Falklands revisionism

We'll hear a lot over the next few weeks about the anniversary of the Falklands War. To this day I relish the warning given by Tam Dalyell in his peerlessly loopy 1982 book One Man's Falklands that “the closeness of the analogy with Vietnam has not been sufficiently considered on the British side of the Atlantic”. But for modern revisionism, we can turn to this week's Socialist Worker, where John Newsinger ("Falklands: war and lies") writes: "To justify the war the Tories suddenly started raging about human rights and 'despicable Latin American juntas'. These same MPs had done nothing when Argentine leader General Galtieri launched a military coup in 1976."

1. The coup of 1976 was launched by Jorge Videla, not Galtieri.

2. Newsinger teaches history at an institution called Bath Spa University.

3. This is not the same as Bath University.

I suspect my readers will be familiar with point 1, but surprised by point 2, and reassured by point 3.