1930's Irish Radio Analysis - Part Four. The Irish Language More Than a Cupla Focail

For an Irish radio station it was not until 1937 before the station became familiarly known in the Irish Language as Radio Eireann prior to that it was known as 2RN or Radio Athlone which upset Irish language activists. Despite the constant effort by these activists to force the Irish language centre stage by and the call for more native language programmes on the State station it would not be until 1939 before the first GAA hurling match between Limerick and Kilkenny would be broadcast entirely in the Irish language. All the more remarkable when we learn that a year earlier the first all Irish pantomime had been broadcast from Galway.

From the first inception of Irish radio, there was a battle by Irish Gaelgoirs to use the medium to rejuvenate and reinvent the Irish language and utilise the national aspects of the stations availability. English was the predominant language in Ireland and despite the best efforts of Conradh na Gaeilge amongst others to have Radio Athlone broadcast more in Irish, the native tongue was consigned to a second language and at times struggled for that position. Throughout the thirties the station carried linguistic learning courses in French and German. The Irish language activists became alarmed as the decade continued as the station began to broadcast a number of programmes in the universal language of Esperanto. During long periods of the late nineteen thirties there were more programmes broadcast in Esperanto than in the native language.

In the early days of Irish radio the Irish language supporters believed that the airwaves were not being used properly for the promotion of the native language. Activists initially wanted the state run station to be solely broadcast in Irish and that it should support National ideals and traditions but there was very little support from the political establishment who were unsure how to treat the new medium and were suspicious of the intentions of traditionalists. Over eighty percent of the station’s output was in English, the language of Government and the Irish language did not even make up the entire remainder as French, German and Esperanto all received significant airtime. Less than half of all music played on the new station was Irish traditional and this caused much debate in the newspapers of the day.

It was not until 1970 that a group of activists crowded into a small caravan in Galway and asserted their right to have a dedicated Irish language radio station on the air. Two years after those pioneering pirate broadcasts Radio na Gaeltachta took to the airwaves and has been broadcasting nationally ever since. In recent years other stations have provided programming in the native tongue including Radio Na Life, Radio Failte and local community stations across the country. These have been augmented in recent years by internet based Irish language radio stations. In 1989 when the Independent Radio and Television Commission perused proposals for the new commercial national franchise there was derision in the media when former pirate broadcaster Chris Cary (Radio Nova) in his submission advanced his proposal for an Irish language ‘word of the day’. This English born entrepreneur seemed unable grasp the importance of the native tongue on a national stage but fast forward twenty years and the national franchise now Today FM offers a thirty second occasional slot ‘creid é no ná creid é’ not far off Cary’s 1989 thoughts on the subject in 1989.

Radio Eireann in 1939 was the chief provider of Irish language broadcasting but this year would see four different stations in three different countries broadcast ‘as Gaeilge’. Vatican Radio aired Irish programmes at 7.30pm hosted by the Rector of the Irish College in Rome broadcast on short wave for the faithful in Ireland to listen to. In Germany, Nazi state radio began broadcasting in Irish on December 10th 1939. The presenter was Hans Hartmann and their propaganda was anti British and an overt attempt to reinforce Ireland’s position of neutrality during the Second World War. Covered in the excellent book by David O’Donoghue ‘Hitler’s Irish Voices’ Irland-Redaktion was heard on short wave and 395m medium wave. The station was the brainchild of Ludwig Mulhausen of the German propaganda department, a professor in Celtic studies at Berlin University who had visited Ireland especially the West of Ireland many times prior to the war. Also assisting in the Irish broadcasts was Adolf Mahr who had been the director at the National Museum.  For the first two years of broadcasts were delivered only in Irish but from 1941 until its final transmission on May 2nd 1945 the station broadcast both in English and Irish but aimed at an Irish audience both in Ireland and the Irish Diaspora in Britain.

The final broadcaster ‘as gaeilge’ was the IRA’s broadcast station which was located in Ashgrove House, Rathgar and began all their broadcasts with a speech in the native tongue usually delivered by Seamus Byrne. The station was raided and closed at the end of December 1939 bringing the decade to a close.