'We take nothing for granted': Falkland Islanders on UK support amid Argentina threat

Sky News

16-03-2025

It's more than 40 years since British forces fought a brief but bloody campaign to retake the Falkland Islands after their invasion by Argentina.
On the windswept hills around the capital Port Stanley you can still see evidence of battle.
The wreckage of destroyed helicopters, discarded military hardware and shell casings scattered on once strategically important rocky outcrops and boggy valleys.
These relics are quietly rusting away.
But for the few thousand residents of an island archipelago half the size of Wales, memories of the conflict don't fade.
On 1 April 1982, Patrick Watts was broadcasting news of the unfolding invasion from the studio of Falklands Radio when jubilant Argentinian soldiers burst in.
The live recording of his exchange with the invaders is now part of the historical record of the invasion.
"I'm not going to speak with a gun in my back," says Watts to the Argentinian commander.
Speaking to us 43 years later in the same studio, Patrick clearly recalls his mood that morning.
"For them, the islands, they have always said belong to them. And it's expressed in their emotions when they come up the passage shouting at each other and they open the door and they come in, they have guns," he says.
"I then become quite belligerent."
On the recording, he can be heard ordering the Argentinian commander to tell his men to take their guns outside, to stop shouting and smoking.
"I hate smoking. No smoking in my studio. And he tells them and of course, they're still shouting and screaming. And then you can hear him shouting, 'Silencio, silencio'."
Mr Watts's calm defiance has come to define the collective attitude of this British Overseas Territory ever since.
But given Argentina has never relinquished its territorial claim to the Falklands, it's not necessarily the population's overwhelming desire to remain British that has kept them that way.
'The threat hasn't changed'
Since the end of the conflict there has been a UK military presence on the islands.
A 2,000-strong garrison of troops and a squadron of fighter jets and transport aircraft based around the main airport at Mount Pleasant.
A deterrent to Argentina - little more than 200 miles away - not to exercise its continued claim over the Falklands.
However, the UK is more than 7,000 miles away and in a world newly dominated by strong men with territorial ambitions.
And the UK's expensive military commitment to the Falklands comes at a time when the government is under pressure to prioritise defence, and defence spending closer to home.
Walking across the rugged landscape you get a sense of how remote and, to an outsider at least, how inhospitable these islands are.
With military tensions escalating in Europe as US President Donald Trump presses for an end to the war in Ukraine, it's reasonable to ask whether Falkland Islanders feel less secure than they have done for the past 40 years.
"Argentina is always a bit of a shadow over our shoulder," says Leona Roberts, a member of the Falkland Islands legislative assembly.
"The threat and the situation… has not changed."
But she is confident the UK will continue its protection of the Falklands. Successive governments, including Sir Keir Starmer 's, have continued to support the current military presence.
'We take nothing for granted'
But could it change?
"We take nothing for granted," she says. "We're very grateful for the UK's continuing support."
Though remote, the Falkland Islands, she argues, are strategically important as a gateway for research and maritime operations around Antarctica and the vast South Atlantic region, as well as politically stable in an increasingly unstable world.
"A little rock of democracy and stability in what is otherwise a pretty volatile region," she says.
Argentina's President Javier Milei, an ally of Mr Trump, has said he will not relinquish the claim to sovereignty over the Falklands, but nor will he seek conflict with the UK.
People here hope their strong desire to remain British will always outweigh the physical distance between them and their protector.