It is a great honour for me to
join you today before this extraordinary gathering of so many
brave, gallant individuals, so many veterans and their families,
exactly 40 years after British soldiers entered Port Stanley and
liberated the Falkland Islands.
If you look at the photographs
of our troops raising the Union Flag over Government House,
you’ll see young men who had just fought their way across a
desolate and freezing landscape,
and they’re unkempt and
unshaven, their camouflage is streaked with mud, and you sense
that their stamina – even their legendary stamina, has been
tested to the limit, but what strikes you most is how their eyes
and their faces are filled with pride in what they have
achieved.
I of course have to rely on
photographs, yet many of you were actually
there.
You were the spearhead of an
immense national effort, whereby our country dispatched a Task
Force 8,000 miles to the South Atlantic to liberate a British
territory from occupation and, even more importantly, to
vindicate the principle that the people of the Falkland Islands -
like people everywhere - have a right to decide their own future
and live peacefully in their own land.
You left behind 255 British
service personnel who laid down their lives for that principle,
along with three Falkland Islanders.
As we honour their memory, the
greatest tribute we can pay them is that ever since the
liberation the Falkland Islands have lived and thrived in peace
and freedom.
Today, they are home to people
of 60 nationalities, providing Britain’s gateway to the
Antarctic, and vital opportunities for conservation and
scientific research, based on a modern partnership founded on
that principle of self-determination.
None of this would have happened
without the tenacity, courage and fortitude of everyone who
served in the Task Force and the thousands of civilians who made
it possible.
Now, in honour of your
achievements and sacrifice, I would like to ask the Hon Roger
Spink and the Hon Leona Roberts of the Falkland Islands
Government to present Tom Herring, the Chairman of the South
Atlantic Medal Association, with a scroll giving all holders of
the South Atlantic Medal the Freedom of the Falkland
Islands.
