On April 2, 1982, Argentinian troops invaded the Falkland Islands, which they referred to as the Islas Malvinas. This move by the junta leader, General Leopoldo Galtieri, came as a complete surprise to the world. Reporting on this event was Harold Briley, the BBC World Service’s Latin America correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro. In his report, he said, “Argentina’s threatened invasion of the British colony, the Falkland Islands, is reported to be under way.”
Briley alerted people in Britain and around the world to this shocking news. Following that, Briley went to Buenos Aires to continue reporting on the conflict. This went on for over two months before the task force sent from Britain by then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, defeated the Argentinian forces, with the loss of hundreds of combatants on both sides.
During the Argentinian occupation of the islands, locals listened intently on hidden radios to Briley’s reports on the progress of the conflict, coming to trust him to give them accurate information on the momentous events taking place around them. When he visited the islands shortly after the capitulation of the Argentinian forces in June, the locals put up a banner on Government House in Port Stanley, simply reading, “God Bless You Harold.” He was later awarded the freedom of Goose Green, as well as the right to free drinks at the Falklands Club in Port Stanley.
After the Falklands War, Briley continued his close relationship with the Falkland Island locals. He ran the BBC World Service’s twice-weekly Calling the Falklands program and edited the Falkland Islands Association Newsletter for over ten years. Briley was also on the association’s executive committee. In 2022, on the 40th anniversary of the war, Briley published his book Fight for Falklands Freedom, which criticized the attempts by James Callaghan’s Labour government to negotiate the transfer of sovereignty of the islands to Argentina.
Harold Briley passed away due to cancer at the age of 92. Born in Anfield, Liverpool, he was the son of Jessica (nee Humphreys) and Harold Briley Sr, a wheelwright. During the Second World War, he survived a German bomb that destroyed most of his street and was evacuated to the Isle of Man, where he attended the Douglas high school for boys. Briley began his journalism career on the Isle of Man, where he also met Norah Mylrea. They married in 1956.
After serving in national service with the Royal Artillery on the border between Hong Kong and communist China, he worked in newspapers in Manchester and on the Liverpool Post and Echo as a crime reporter. Joining the BBC in the late 1950s as a writer for Today in Parliament, Briley embarked on his career as a war correspondent when he was on a journalism scholarship in India and war with Pakistan broke out in 1971, leading to the establishment of Bangladesh. In recognition of his support for the Falklands Islanders’ cause, in 2022, a park near Port Stanley was named after him, an honor of which he was immensely proud. Briley was survived by Norah, their daughter, Heather, and son, Kevin, and a grandson, Matthew
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