interests. 84 A small number of British works do note strategic or economic interests including those by Klaus Dodds, Robert Miller and Martin Middlebrook. 85

Most accounts by British politicians claim that the Falklands were of little strategic value, with the exception of those by Margaret Thatcher and Tony Benn. Thatcher wrote in her autobiography that ‘the islands had obvious strategic importance’, and during the Falklands war she attempted to win US support by emphasising their strategic role to President Reagan. 86 Tony Benn, who was energy secretary during the 1970s and witnessed oil companies’ interest in Falklands oil, wrote in his diary on the outbreak of the Falklands conflict on 2 April 1982: ‘The real interest there is oil’. 87

But it was more common for politicians to dismiss their strategic value. Barbara Castle, for example, reported in her diary a cabinet conversation in 1968: ‘It was Jim Callaghan who asked solemnly whether the Falkland Islands were any use to us. Apparently none at all but there would be one of those absurd parliamentary rows if we were to try and disembarrass ourselves of them.’ 88 The foreign secretary at the time of the Argentine invasion in 1982, Lord Carrington, assessed that the Islands had ‘no vital strategic or economic interest for Britain’, and his junior minister at the Foreign Office, Richard Luce, suggested that there was ‘no direct British interest in the Falklands, but a responsibility for the 2000 subjects who were mainly of British origin’. 89

In contrast, many accounts by Argentine academics, journalists and politicians suggest that Britain retains the Falkland Islands for strategic and economic reasons, highlighting, in particular, their location as a gateway to Antarctica and the access they provide to the oil , mineral and marine resources in South Atlantic waters. 90 As the Argentine ambassador told Nicolas Ridley in 1981: ‘The Argentine man in the street was convinced that the UK was interested solely in the oil potential.’ 91 While some Argentine works are highly polemical, others, such as Monica Pinto’s balanced survey of Anglo-Argentine interest in hydrocarbons around the Falklands, provide useful research that should be integrated into British accounts. 92 Lowell Gustafson also gives a useful overview of negotiations about oil, but both accounts are limited by the source material available in the 1980s. 93

This book accepts the traditional British interpretation that domestic factors are key to understanding the British government’s failure to reach an agreement with Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands . However, it provides archival evidence that the British government and British companies were interested in the oil around the Falklands, and that officials were keen to preserve their access to Antarctica , indicating that strategic and economic concerns did play a role in the British government’s deliberations over the Islands in the years before the war.

Political scientists are critical of purely ‘factual’ accounts and historians, too, try to explain events rather than simply relate ‘what happened’. While this book has attempted to take a theoretically-informed analytical approach to explaining Britain’s engagement with Argentina and Chile, it also sees value in bringing into the public domain new empirical material such as the details of export licences for armaments approved by the British government for sale to the Argentine dictatorship—including bomber planes, battle tanks and armoured cars—or the fact that the head of the Argentine navy met the head of the British navy in Britain four years before the Falklands war. Sadly, a complete picture of British official actions may never be possible because, as a Freedom of Information Request by this author has revealed, 322 FCO files on British relations with Argentina between the years 1976 and 1982—including files on military visits and arms sales—have been permanently destroyed by the British government. 94

Notes

  1. 1.

    Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 6. ‘Gut-wrenching’ quote from ‘Jack Straw and General Pinochet’, The Economist , 3 December 1998.

  2. 2.

    Richard Snyder, H.W. Bruck and Burton Sapin, Decision Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962). See also Valerie Hudson, Foreign Policy Analysis : Classic and Contemporary Theory (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) p. 4.

  3. 3.

    Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 294; Jamie Gaskarth, British Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 2.

  4. 4.

    Walter Carlsnaes, ‘The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis’ in Walter Carlsnaes and Stefano Guzzini, Foreign Policy Analysis , Vol. 4 (London: Sage, 2011), pp. 165–199.

  5. 5.

    On globalisation and foreign policy-making, see Chris Alden and Amnon Aran, Foreign Policy Analysis : New Approaches (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012).

  6. 6.

    David Vital, The Making of British Foreign Policy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968), p. 98.

  7. 7.

    Kevin Theakston, The Labour Party and Whitehall (London: Routledge, 1992); Tony Benn, ‘Obstacles to Reform’, in Ralph Miliband, Leo Panitch and John Saville (eds.), The Socialist Register 1989 (London: Merlin Press, 1989); G.D.H. Cole, ‘Reform in the Civil Service’ in Essays in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1950); Stafford Cripps, ‘Parliamentary Institutions and the Transition to Socialism’ in Cripps et al., Where Stands Socialism Today? (London: Rich & Cowan, 1933); Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Volume 1 (London: Hamish Hamilton & Jonathan Cape, 1975); Harold Laski, The Labour Party and the Constitution (London: Socialist League, 1933); and Ralph Miliband, Capitalist Democracy in Britain (Oxford: OUP, 1984).

