[1] On 6 July 1982, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, announced to the British Parliament that, following consultation with the Leader of the Opposition and leaders of other Opposition parties, the Government had decided to appoint a committee of Privy Counsellors, under the chairmanship of Lord Franks, with the following terms of reference: 'To review the way in which the responsibilities of Government in relation to the Falkland Islands and their Dependencies were discharged in the period leading up to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982, taking account of all such factors in previous years as are relevant; and to report'.
[4] The report concluded that the Committee "would not be justified in attaching any criticism or blame to the present Government for the Argentine junta's decision to commit its act of unprovoked aggression".
The British political commentator Hugo Young called it "a classic establishment job".
[7] In the parliamentary debate that followed its publication, the former Prime Minister James Callaghan said that "for 338 paragraphs he painted a splendid picture, delineated the light and the shade, and the glowing colours in it, and when Franks got to paragraph 339 he got fed up with the canvas he was painting, and chucked a bucket of whitewash over it".
David Owen, Foreign Secretary in the previous Labour government, was kinder in his interpretation.