The Guardian today reports on the many voices around Mrs Thatcher, in the lead-up to the Falklands war in 1982, that spoke against what it calls 'the jingoistic spirit at the time':
Some of Margaret Thatcher's closest policy advisers voiced strong concerns that the Falklands Islands were not worth the fight, from the earliest days of the campaign, according to the latest release of files from the former Conservative prime minister's personal papers.
The report goes on to quote or summarize what a whole number of people close to her were thinking and saying at the time: proposing schemes to buy out the islanders, warning her about deep divisions among Conservatives, arguing that the islands weren't worth the effort, urging the prime minister to 'let the Argentinians have the Falklands'.
A Times leader offers this contrasting paragraph (£):
Hours before the first shots were fired in the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher noted in a telegram to General Leopold Galtieri, the Argentine dictator, that in a few days they would both be reading casualty lists. "On my side," the Prime Minister wrote, "grief will be tempered by the knowledge that these men died for freedom, justice and the rule of law. And on your side? Only you can answer that question."
It's not often I write in praise of Margaret Thatcher. I'll correct that: it's hardly ever. But here is something for which praise is precisely what she deserved and deserves.