  8. 8.

    For a history of FPA see Valerie Hudson, ‘The history and evolution of foreign policy analysis’ in Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (eds.), Foreign Policy: Theory/Actors/Cases (Oxford: OUP, 2012); Chris Alden and Amnon Aran, Foreign Policy Analysis : New Approaches (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012).

  9. 9.

    Hill, The Changing Politics, p. 240.

  10. 10.

    Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (eds.), Foreign Policy: Theory/Actors/Cases (Oxford: OUP, 2012), p. 5. Their critical approach to foreign policy builds on the work of Colin Hay and Paul Williams.

  11. 11.

    Robert Cox and Timothy Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: CUP, 1996); Andreas Bieler, Werner Bonefeld, Peter Burnham and Adam David Morton (eds.), Global Restructuring, State, Capital and Labour: Contesting Neo-Gramscian Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Adrian Budd, Class, States and International Relations (London: Routledge, 2013); and Richard Wyn Jones (ed.), Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

  12. 12.

    See Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

  13. 13.

    P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas I. The Old Colonial System, 1688–1850’, Economic History Review, 39 (1986), 501–525; P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas II: New Imperialism, 1850–1945’, Economic History Review, 40 (1987), 1–26; P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688–2000 (London: Pearson, 2001).

  14. 14.

    Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, pp. 620–621.

  15. 15.

    Author’s analysis of Oxford University Careers Data. University of Oxford Appointment Committee Reports, 1917–2004. See Appendix A.

  16. 16.

    Laski quote from G.D.H. Cole (ed.), Plan for Britain (London: Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1943), p. 119. ‘Committee on the Civil Service (Fulton Committee)’, 1968, The National Archives (TNA): CAB/168/105.

  17. 17.

    Data for 1950–1954 and 1960–1964, from FCO sources, cited in Moorhouse, The Diplomats, p. 59. The 1961 figure from Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962), p. 304.

  18. 18.

    Ruth Dudley Edwards, True Brits (London: BBC Books, 1994), p. 91.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., p. 98.

  20. 20.

    See Appendix B.

  21. 21.

    John Dickie, Inside the Foreign Office (London: Chapmans, 1992), p. 17.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  23. 23.

    Kevin Theakston, ‘New Labour and the Foreign Office’, in Richard Little and Mark Wickham-Jones, New Labour’s Foreign Policy: A New Moral Crusade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 118; Geoffrey Fry, ‘The British Diplomatic Service: Facts and Fantasies’, Politics (1982) 4–8; Simon Jenkins and Anne Sloeman, With Respect, Ambassador: An Inquiry into the Foreign Office (London: BBC Books, 1985), pp. 105–106; and Hill, The Changing Politics, p. 241.

  24. 24.

    Theakston, ‘New Labour’, p. 113.

  25. 25.

    Bevin quoted in Sampson, p. 313.

  26. 26.

    T.G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy 1865–1914 (Cambridge: CUP, 2011).

  27. 27.

    Charles Jones, ‘“Business Imperialism” and Argentina, 1875–1900: A Theoretical Note’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 12 (1980), 437–444 (p. 442).

  28. 28.

    Report of the Review Committee on Overseas Representation by Sir Val Duncan (London: HMSO, 1969) [The Duncan Report]; ‘Travelling salesman’ remark made by the Marquess of Lansdowne: Hansard: House of Lords Debate, 19 November 1969, Vol. 305, cc917–1055.

  29. 29.

    H.E. Affleck-Graves, Capt. R.M., to DS5, RM7/14/5, 13 August 1976, TNA: DEFE 24/1416.

  30. 30.

    Henry Fairlie, ‘Political Commentary’, The Spectator, 22 September 1955.

  31. 31.

    Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939); Vilfredo Pareto, The Mind and Society (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1935). See also James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (New York: Putnam, 1942); Charles Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966); W.L. Guttsman, The British Political Elite (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968); and Geraint Parry, Political Elites (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2005) [orig. pub. 1969].

  32. 32.

    Works that combine an analysis of elites and class include, David Lane, Elites and Classes in the Transformation of State Socialism (London: Transaction Publishers, 2011); Ralf Dahrendorf, The Modern Social Conflict (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction, 2007) and P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688–2000 (London: Pearson, 2001).

  33. 33.

