Gibraltar at Arcola Theatre

Gibraltar, written by media law expert Alastair Brett with Siân Evans, is based on the hugely controversial shooting by the SAS in Gibraltar of three unarmed Provisional IRA terrorists in 1988. Hear how the Government got it wrong, how the press got it wrong and how television got it wrong. Decide who you think got it right and who told the truth. Was it simply ‘shoot to kill’ – the state summarily executing three terrorists – or did a police blunder cause a highly classified secret operation to go horribly wrong?

The themes in Gibraltar raise serious questions about the culture, practices and ethics of journalism and how the media can and will ‘spin’ material and fail to check or omit uncomfortable facts in the headlong rush to publish or broadcast a ‘scoop’.

Following the shootings, a television documentary provoked a massive press backlash; the Government’s account of the shootings was challenged and witnesses’ backgrounds and reputations were trashed in the programme’s aftermath - the truth was buried in a welter of accusation and counter-accusation.

The characters in Gibraltar are a fusion of those who were, in one way or another, caught up in the aftermath of the shootings and the making of the television documentary – here called Ambush. Although based on fact, the dialogue is fictional apart from the accounts of the shootings given on television, what was said in the House of Commons, in the Gibraltar Coroner’s Court and in police and magistrates’ reports. Gibraltar also looks at the role of the Government and the intelligence services in allowing drug smugglers and criminals, with multiple paymasters, to avoid justice by informing on terrorists and the criminal underworld.

Gibraltar examines the people who live in this British Overseas Territory, its proximity to Spain and Morocco and the smuggling that has gone on there for years. 25 years on, this is your opportunity to find out about the SAS, the IRA, journalists, MI5 informants and the Costa del Crime. Decide where you think the truth lies!