The anatomy of an NUJ strike that silenced a radio revolution in 1986.

 

Courtesy of the #anoraksirelandcollection

The anatomy of an National Union of Journalists strike that silenced a radio revolution.

July 1983                    Following a relaunch of Kiss FM, Cary told the Sunday Independent that he ‘also decided "to get into bed" with trade unions. In the past Carey has threatened staff with dismissal for joining unions but now he has invited the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to open discussions with him in what he describes as "a necessary evil" following pressure from existing NUJ staff members at Radio Nova.’

 

January 15^th 1984     Chris Cary closes Kiss FM following a prolonged period of FM frequency jamming by the State broadcaster RTE.

February 2^nd 1984     On the front page of the Evening Herald, Cary said he thought the laying off a 15 staff would be sufficient to keep Radio Nova open but announces the closure of Radio Nova leading to the redundancy of 57 staff.

 

February 3^rd 1984     Jenny McIvor, the chapel of the NUJ, Linda Conway, Shane McGabhan, David Malone, Ken Hammond and Brian Johnson, all member of the NUJ are sacked without statutory notice or redundancy payment offer.

 

February 7^th 1984     Official NUJ pickets are placed on Radio Nova’s headquarters at 19 Herbert Street. He is reported as saying ‘I did them all a favour by giving them jobs in the first place’.

 

February 11^th 1984   A newspaper report states that Cary carried out a poll of his remaining employees who vote by a 5-1 majority to have unions excluded from the radio station. 

February 27^th 1984   The striking NUJ workers have a letter published in the national newspaper stating their case and grievances. 

March 4^th 1984          The Irish Congress of Trade Unions grant the NUJ an all out picketing of Radio Nova, this prevents other union employees including ESB & Posts and Telegraphs workers passing pickets. Cary also refuses to attend the Labour Court for dispute arbitration. Nova has moved its entire operation to Nova Park on Stocking Lane in Rathfarnham.

March 10^th 1984        There another announcement from Cary that Radio Nova would be imminently closing following a £150,000 VAT demand from the tax man. Mike Hogan resigns from the station as General Manager. 

June 1^st 1984              The NUJ publish a warning to prospective employees following adverts for replacement employees, that before they take on a position at Radio Nova, that they should contact the NUJ. 

August 4^th 1984         The Irish Independent reports that a unfair dismissal hearing at the Employment Appeals Tribunal has been adjourned until a High Court case is heard. According to Radiowaves.fm, ESB refuse to cross the pickets now at the station’s transmitter site at Nova Park in Rathfarnham when power is lost. Cary was forced to purchase generators to power the station.

                                                            Courtesy of the DX Archive

September 17^th 1984 Ken Hammond seeks an interlocutory injunction to prevent Cary from interfering with his picketing at Nova Park. He said Cary had been abusive and threatening.

October 2^nd 1984       An injunction ordered to prevent Cary interfering with pickets. Hammond in an affidavit said that Cary told him ‘he would find out what real guerrierism was and that if necessary he would hire people and he (Hammond) would find out what thousands of pounds could do’.

 

October 9^th 1984        The NUJ objects to the renewal of the pub and dancing licenses for Nova Park by Uniminster Limited, a Cary company. Justice Thomas Donnelly granted the license saying that the union had no rights to object as they were neither an individual nor a resident affected by the awarding of licenses.

November 23^rd 1984  The Irish Press reports that after 9 months the strike has been settled. Two of the striking journalists had found employment elsewhere but four remaining NUJ strikers would be returning to Radio Nova the following Monday.

Courtesy of radiowaves.fm

April 28^th 1985          Cary’s opens a new sister station to Radio Nova, Magic 105. The station operated from the Nova Boutique on Leeson Street. A company called Tegrar Limited is set up to run the station and Radio Nova leases a news service from Magic in an attempt to out manoeuvre the NUJ.

 

September 22^nd 1985 Magic is suddenly closed with the 8 NUJ members of the news room are locked out of the station. The NUJ picket the station once more. On the Nova News, Sybil Fennell read out the news about Magic closing attempting to distance Cary and Nova from the closure. It was according to the radiowaves.fm website The story read on Nova can only be described as pure propaganda (at best), given that Nova clearly owned Magic in every way, and probably didn't fool anyone. It certainly didn't fool the NUJ, who had returned to the picket line with a vengeance, determined to crush Nova.

September 29^th 1985 Nova says that the dispute has been settled and that they were recognising the union and offering striking workers contracts. The NUJ denies this.

October 21^st 1985      Sybil Fennell resigns from the NUJ. According to Fennell in an interview with Radio Today Ireland

‘The NUJ strike didn’t just ‘happen’ it was carefully orchestrated.  From memory I wasn’t working at Radio Nova at the time, I was hosting a magazine programme on LBC in London. I have no argument with the NUJ as a union, never have had, my argument was how every possible tactic was being employed to force Radio Nova off-air. The strike was a deliberate move to bring pressure to bear on Chris and to bring about the closure of Radio Nova – as was the jamming. RTE was not a happy bunny – their stations were haemorrhaging listeners not just to Radio Nova, although we were the most popular of the stations, but to a dial filled with radio stations delivering what the Dublin audience wanted.’