    Veto players is a term coined by George Tsebelis and is an analysis derived from game theory. The term ‘gate-keepers’ is used by Joshua Busby who thinks it better describes the role of key policy-makers who can facilitate legislation, but not necessarily veto it. George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (New York: Princeton University Press, 2002); Joshua Busby, Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p. 60.

  34. 34.

    Marco Giugni, ‘How Social Movements Matter’ in Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly (eds.), How Social Movements Matter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. xix–xx. See also Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998); David Skidmore and Valerie Hudson, ‘Establishing the Limits of State Autonomy: Contending Approaches to the Study of State-Society Relations and Foreign Policy-Making’ in Skidmore and Hudson, The Limits of State Autonomy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 1–22.

  35. 35.

    These variables are taken from Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 59. For foundational work on Political Opportunity Structures see Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-nuclear Movements in Four Democracies’ British Journal of Political Science, 16 (1) (1986), 57–85; and Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Mayer Zald (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge: CUP, 1996).

  36. 36.

    Hein-Anton van der Heijden, ‘Globalization, Environmental Movements and International Political Opportunity Structures’, Organization and Environment, 19 (1) (2006), 28–44; Hanspeter Kriesi et al., Social Movements in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).

  37. 37.

    George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (New York: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 235–239.

  38. 38.

    Leslie Bethell, George Canning and the Independence of Latin America (London: The Hispanic and Luso Brazilian Council, 1970).

  39. 39.

    Victor Bulmer-Thomas, British Trade with Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: ILAS, University of London, Occasional Papers No. 19, 1998), p. 8.

  40. 40.

    John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’ in Economic History Review, 6 (1953), 1–15 (p. 13).

  41. 41.

    H.S. Ferns, Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); H.S. Ferns, ‘Argentina: Part of an Informal Empire’ in Alistair Hennessy and John King, The Land that England Lost: Argentina and Britain, a Special Relationship (London: British Academic Press, 1992), p. 60.

  42. 42.

    10% figure from Rory Miller, Britain and Latin America (London: Longman, 1993), p. 5 and 60% figure from Alistair Hennessy, ‘Argentines, Anglo-Argentines and Others’ in Hennessy, The Land that England Lost, p. 10.

  43. 43.

    D.C.M. Platt, ‘Further Objections to an ‘Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 26 (1973), 77–91; D.C.M. Platt, Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); and D.C.M. Platt (ed.), Business Imperialism, 1840–1930, An Inquiry Based on British Experience in Latin America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).

  44. 44.

    Colin Lewis in Platt, Business Imperialism, p. 427; Colin Lewis in Hennessy, The Land that England Lost.

  45. 45.

    Charles Jones in Platt, Business Imperialism; Charles Jones, ‘“Business Imperialism” and Argentina, 1875–1900: A Theoretical Note’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 12 (1980), 437–444 (p. 442).

  46. 46.

    See Matthew Brown (ed.), Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).

  47. 47.

    Bulmer-Thomas, British Trade, p. 8 and Miller, Britain and Latin America, p. 246.

  48. 48.

    Works on Chilean-British relations which do not necessarily accept the informal empire approach but consider the evidence include Harold Blakemore, British Nitrates and Chilean Politics 1886–1896 (London: Athlone Press, 1974); Juan Ricardo Couyoumdjian, Chile y Gran Bretaña: Durante la Primera Guerra Munidal y la Postguerra: 1914–1921 (Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1986); Robert Greenhill, ‘The Nitrate and Iodine Trades 1880–1914’ and Linda and Charles Jones and Robert Greenhill ‘Public Utility Companies’ both in Platt, Business Imperialism; John Mayo, British Merchants and Chilean Development 1851–1886 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); and Thomas O’Brien, The Nitrate Industry and Chile’s Crucial Transition 1870–1891 (New York: New York University Press, 1982).

  49. 49.

    Miller, Britain and Latin America, p. 13.

  50. 50.

    Couyoumdjian, p. 27.

  51. 51.

    The Duncan Report , 1969.

  52. 52.

    Cited in Robert Graham ‘British Policy Towards Latin America’ in Bulmer-Thomas, Britain and Latin America, p. 61.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., p. 55. See also ‘Bones of Contention in Latin America’, memorandum by Victor Perowne, FCO, 22 April 1943, A3479/3479/51, TNA: FO371/33929.

  54. 54.

    Miller, Britain and Latin America, p. 246.

  55. 55.

    Frank Barnaby, ‘Latin America and the Arms Trade’, in Britain and Latin America (London: LAB, 1979), p. 67.

  56. 56.

