The Chairman and Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee, together with the Chief of Defence Staff and the Defence Secretary, were contacted and told to stand by. Staff monitored two television sets, tuned to the BBC and CNN. Downing Street opened lines to Permanent Joint Operations Headquarters in Northwood in North London, Britain's joint military command centre. Minutes before informing Downing Street, Northwood had itself been alerted by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham; GCHQ had been informed by Britain's Far East listening post in Darwin, northern Australia.
Wentworth was quickly told that the White House regarded the attack as a serious international crisis and was planning a response by 0045. It was not known exactly what line the Americans would take. The Prime Minister asked for a verbal report and draft statement by 0025. His Press Secretary, Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and a senior official from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office drew up Britain's reaction. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office made sure the Press Association and Reuters were ready to put it out immediately.
On the other side of Downing Street, at the Foreign Office, officials collated the assessments of Britain's representatives in Hanoi, Beijing, and elsewhere in the region, in time for the Foreign Secretary to present them for the 0045 meeting. From Hanoi the Ambassador reported that there were 1,750 permanent British residents in Vietnam and possibly up to 5,000 tourists. Unconfirmed reports from the bombing were one British engineer dead and two slightly injured at Cam Ranh Bay. Russians, French, Germans, Americans, and other Westerners were believed to be hurt. The Consul-General in Hong Kong said that eighty-seven British nationals were listed as working on the rigs in the South China Sea. An unknown number of Hong Kong Chinese with British Dependency passports were also employed there. At least seven might have been on Discovery Reef at the time of the attack. It should be assumed that they were being held by Chinese troops. In a telephone conversation with the Resident Clerk (Duty Officer) at the Foreign Office, the Consul-General in Hong Kong said the situation in the territory was volatile: `We must do everything to retain the confidence of the Chinese. They think we are trying to destabilize the situation here. This South China Sea adventure could not have come at a worse time.' The British Ambassador in Beijing spoke on the telephone from a secure room inside the embassy known as the Wendy House. He had not had official confirmation of the attacks. His information was coming from CNN and the BBC. He urged London to treat the Chinese leadership carefully. `These are highly intelligent and highly motivated national leaders who are facing a domestic crisis. It may be a dictatorship, but it's fracturing. Corruption's rampant, food shortages abound, and there's a shortage of oil. My advice is to tread carefully and see what they say. China is a nuclear power with large ambitions.'
By 0050 Wentworth was nearing the end of his report. He noted that Britain had treaty obligations to Malaysia, one of the claimants to the South China Sea islands, under the Five Power Defence Agreement drawn up in the 1960s. If the Malaysians asked for Britain to honour it, Australia and New Zealand would also be involved.
The Prime Minister asked: `What would they do?'
The Foreign Secretary replied: `New Zealand, for what it's worth, would support us. Australia, which is more important, may well take a lead from Asia. It would have to consult its Asian neighbours. It doesn't have the European Union. It doesn't have the North America Free Trade Agreement. If it puts a foot wrong in East Asia, it loses the only operational trading bloc to which it aspires to be a member.'
Wentworth then told the meeting that the Ambassador in Paris reported that France's reaction to the attack on Vietnam would be volcanic. The Ambassador had recalled a conversation about Indochina with the French President, who said bluntly: `We once owned the jewel of Asia. We lost it in 1954. We don't intend to lose it again.' He pointed out that after the Vietnamese provincial elections Paris and Hanoi had begun drafting a mutual security treaty. France might use this to take a military position in support of Hanoi.
A message from the Ambassador to the oil-rich sultanate of Brunei reminded the ministers that a British naval group led by the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal was paying a visit to Brunei on its way to Australia. Deliberately, this was not included in the Foreign Office statement which came out in time to lead the 0100 radio news bulletins:
`The British government is deeply concerned about the violence and loss of life in Vietnam and the South China Sea. We are in contact with our European and American allies and urge China to withdraw from disputed territory to avoid further bloodshed. The government calls on China and Vietnam to uphold the pledges made over many years: that sovereignty disputes in the region should be resolved through peaceful means. `The government is particularly concerned for the safety of British nationals in the war zone.' As soon as the statement was broadcast, both BBC and CNN switched to the live press conference from the State Department in Washington.
Nguyen Van Tai, President of Vietnam, had planned a visit to Hue, Vietnam's old imperial capital, that morning, but for the past forty-five minutes he and his staff had been poring over maps of Vietnam and the South China Sea. Tai, the man known as Vietnam's Gorbachev, an honour he did not fully accept, sat at the head of an ornate nineteenth-century French table, his generals and civilian advisers on either side. Two portraits hung on the wall opposite: Ho Chi Minh, the founder of Communist Vietnam, and General Giap Vo Nguyen, who delivered defeat to the French at the siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. As the faces of these two great Asian leaders looked down upon their successors, President Tai was concluding his summing up.
`So you are telling me, gentlemen, that our best course of action is inaction,' Tai said. `I should order our air force to stay in Laos and Cambodia. Our navy, or what is left of it, I should keep at sea running away from China's attacks. So be it and so ordered. General Diem, see that the air force and navy are informed immediately. I am not, however, entirely happy with the idea of doing nothing other than protecting our military assets. I want the Chinese to pay for what they have done. We should unleash a reign of terror along our mutual border. Nothing big. Small units only. I want our best troops held back to defend Hanoi. What I have in mind are guerrilla operations. Surgical and clean, but designed to produce maximum impact. General Thu, please see to it. Finally, I think we should involve the international community, especially France and the United States. I will put in a call to President Dargaud and I will see the US Ambassador here.
`In the meantime, I want a full statement issued over Radio Vietnam condemning the Chinese unequivocally. I also want a clear exposition of the legitimacy of our claim to the islands. It should conclude with a call to the United Nations to intervene. That is all.
' Radio Hanoi broadcast:
`This morning at dawn the Chinese government launched an unprovoked attack on our air force and navy aimed at destroying our capacity to defend the nation. This is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Vietnamese people who in 10,000 years will never forget this perfidious act. At the same time the Chinese navy has laid siege to the oil-production facilities on the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands in the Bien Dong Sea (South China Sea). The government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam calls on China to withdraw immediately and renounce its rebel claim to Vietnamese territory or accept the consequences of protracted war.'