Gordon Brown says Britain is prepared to protect Falkland Islands as row with Argentina escalates

When Argentine troops invaded the Falklands in the summer of 1982, I was a twenty-five year old teacher of English as a Foreign Language, living and working in northern Italy. Like many Britons, many of whom had never heard of the Falklands, let alone be able to tell you where they were, I was outraged that these islands should be taken over by the Argentine Junta, in a bid to shore up its faltering popularity at home. Many Italian friends and aquaintances were against the war, some thought it evitabile (avoidable), one or two were with us.

My attitude to the war changed after the sinking of the General Belgrano, a former United States cruiser, the USS Phoenix (CL-46), which had survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was known as the luckiest ship in the US Navy. Hit by torpedoes from a British submarine, she proved not so lucky after her change of name and ownership. 323 Argentines were killed, many of them boys, and controversy still rages today as to whether she was a legitimate target.

Later that summer, I returned home to England, to see my family and to chase after a young Italian girl who had come to London to improve on her English, whom I had met in Italy earlier that year, and with whom I was deeply, and hopelessly, in love.

While walking down the steps from Carlton Terrace to the Mall (that’s the Mall which runs between Buck Palace and Trafalgar Square, not the one in Washington!), I passed the former prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas Home, dressed in his lawyers rags, who looked at me with the kindliest smile I have ever seen. “Hey! Isn’t that your former prime minister?” an American tourist who had also seen him, asked.

“Yes,” I replied, giving him his exact name.

Somehow we got onto the topic of the recently concluded Falklands War. “We’re really grateful to you Brits for what you’ve done.”

I briefly shared with him my own, somewhat different, views on the war.

Today, many years later, I think it’s high time the British government started talking to the Argentines about their claims to the Falklands-Malvinas, as an Argentine teacher who once brought a group of Argentine schoolchildren over to the international boarding school where I was briefly teaching at the time, called them, especially now that oil has been discovered.

After all, they were taken from Spain by the British at a time when Argentina was still a Spanish colony and, understandably, the Argentines, who long ago gained their independence from Spain, have felt aggrieved about the Falkland-Malvinas ever since.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251901/Falkland-Islands-oil-row-Argentina-warns-UK-complacency.html#ixzz0ftcsrSam