    David Atkinson, ‘Trade, aid and investment since 1950’ in Bulmer-Thomas, Britain and Latin America, p. 115.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., p. 113.

  58. 58.

    Gerald Martin, ‘Britain’s Cultural Relations with Latin America’ in Bulmer-Thomas, Britain and Latin America, p. 32.

  59. 59.

    Britain and Latin America (London: LAB, 1979), inside cover page.

  60. 60.

    Hill, The Changing Politics, p. 269. See also Peter Willets (ed.), Pressure Groups in the Global System: The Transnational Relations of Issue-Orientated Non-Governmental Organizations (London: Frances Pinter, 1982).

  61. 61.

    Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (London: Belknap, 2010); Flood, Patrick James, The Effectiveness of UN Human Rights Institutions (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998).

  62. 62.

    David Owen, Human Rights (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978); Richard Luce and John Ranelagh, Human Rights and Foreign Policy (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1977). Hansard: ‘Foreign Policy and Morality’: HC Deb., 9 February 1976, Vol. 905, cc35–99.

  63. 63.

    For more on superpowers’ use of the concept of human rights during the Cold War, see Dilys Hill, Human Rights and Foreign Policy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989) and R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

  64. 64.

    Karen Smith and Margot Light (eds.), Ethics and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); William Walldorf, Just Politics: Human Rights and the Foreign Policy of the Great Powers (London: Cornell University Press, 2008); Richard Little and Mark Wickham-Jones, New Labour’s Foreign Policy: A New Moral Crusade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); and Jamie Gaskarth, ‘Interpreting Ethical Foreign Policy: Traditions and Dilemmas for Policy Makers’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 15 (2013), 192–209.

  65. 65.

    David Chandler and Volker Heins, Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2006).

  66. 66.

    Thomas C. Wright, State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina and International Human Rights (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 2007); Patrick William Kelly, ‘The 1973 Chilean coup and the origins of transnational human rights activism’, Journal of Global History, 8 (1) (2013), 165–186.

  67. 67.

    Thomas C. Wright and Rody Oñate Zúñiga, ‘Chilean Political Exile’, Latin American Perspectives, 34 (4) (2007), 31–49.

  68. 68.

    Nicolas Prognon, ‘France: Welcoming Chilean Exiles’ in Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris and Magaly Rodríguez García (eds.), European Solidarity with Chile, 1970s–1980s (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014), pp. 187–207.

  69. 69.

    Peter Read and Marivic Wyndham, ‘Eurocommunism and the Concertación: Reflections on Chilean European Exile’, 1973–1989, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 21 (1) (2015), 116–125.

  70. 70.

    Grace Livingstone, America’s Backyard (London: Zed Books, 2009), p. 69, citing US State Department Memorandum of Conversation, 7 October 1976.

  71. 71.

    Grace Livingstone, ‘British and US policy towards Argentina before and during the Falklands/Malvinas War’, paper presented at the 2013 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington DC. See also: Richard Aldous, Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship (London: Arrow, 2012); Louise Richardson, When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations during the Suez and Falklands Crises (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).

  72. 72.

    Miller, Britain and Latin America.

  73. 73.

    Bulmer-Thomas, Britain and Latin America.

  74. 74.

    Beckett, Pinochet.

  75. 75.

    Reed Brody and Michael Ratner, The Pinochet Papers: The Case of Augusto Pinochet in Spain and Britain (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000); Madeleine Davis (ed.), The Pinochet Case, Origins, Progress and Implications (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2003); and Ariel Dorfman, Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet (London: Pluto Press, 2002).

  76. 76.

    Alan Angell, ‘International Support for the Chilean Opposition, 1973–1989: Political Parties and the Role of Exiles’, in Laurence Whitehead (ed.), International Dimensions of Democratization (Oxford: OUP, 2001); T. Kushner and K. Knox. ‘Refugees from Chile: A Gesture of International Solidarity’ in K. Knox and T. Kushner (eds.), Refugees in an Age of Genocide (London: Frank Cass, 1999); Jasmine Gideon, ‘Health and Wellbeing among Chilean exiles in London’, Birkbeck College, 2015 https://ageingandmigration.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/gideon-ageing-and-migration-pp.pdf; Paola Bayle, ‘La Diáspora de una Población Calificada: el Exilio Académico Chileno en el Reino Unido’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina, 2010; Michael D Wilkinson, ‘The Chile Solidarity Campaign and British Government Policy towards Chile, 1973–1990’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 52 (1992), 57–74; and Ann Jones, No Truck with Chilean Junta (Canberra: Anu Press, 2014).

  77. 77.

