The Falklands Play

The Falklands Play is a 2002 TV movie that is a dramatic account of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982 Falklands War.

Directed by Michael Samuels. Written by Ian Curteis.

Margaret Thatcher

• Only one thing makes war justified and lawful, only one thing. When it's a struggle for law against force, for people's laws, their language and way of life. Everything that makes them what they are against a brutal effort to impose on them a life and language and laws which are not theirs and they do not want.

• If we are wrong to fight now, we were wrong to fight Hitler. We were wrong to fight the Kaiser. We were wrong to fight Napoleon. Wrong to fight Philip of Spain. Wrong to do anything but throw in the towel and crumple before the first brute force to come along.

Dialogue

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 "faraway 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 the British citizens?

Cast

• Patricia Hodge - Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher MP (Prime Minister)
• James Fox - Lord Carrington KCMG MC PC (Foreign Secretary)
• John Standing - Rt Hon William Whitelaw CH MC MP (Home Secretary)
• Michael Cochrane - Rt Hon Nicholas Ridley MP (Financial Secretary to the Treasury)
• Jeremy Child - Rt Hon Francis Pym MC MP (Lord President of the Council / Foreign Secretary)
• Rupert Vansittart - Sir Robert Armstrong (Cabinet Secretary)
• Jonathan Coy - Richard Luce MP (Minister of State, Foreign Office)
• Clive Merrison - Rt Hon John Nott MP (Secretary of State for Defence)
• Peter Blythe - Rt Hon Sir Michael Havers QC MP (Attorney-General)
• Jeremy Clyde - Sir Nicholas Henderson (HM Ambassador to the United States)
• Colin Stinton - Hon Alexander Haig (US Secretary of State)
• Shaughan Seymour - Adm. Sir Henry Leach (First Sea Lord)
• Anthony Calf - Robin Fearn (Head of Falkland Islands Department, Foreign Office)
• Jasper Jacob - John Wilkinson MP (Parliamentary Private Secretary to John Nott)
• Richard Cordery - Tom Enders (US Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs)
• Bob Sherman - Hon. Ronald Reagan (President of the United States)
• Lorelei King - Hon. Jeane Kirkpatrick (US Ambassador to the UN)
• Garrick Hagon - Vernon Walters (Senior Adviser to the US Secretary of State)
• Robert Hardy - Sir Anthony Parsons (HM Ambassador to the UN)
• Arturo Venegas - Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (UN Secretary-General)
• Vernon Dobtcheff - Nicanor Costa Méndez (Argentine Minister of External Relations)
• Robert Bowman - Hamilton Whyte (member, British Mission to the UN)
• John Woodvine - Adm. of the Fleet Sir Terence Lewin (Chief of the Defence Staff)
• Tom Chadbon - Adm. Sir John Fieldhouse (C-in-C Fleet)
• Gordon Langford Rowe - Rt Hon George Thomas MP (Speaker of the House of Commons)
• Patrick Godfrey - Rt Hon Michael Foot MP (Leader of the Opposition)
• Ron Meadows - Rt Hon Peter Shore MP (Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer)
• Renny Krupinski - David Lambie MP (Labour)
• David Fleeshman - Rt Hon Denis Healey CH MBE MP (Deputy Leader of the Labour Party)
• Charles McCurdy - John Browne MP (Conservative)
• Martin Oldfield - Rt Hon Enoch Powell MP (Ulster Unionist)
• Geoffrey Wilkinson - Sir Anthony Meyer Bt MP (Conservative)
• Alan Rothwell - John Wells MP (Conservative)
• Geoff Holman - Rt Hon Tony Benn MP (Labour)

External links

• The Falklands Play quotes at the Internet Movie Database