1930's Irish Radio Analysis - Part One. Society Changed by the Wireless

Irish Radio in the 1930's was to be educational. Its early aims were to teach farmers how to farm better and improve productivity holding out the dream of a better way of life. It would teach new languages including Irish, French, German and Esperanto. It would help to teach children many of whom had left school early to work the family farm or just to survive. Radio would provide women more help in the kitchen, which they rarely left. There was a hope that the station could be all things to everyone but it ended up being nothing to anyone except those who could criticise or take monetary advantage. The arrival of radio would alter the Irish people and their persona more than the introduction of the telegraph, telephone or even television. Rural Ireland and its way of life would be radically altered with the arrival of the station and radio itself.

The monetary value of radio broadcasts were exploited as village fairs, fetes and charity events across Ireland advertised ‘Dances by Wireless’ as a way of generating revenue. These events were ‘paid in’ events with music relayed by a radio set (known popularly as ‘the wireless’) on a stage and dancing on the main floor, an early form of nightclub or for a later generation The TV Club. These events were often organised by the local parish priest to raise funds for local charities, church and school repairs or for the running of the church itself. The parochial organisers often saw themselves as the ‘censor in chief’ monitoring what their flock listened to and protecting the moral fibre of the community. Prior to the arrival of the ‘Irish station’ this was difficult as they had no control over the choice of music being played by international radio stations.

Entertainment was an escape from the trauma of the battlefield, the poor and distressed living conditions and the mundane hand to mouth existence of much of the rural Irish population. In many homes in Ireland late at night the only light in the front room was the light of the Sacred Heart photograph on the wall and in the dial of their radio set. For rural Ireland many of the new technologies of the early part of the twentieth century like the motor car, the aeroplane and even electricity meant little to the Irish farmer, who dominated Ireland’s ‘industrial’ output in the 1920's but radio was affordable especially with a homemade crystal set. An increase in the number of licences in rural Ireland was not seen until the latter part of the thirties as listeners abandoned the crystal set for a production model. The increase was also attributed to the launch of not just a Dublin broadcasting station but a national station accessible in every part of the country.

What difference would radio make to the simple, uneducated farmer living in Dingle or Ballina? Rural Ireland was isolated, it was agricultural based and poorly educated. News of happenings outside your four walls came through word of mouth often offered at the church gates on a Sunday or the communal newsreader. The communal newsreader was the local who had a better degree of education than most and was able to read the newspaper. This led to a gathering where the reader would educate and entertain their neighbours with the contents of a newspaper that was often more than a week old. But events outside their townland or parish had little effect on their lives or so they assumed. M.R. Heffernan TD, the Secretary at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in an article he wrote for The Irish Radio News told the farming community that he believed

            ‘broadcasting will help towards filling the gaps in the lives of our rural population, which gaps at present are dull and uncultivated gaps.’

The arrival of radio made the communal newsreader unemployed as you did not need to read and write to be able to listen to the news via the wireless and form your own opinions. There was still the gathering, the social third place after work and domestic living, but the nature and tone of the gathering had changed. Before radio broadcasts, entertainment centered on the house party. Locals would gather, drink perhaps some locally distilled spirit, sing traditional tunes and sean nos dance on the grey flagged stone floors while maintaining the Irish art of the storytelling. But now the radio broadcast was the centre of attention. People listened in silence to the music and the news.

The local traditional music was not just the only music available to the listener especially the young and impressionable. Marching band music, Operas, Jazz, crooning which was invented for radio vied with traditional Irish music for the listeners attention with the native airs no longer locally based but a national identity.  Musicians from Kerry could now hear musicians from Donegal and like an accent or a dialect there were often variations in the way the same traditional tune was played. There were new influences appearing in traditional Irish music much to the dismay of traditionalists and purists and for this radio was blamed. It was a diluting of the traditional and a moving away from the Irish culture and heritage that was once almost lost and certainly driven underground under Britain rule. For many who did not appreciate how radio worked, their belief that an Irish radio station could have the same isolationist attitude as the nation as a whole ignored the fact that the ether was carrying other influences and stations into the sometime naïve Ireland.  

But now the social equilibrium was broken as a new voice entered the home. This new unseen voice was full of new ideas, ideologies and advancements that produced change faster than the listener could adapt. The radio set was the first piece of twentieth century technology to enter the Irish home. In most houses even before electricity the radio set was the only piece of modern furniture. For many households who bought an imported radio set it was a major investment in tough economic times.

Women were suddenly not lonely when their men folk were out in the fields or cutting turf on the bogs. They were gaining in independence, more receptive to new ideas. The radio was a window on the world rather than a world that just involved the people and events of the next town land. The Irish had let this unseen stranger into their homes in a very intimate way. There were no formal introductions, their way no way to judge by a man’s looks if he was honest or not. This voice from the box was invading a space traditionally reserved for the man of the house even though that person by the act of purchasing a radio set issued an unwritten invitation. The sense of wonderment that somehow you were listening to a broadcaster or a musician in Paris, France while you sat in your kitchen in Kerry was in itself a complicated concept to accept by a simple man from of the land. If you lived on an isolated farm the only voices you would hear were those of your family, your neighbours and perhaps a few villagers as you attended Mass on a Sunday. This totalled less than one hundred people but by listening to the radio you had doubled that total in one week.

People began to speak about presenters in the same way they would talk about a family member even though they would never actually cross paths. Presenters were becoming household names. There was a third presence in a marriage whether the spouses liked it or not. The first battle over what should be listened to was now breaking out. Different styles of music and not just Irish traditional music was drawing greater audiences. When local musicians came to the house they played the tunes they knew and same way they always played them but they were now becoming redundant as with a turn of the dial or a movement of the aerial, ‘new’ music was being heard.

When they heard Birmingham, Manchester, Pittsburgh or New York there was a sense of connection for many of the older generations as these were the cities that their families had emigrated to during and after the famine. Many had lost touch completely never knowing for sure if their brother, sister, son or daughter made it to their new land of opportunity. Even though there was no direct personal contact on the radio, the thought that you were hearing programmes from New York at the same time as a family member was in that city brought a sense of peace and understanding. It drew line under some of the hurt caused by the enforced separations.

Radio changed the social activities of the natives. Radio became a national culture and a disseminator of culture. No longer did people have a parochial or provincial window on life they were now part of a bigger country or the world Listeners across the length and breath of the country were able to hear the same music, talk or news at the same time as everyone else. The advertisement of products was now a national endeavour rather than a local necessity.  Radio became a shared experience with people they would never meet. There was no need to leave the house to be entertained. No need to go to the theatre as 2RN broadcast plays, no need for vaudeville as comedians embraced the new medium and the musical hall came to your living room rather than the need to travel or pay an admission fee even though a licence fee was required to listen to the radio but the purchase of licences outside the urban conurbations was slow. The radio also meant that your entertainment requirements were not affected by inclement weather. The way we were entertained and the way we demanded to be entertained reached new plateaus.

The men of the nation were able to listen to a broadcast of the All Ireland GAA Finals live and we will look as the new stations uneasy relationship with Ireland’s largest sporting body in the next post.