    Alistair Hennessy and John King, The Land That England Lost: Argentina and Britain: A Special Relationship (London: British Academic Press, 1992). This excellent collection includes three essays on the post-war period.

  78. 78.

    Lawrence Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2005).

  79. 79.

    Aaron Donaghy, The British Government and the Falkland Islands , 1974–1979 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

  80. 80.

    Falkland Islands Review, Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, Chairman: The Rt Hon The Lord Franks (London: HMSO, 1983).

  81. 81.

    Books the author has found particularly useful include: Carlos Escudé and Andrés Cisneros, Historia General de Las Relaciones Exteriores de la República Argentina, Tomo XII, La Diplomacia de las Malvinas, 1966–1989 (Buenos Aires: CEPE/CARI/Nuevohacer, 2000); Federico Lorenz, Las Guerras por Malvinas (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006); Federico Lorenz, Malvinas: Una Guerra Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2009); Vicente E. Berasategui, Malvinas: Diplomacia y Conflicto Armado, Comentarios a la Historia Oficial Británica (Buenos Aires: PROA AMERIAN Editores, 2011); and Atilio Borón y Julio Faúndez, Malvinas Hoy: Herencia de un Conflicto (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1989). Studies focusing on strategic issues are referred to below in note 90.

  82. 82.

    Freedman, The Official History, p. 18.

  83. 83.

    George Boyce, The Falklands War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 4. Hastings and Jenkins, p. 7.

  84. 84.

    Duncan Anderson, The Falklands War 1982 (Oxford: Osprey, 2002); Dale, Memories; McManners, Forgotten Voices, Michael Parsons, The Falklands War (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000).

  85. 85.

    Klaus Dodds, Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire (London: IB Tauris, 2002); Martin Middlebrook, The Falklands War 1982 (London: Penguin, 2001); and Robert Miller, Liability or Asset? A Policy for the Falkland Islands (London: Alliance, for Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, 1986).

  86. 86.

    Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 174; ‘Record of Telephone Conversation between President Reagan and the Prime Minister on 13 May 1982’, TNA: FCO7/4532, 1982.

  87. 87.

    Tony Benn, The End of an Era, Diaries, 1980–1990 (London: Hutchinson, 1992), p. 202.

  88. 88.

    Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1964–1976 (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 207.

  89. 89.

    Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past (London: Fontana, 1988), p. 349; Richard Luce, Ringing the Changes, A Memoir (Norwich: Michael Russell, 2007), p. 135.

  90. 90.

    Accounts that highlight strategic factors include: Oscar Abudara Bini et al., Malvinización y Desmentirización: Un Aporte Económico, Político y Cultural en el marco de la Patria Grande (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Fabro, 2013); Rodolfo Balmaceda, La Argentina Indefensa: Desmalvinización y desmalvinizadores (Buenos Aires: Editorial Los Nacionales, 2004); Carlos Alberto Biangardi Delgado, Cuestón Malvinas, A 30 Años de la Guerra del Atlántico Sur (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2012). Borón and Faúndez, Malvinas Hoy; Carlos Chubrétovich, Las Islas Falkland o Malvinas: Su Historia, La Controversia Argentina-Británica y la Guerra Consiguiente (Santiago: Editorial La Noria, 1987) [Chilean]; Juan José Cresto, Historia de las Islas Malvinas: Desde su Descubrimiento hasta Nuestros Días (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2011); Julio Laborde y Rina Beraccini, Malvinas en el Plan Global del Imperialismo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Anteo, 1987); Rubén Oscar Moro, La Trampa de Malvinas: Historia del conflicto de Atlántico Sur (Buenos Aires: Edivérn, 2005); Adolfo Silenzi de Stagni, Las Malvinas y El Petróleo (Buenos Aires: Editora Theoría SRL, 1983); and Otto Vargas et al., La Trama de Una Argentina Antagónica: Del Cordobazo al fin de la Dictatura (Buenos Aires: Editorial Agora, 2006).

  91. 91.

    Anglo-Argentine Ministerial Talks on the Falkland Islands: New York, 23/24 February 1981, FCO record, TNA: PREM 19/612.

  92. 92.

    Mónica Pinto, ‘Islas Malvinas/Falkland, Georgias y Sandwich del Sur: Algunas Consideraciones Relativas a los Hidrocarburos’ in Borón & Faúndez, pp. 125–155.

  93. 93.

    Lowell Gustafson, The Sovereignty Dispute Over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands (Oxford: OUP, 1988).

  94. 94.

    Freedom of Information Request to the FCO, reference 1014–14, 12 June 2015. All the files for 1982 have been kept.