The Falklands Play (2002 TV Movie)

Patricia Hodge: Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher MP (Prime Minister)

Photos 

Quotes 

• Alexander Haig : We are trying to de-escalise a war.

  Margaret Thatcher : So am I. But you do not do it by appeasement. You increase its chances. You see this table? This was where Neville Chamberlain sat in 1938 when he spoke on the wireless about the Czechs as "far away people about whom we know nothing and with whom we have so little in common". Munich! Appeasement! A world war followed because of that irresponsible, woolly-minded, indecisive, slip-shod attitude and the deaths of 45 million people.

  Tom Enders : The fact that we have to treat Britain and Argentina even-handedly for the purpose of negotiation...

  Margaret Thatcher : How *dare* you treat us even-handedly? Argentina is the aggressor, the invader. A fourth-rate, cruel, unstable, corrupt, brutal regime with no morals or scruples whatever! They torture and murder their political opponents by the most ghastly Nazi methods. And this is the regime you wish to give even a foothold over British citizens?

• [in a War Cabinet meeting] 

  Margaret Thatcher : Do we send those ships? Do we still have the will to fight aggression by force of arms, even halfway across the world, even at huge risk of world opinion turning against us? Because if we don't have it any more, for God's sake say so now and pull out before we start. It may be we *are* going to war. People *will* get killed. Innocent people. Young soldiers, many of whom won't even know what it is we are fighting for. Are we really prepared to do that? Do we still believe what we certainly believed in in 1940? Or is that now just the romance of history, nothing to do with the cold reality of Britain in 1982, part of a nation that has, actually, quietly died, as Greece died, as Spain died? Because if in our hearts we really believe that Britain is dead, then it would be a crime of the direst and blackest sort to send those men to fight, a crime of which the country would very soon find us guilty, because their hearts won't be in it. The first death will light the fuse that will blow us sky-high and clean out of office at the next election. Now, do we send the signal or not?

  [each cabinet minister, with some hesitation, says "yes"]