Falklands War cartoon

Falklands War cartoon

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was in Britain when the Falklands War broke out in early 1982. Declaring that ‘New Zealand would back Britain all the way’, he compared Falkland Islanders with New Zealanders as people living ‘at the end of the line’ who knew ‘the feeling of isolation’.

This cartoon published in New Zealand Truth shows the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher – as Britannia – preparing for a conflict with the ‘Argentine Bull’, which is standing on a very small island. A bulldog personifying Muldoon is barking up the ‘wrong tree’ of ‘N.Z. native opinion’.

Many New Zealanders did not agree with Muldoon’s unquestioning support of Britain’s military aims. However, his primary motive may have been a desire to bolster New Zealand’s position in trade negotiations with Britain. In the event, New Zealand’s only contribution to the Falklands War was to relieve a vessel of the Royal Navy’s Task Group in the Indian Ocean so that it could be sent to the South Atlantic.

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