In any event, Merton’s Hall, Chapel and front quadrangle were built in the quarter of a century after 1274, and Mob Quad, constructed between 1288 and 1378. The Merton College Library, situated in the Mob Quad was, allegedly, the oldest continuously used academic library in the World. But then Oxford Colleges routinely made so many claims about these things that it was hard to tell which to take seriously.
In any event, as a Cambridge man Willie Whitelaw tended to take any claim by an Oxford man on behalf of his college with a very large pinch of salt.
“Dreadfully sorry to keep you all waiting, gentlemen,” he declaimed, shouldering into the room with a sheaf of files under his left arm. “I was bearded by our new Supply Supremo. Mrs Munro doesn’t take any prisoners so I had a Devil of a time making a break for freedom!”
Privately, the Secretary of State found it a little peculiar to be in a government run by a woman, and was still struggling to come to terms with a Cabinet that was not only led by a woman — albeit a remarkable, if prickly example of the gender — containing two others. He had had as little as possible to do with Barbara Castle, his counterpart at the Department of Labour, a leftie like her was the ideal person to deal with the bloody trade unions; but Alison Munro’s department, the greatly expanded Ministry of Supply, Transportation and Energy, was intimately connected in every way with what his bailiwick was all about; making war.
From the expression of sympathy on the faces of the three Chiefs of Staff, Willie Whitelaw divined that each man had already had his own baptism of fire at the hands of the second ‘woman of steel’ in the UAUK Cabinet.
“A most formidable lady, sir,” General Sir Richard Hull, Chief of the Defence Staff remarked ruefully.
“Yes, indeed!” Willie Whitelaw dumped himself at one of the two vacant chairs around the old — everything in Merton was ‘old’ — common room table which had been brought into the room for this conference. “I was informed on the way down to this place that the Prime Minister’s plane has landed at Philadelphia and her party has arrived safely at the Embassy.”
General Hull cleared his throat.
“I briefed Charles Elworthy on the current military situation before I came across to Merton College, Minister,” he explained, merely as a matter of form. Air Marshal Sir Charles Elworthy was the UAUK’s ‘military legate’ to the Kennedy Administration, an increasingly thankless post that would soon be, if it was not already, redundant. “I also took the liberty of asking Major General Carver to attend Merton College this morning with a view to making himself available to report directly to the Chiefs of Staff and, yourself.”
“I understood the poor fellow was only due to fly into Brize Norton an hour ago?” The Secretary of State queried.
“Just so, Minister. He should be here in the next few minutes.”
Willie Whitelaw gathered his wits.
The Prime Minister had decided that whatever came out of her ‘summit’ with President Kennedy, that the United Kingdom would ‘draw a line in the sand’ in the Middle East. Abadan Island and any government in the region willing to resist the Soviet invasion of Iran — and inevitably, soon Iraq — would be defended by British arms to the limit of the nation’s resources.
Colleagues had already come to Whitelaw and observed that ‘the PM seems to be a bit one-eyed about all this’, but actually for all her faults, the woman was right about the one vital thing; if the country stood back and let the Red Army drive to the northern shores of the Persian Gulf it would be the end of Great Britain. He, like his Prime Minister, did not want to live in that Britain.
“Before we attack the meat of today’s session,” he decided, turning to the new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Varyl Begg. “Where are we with Operation Sturdee, First Sea Lord?”
Operation Sturdee — named for Admiral Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee, the victor of the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914 — was the codename for the planned deployment of as many as eight modern conventional Oberon and Porpoise class submarines in response to the Argentine seizure of the Falklands Archipelago and other British territories in the South Atlantic.
“HMS Walrus and HMS Cachalot are two days out from Devonport bound for Simons Town, Minister. HMS Olympus and HMS Oberon are currently making ready at Gibraltar. They will sail for the Cape within the next forty-eight hours. Three other Oberons and Porpoises are being made ready for operations in the South Atlantic. The Ice Patrol Ship Protector has successfully rendezvoused approximately mid-way between South Africa and South Georgia with the South African destroyer Jan van Riebeeck and the frigate HMS Llandaff. All onboard the Protector are reported safe and well. At least four Oberons and Porpoises will be on station around the Falkland Islands not later than 18th May, Minister.”
The day before the Battle of Malta the air force of the Argentine Republic had bombed Port Stanley and Argentine Marines masquerading as whalers and scrap metal dealers had landed on South Georgia, seizing the settlement of Grytviken. At the very time Malta was coming under bombardment from ships of the Red Navy, and nearly two thousand paratroopers and Spetsnaz of the Red Army were swinging beneath their parachutes over the most important British base in the Mediterranean, two thousand Argentine soldiers were coming ashore at Port Stanley on East Falkland and raising the white and blue flag of the Argentine Republic over government house. There were unconfirmed reports that the small force of Royal Marines ‘defending’ the distant archipelago had fought practically to the last man and there were, apparently, gruesome stories in the newspapers in Buenos Aires of captured ‘British soldiers’ and ‘Imperialistic criminals’ — civilian administrators — having been ‘shot while resisting arrest’.
“Very good,” Willie Whitelaw acknowledged. “I will advise the Prime Minister that an ultimatum should be broadcast as planned to the Argentine authorities and to all South Atlantic shipping, that as of 1st May all vessels encountered within a two hundred miles ‘total exclusion zone’ around the archipelago will be attacked and sunk without warning.”
Serendipitously, there was a businesslike knock at the door.
“Major General Carver is here, Minister,” Whitelaw’s new private secretary, thirty-three year old Christopher Chataway, the former athlete and broadcaster, announced.
The Minister glanced to the Chief of the Defence Staff, who nodded.
“Ask General Carver to join us please.”
Willie Whitelaw had not been remotely surprised when he had discovered that the man the CDS had sent out to the Persian Gulf to ‘report on the situation’ was forty-eight year old Major General Richard Michael Power Carver. The Secretary of State’s custom rose to his feet and extended his hand to the newcomer.
“How was your flight back, General?” He inquired solicitously as the newcomer was ushered into the room by Chataway.
Michael Carver viewed Whitelaw thoughtfully for a moment. Carver was a tall, handsome man with a superficially aquiline, praetorian dignity that gave strangers the impression that he was overly haughty, and inclined to purposefully distance himself from the milieu of those around him.
“Bumpy, sir,” he said, the merest suggestion of wry humour in his hard grey eyes. He was carrying a somewhat careworn attaché case in his left hand and his uniform was creased, as bone weary as the man inside it. “Especially, the landing at Malta to refuel.”
There was a noisy interruption as a tea trolley was pushed, rattling and creaking into the room by a co-opted Merton College porter whose sulky attitude made it abundantly apparent that the sooner his ‘Fellows’ were reinstalled the better.