Thread by @akoz33

Today is the Margaret Thatcher Day in the Falkland Islands.
anydayguide.com/calendar/3822
So on this occasion I’ll tell a story about how I heard about the Argentine invasion in April 1982, the dispatch of the Task Force and an argument I had with a well known Polish Oxford University

professor.
In 1982, when the Argentines invaded the Falklands I was in Japan. I was in the second year of my JSPS/Royal Society post-doctoral fellowship. I chose to be at the University of Tsukuba (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit… ), where my wife was an associate professor (in a

different field). I heard about the invasion and the dispatch of the Task Force on Japanese news. I knew perfectly that Mrs Thatcher was a completely different type of leader from Wilson, Heath or Callaghan who had preceded her as prime ministers since I emigrated to the UK in

1968, but of course I was unsure about the outcome. The general Japanese public was not very involved in this issue but among the “intellectuals” a clear majority sided with Argentina, as both the Japanese left and the right share a “anti-imperialist” and “anti-colonialist”

rhetoric, which curiously comes from different directions but ends up with the sane conclusions - in the case of the left it derives from the original Soviet “anti-imperialism” and on the right from the “anti-imperialism” of the

Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_E… ). I persuaded my wife to write an article justifying the British position, which was published in a quite prestigious magazine of moderate circulation.
It so happened that before the Task Force reached the Falklands

we had a visitor from Oxford. It was a well known Polish economist, once a orthodox Marxist and later a leading “revisionist”, one of those who were personally attacked by Gomułka in his notorious 1968 speech. He was now a Professor of Russian Studies at Oxford. Although no

longer a Marxist, he retained a generally left-wing outlook and was a staunch anti-Thatcherite. He was coming to Japan at the invitation of several universities and was giving a number of lectures.

I met him at the Narita Airport and we went together by train to our house near Tsukuba. Almost immediately after our meeting he greeted me with the words “I hear that you have lost some territory”. It was, of course, a jocular reference to the fact that I was already a British

citizen while he was a Polish one (although later he did acquire British citizenship too). I answered “I would not be so sure. This is Mrs Thatcher and there is this Task Force on the way”. He looked shocked and said “Are you serioyslybsaying there will be war?” I hesitated

briefly and then answered “If the Argentines agree to withdraw, they may get something to save their face but otherwise yes”.
He looked at me as if I was crazy and we did not discuss this matter any more during his stay. But some years later I reminded him about this

conversation and he claimed he could not remember anything of the kind.