Death on the Rock
“Death on the Rock” was an episode of Thames Television’s current affairs series This Week. The programme examined the deaths of three IRA members in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988. It presented evidence that the IRA members were shot without warning or while attempting to surrender. Thames commissioned an independent inquiry into the making of the programme. The report found it to be a “trenchant” work of journalism, made in “good faith and without ulterior motives”
About Death on the Rock in brief
“Death on the Rock” was an episode of Thames Television’s current affairs series This Week. The programme examined the deaths of three IRA members in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988. It presented evidence that the IRA members were shot without warning or while attempting to surrender. It was condemned by the British government, while tabloid newspapers denounced it as sensationalist. Thames commissioned an independent inquiry into the making of the programme. The Windlesham–Rampton report found that the programme’s tendency was to raise questions rather than to reach a conclusion. It became the first individual documentary to be the subject of anIndependent inquiry, in which it was largely vindicated. The documentary was broadcast on 28 April 1988, despite two attempts by Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe to have the Independent Broadcasting Authority postpone the broadcast. The report found it to be a “trenchant” work of journalism, made in “good faith and without ulterior motives”. Thames lost its franchise and the IBA was abolished as a result of the Broadcasting Act 1990—decisions which several involved parties believed were influenced by the government’s anger at “Death On The Rock”. This Week was a current affairs television series that began in 1956. In 1978, it was renamed TV Eye and took on a slightly lighter format; the title this Week was restored in 1986, after which it became steadily more journalistic. By 1988, the programme had interviewed several prime ministers and leaders of the opposition, including Margaret Thatcher, who had been interviewed for three full episodes. The programme was broadcast simultaneously across the ITV regions and became a mainstay of ITV’s current Affairs programming.
The series’ editor, Roger Bolton, dispatched journalists to Gibraltar and Spain, where they interviewed several people who witnessed the shootings as well as Spanish police officers. Satisfied by the journalists’ findings, Bolton sought a conclusion to the programme; as the government refused to comment, Bolton recruited a leading human rights lawyer to give his opinion on the findings. Most of the eyewitnesses interviewed for the programme gave evidence at the inquest into the shootings; most repeated the statements they had given the programme, but one witness retracted his previous statement. Carmen Proetta, one of the documentary’s main witnesses, accused her of being a former prostitute and of being anti-British; Proetta later successfully sued several newspapers for libel. In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, the British Government released a statement to the effect that a large car bomb had been found in Gibraltar, and that three suspected terrorists had been shot by British soldiers. That evening, British television reported the alleged finding of the car bomb in a car park while it was full of soldiers for the Convent ceremony. The three were suspected by British authorities of being part of a plot to detonate a bomb in the car park in Gibraltar. They were shot by members of the British Special Air Service, while the suspects were walking back towards the Spanish border, as they were walking towards the border, and they were shot dead by soldiers.
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