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News of the disaster rocked the British, who had until then been carried along on a wave of euphoria and rhetoric by the ability of their task force to inflict damage without sustaining serious casualties. In reality, however, the British had never been enthusiastic about losing lives in defense of their remote colony, even if the lives were Argentine. A Market & Opinion Research International poll, taken four days before the Sheffield sinking, had shown that three out of five Britons were not prepared to lose one serviceman's life in defense of the Falklands.
In Portsmouth, anxious families gathered in pouring rain outside the gates of the British naval headquarters for news of the fate of their loved ones. Special telephone lines installed to pass on information to next of kin were jammed with calls. In the destroyer's namesake city, Union Jacks were lowered to half-mast. Sheffield's Lord Mayor Enid Hattersley was on the verge of tears as she asked mournfully, "What is worth losing young lives for? One is too many." The re-action of most Britons was summed up by a Portsmouth man, who said he "had thought we might lose some because of the weather in the South Atlantic, but I never thought we would lose any to the Argies."
Among families of the dead, the forms of grief were mixed. Said Harry Taylor of the Dorset village of Ryme Intrinseca, father of the first Harrier pilot to be shot down: "I am proud to have a son who died doing the job he loved for the country he loved. Nick was always fully aware of the dangers." But Joan Goodall, the Enfield, Middlesex, mother of a 21-year-old cook aboard the Sheffield, was far airport stoic. Said she of her son Neil: "He never joined the navy to die for something as wasteful as this. I feel totally shattered and heartbroken."
The loss of the Sheffield sharpened the political situation for Thatcher and her Cabinet. Even before that setback, the spirit of unified support for the British government in its campaign to win back a territory taken by force had begun to give way, both at home and abroad. Indeed, the change in mood took effect almost immediately after the sinking of the Belgrano.
In the House of Commons, the opposition Labor Party, which after some fretting had taken a posture of bipartisan support for the government's combination of military and diplomatic pressure on Argentina, became restive again. Labor Leader Michael Foot refused a Thatcher offer of briefings on the military progress in the Falklands, and renewed demands that Britain try U.N. mediation of the dispute. Labor's foreign policy spokesman, Denis Healey, warned that "if this military escalation continues, more lives, both Argentine and British, could be lost than there are on the Falkland Islands." Outside the Commons the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie expressed similar fears. Said he: "It is a moral, not just a political duty to count the cost at every stage as the conflict develops."