reading

First published in 2016 by Oberon Books Ltd

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Richard Norton-Taylor and Matt Woodhead are hereby identified as authors of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The authors have asserted their moral rights.

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PB ISBN: 9781783197736

EPUB ISBN: 9781783197743

Cover design by Joseph Priestley

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Introduction

The Chilcot inquiry into how and why Britain joined the US-led invasion of Iraq, widely seen as the most damaging foreign policy disaster in modern times, is an ideal candidate for a verbatim and documentary theatre production. Using the theatre as a platform in this way contributes to the democratic process.

The inquiry, set up by Gordon Brown in 2009, six years after the invasion, was crying out for a new audience. The devastating evidence it heard from senior ministers, military commanders, security and intelligence officers, civil servants and advisers, is in danger of being consigned to history.

Last year we quickly agreed that Chilcot urgently needed to be revisited. Richard had behind him the experience of the ‘tribunal’ verbatim plays performed at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, northwest London, based on public inquiries and trials. The plays (all published by Oberon) include: The Colour of Justice, on the racist murder of the black teenager, Stephen Lawrence; Bloody Sunday, Scenes from the Saville Inquiry into the shooting of Irish civil rights marchers in Derry in January 1972; the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial; and Justifying War, based on the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of the government’s Iraqi weapons expert, David Kelly.

Matt and his verbatim company LUNG had recently successfully performed The 56, based on testimony from survivors of the Bradford City football stadium fire in 1985. Their second community based verbatim play E15 examined the struggle by twenty-nine mothers to prevent families from being evicted and the housing crisis in Newham, east London. Both productions premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and toured nationally, platforming unheard voices across the country.

Many involved in the inquiry, especially Tony Blair, his former ministers and close advisers, insist there have been enough investigations into the circumstances leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is time to move on, they insist. We profoundly disagree.

And other voices needed to be heard. We decided to give a platform to these voices through the play. They include: Iraq veterans; families of British soldiers killed during the conflict the invasion provoked; and also from Iraqis affected by the invasion. The interviews we conducted are interspersed with the Chilcot tribunal testimony.

One senior British military commander described the 2003 invasion as the ‘original sin’ which provoked years of violence, Sunni-Shia sectarian war, and from which the emergence of Isis sprung. Patrick Cockburn, the authoritative and respected British journalist writing about the Middle East, describes the 2003 invasion in his most recent book, Chaos and Caliphate, as the ‘earthquake whose aftershocks we still feel’. He adds: ‘It destroyed Iraq as a united country and nobody has been able to put it back together again.’

Nobody, apart from the dictator’s henchmen, defended Saddam Hussein. The question was, why invade Iraq at a time extreme Islamist-based terrorism was by far the greatest threat to Britain and the west? Saddam was not linked to al-Qaeda. The question was posed when the head of MI5, Eliza (now Baroness) Manningham-Buller, gave evidence.

Asked by Chilcot whether, in her view, the invasion of Iraq substantially increased the terrorist threat to the UK, she replied, unequivocally, that yes, it did so. She added: ‘We did not believe he (Saddam Hussein) had the capability to do anything much in the UK. That turned out to be the right judgment’.

Given his subsequent support for Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, Blair curiously told the Chilcot inquiry: ‘As a matter of sensible foreign policy…the way to deal with one dictatorial threat is not to back another’.

At the time we were going to print (May 2016) Sir John Chilcot announced his inquiry’s report will finally be published on 6 July. It consists of 2.6m words, about four times the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. But there is a danger that this valuable evidence will be lost, smothered, and eclipsed by the consequences of the EU referendum vote on 23 June and by spin from all sides.

Britain is still suffering, directly or indirectly, from the invasion of Iraq. Sectarianism has divided Iraq and Isis has taken over significant areas of the country.

Chilcot offers audiences the opportunity to assess the key evidence for themselves, in some 20,000 words.

Richard Norton-Taylor and Matt Woodhead

Acknowledgements

With thanks to the National Theatre Studio, Battersea Arts Centre, The Lowry, Alex Ferris & Old Vic New Voices, The Guardian, NSDF, Military Families Against War, Veterans for Peace, Stop the War Coalition, Migrant Voice, Faith Forum, Iraqi Body Count, CAGE, Haifa Zangana, Diyan Zora, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Mark Townsend, Simon Hooper, Chris Thorpe, Helen Monks, Tamar Saphra, Simon Shepherd, Julia Ford, Nicholas Tennant, Jonathan Dryden-Taylor.

Special thanks to Rachel Twigg. Without your advice, help and support, none of this would have been possible.

We are also indebted to Asma (aka Smile Cookie) for her dedication and countless hours spent facilitating interviews across Jordan.

Chilcot was originally performed with six actors, multi-rolling all parts.

Original cast: Souad Faress, Thomas Wheatley, Jonathan Coote, Sanchia McCormack, Raad Rawi, Gary Pillai

Characters

The Chilcot Inquiry Panel

Sir John Chilcot

Baroness Una Prashar

Sir Roderic Lyne

Sir Lawrence Freedman

Sir Martin Gilbert

The Witnesses

Sir Mark Allen, Head of MI6 Counter Terrorism Operations

Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Lord Goldsmith, Attorney General

Hans Blix, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq

Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff

Geoff Hoon, defence secretary

Jack Straw, foreign secretary

Tony Blair, prime minister

Alastair Campbell

Minister’s director of communications and strategy

Clare Short, international development secretary

Unidentified MI6 witness

Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5

The Interviewed

Oliver, A Civil Servant

Nick and Simon, UK veterans

Peter Brierley and Rose Gentle, military families

Shaikh Marwan Al Dulaimi,

Head of the Revolutionary Council

Ali, an Iraqi Civilian living in Basra

Nadia, an Iraqi Civilian living in Baghdad

Edited and compiled by Richard Norton-Taylor & Matt Woodhead

Director: Matt Woodhead

Producer: Sarah Georgeson

Assistant Producer: Christabel Holmes

Lighting Designer: Will Monks

Set & Costume Designer: James Donnelly

Lighting and Video Designer: Will Monks

Sound Designer: Owen Crouch

Cover Art: Joseph Priestley

Setting

The action of the play is split between the evidence room at the Chilcot Inquiry and in various one-on-one interview settings.

Authors’ Note

All evidence has been taken directly from the evidence given at the Chilcot Inquiry. None of the words of the witnesses who gave evidence, or of the panel members who asked questions, have been changed.

All interview material has been collected by Matt Woodhead & Richard Norton-Taylor. Some names of those interviewed have been changed to protect identities.