 

November 1^st 1985    A temporary injunction is granted to Cary and Fennell to prevent picketing at Nova Park on Stocking Lane after Fennell was verbally abused. The station has no telephones as Bord Telecom employees refuse to pass the pickets to repair the lines.

 

November 15^th 1985  Nova Media Services and Sybil Fennell fail to get injunction to stop the picketing but strikers said that they would picket in an orderly fashion and would refrain from calling Ms. Fennell a ‘scab’.

January 1^st 1986        Bernadette Cotter, described in the newspapers as one of the Nova strikers, made headlines when her daughter was the first baby born in Dublin for 1986. Her husband Paul was Nova’s station engineer.

 

March 1986               Nova closes. Cary lays the blame firmly at the door of the NUJ and the strikers.

1989                            When Cary and his Radio Nova team applied for the new National franchise from the Independent Radio and Television Commission told the commission he would offer £25,000 to the NUJ "to clear the air". His application was unsuccessful with Century Radio winning the franchise.

Further information of the Radio Nova story can be found HERE

Also at pirate.ie & The DX Archive

Sources

The Anoraks Ireland Collection at DCU

The Irish Newspaper Archives

pirate.ie

The DX Archive

radiowaves.fm

The British Newspaper Archives

The 1924 Dublin station NOT in Dublin

 

CC Baxter in the Middle

We are all well aware that in 1926, 2RN began entertaining the nation from studios located on Little Denmark Street just off Henry Street in Dublin’s city centre. But did you know that in June 1924 a radio station began broadcasting from Grafton Street, Dublin. It was operated by a store owner C.C. Baxter but rather than being a stones throw from St. Stephen’s Green, Baxter’s station was a fifteen watt operation from Grafton Street, Dublin, Texas.

KFPL was opened on June 30^th 1924 originally broadcasting from above Baxter’s Discount Store in downtown Dublin but quickly moved to a garage next to Baxter’s house on Grafton Street. It had four studios and initially broadcast many local musicians as the quality of 78s at the time were poor when broadcast. The station proved a boom for the Baxter’s Discount Store that expanded into the neighbouring saloon when prohibition was introduced.  The local newspaper the Dublin Progress reported in 1924 that the reception of the station was excellent with phone calls coming in from as far away as Forth Worth. Over the years the station was heard on various frequencies including 242m initially from June 30^th 1924, 252m (June 1925-June 1926), 275m (June 1926 – November 1928) 219m (November 1928-February 1929) and finally 229m (February 1929-March 1941).

Part of Baxter’s promotion of the station was to sell KFPL Mineral Water at a discounted price in his stores. The shop enhanced the success of the station and the station enhanced the success of the store. During the early 1930s, this was the only radio station in operation between Ft. Worth and Brownwood. The broadcasts reached 58 counties and around one million listeners. It has been reported that a broadcast from the station was once heard as far away as New Zealand.

The station remained on air until March 1941 when due to call ups to the armed forces, Baxter struggled to staff his beloved station and he handed the license back to the FCC with the license moved to a nearby town as WFTX.

The Grafton Street location of KFPL as it is today

A Photographic Record of the May 1983 Pirate Protest March - Dublin, Post the raids on Radio Nova and Sunshine Radio

 

On May 19th 1983, members of An Garda Siochana and officials from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs began a raid on Dublin and perhaps Ireland's most successful radio station, the pirate operation Radio Nova. It was a bolt from the blue, the second biggest station in Dublin, Sunshine Radio located in the grounds of the Sands Hotel, Portmarnock was also raided and closed. While Nova managed to get back on air briefly to say their goodbyes on May 20th, the raids on the two biggest stations sent shockwaves throughout the Irish pirate world and many of the over 100 stations closed voluntarily in case of a raid. 

You can read about the raids here. RADIOWAVES.FM

The 1983 Protest March Route

Many of the Dublin station managers and owners met and decided that a protest march would be held on Friday May 27th, gathering at the GPO on O'Connell Street and making their way to Government buildings on Merrion Street, where a letter of protest would be handed into the relevant Minister responsible for broadcasting. According to newspaper reports 3,000 protesters took part but more reliable Garda figures put the figure closer to 10,000. This is their story. 

 

The Radio Nova flatbed truck to be used as a float arrives on 

Westmoreland Street on its way to the GPO.

The Crowds begin to gather outside the GPO at 3pm including a Radio Dublin float

The Crowd depart the GPO travelling briefly Northwards before crossing the central mall and heading southbound down O'Connell Street with several radio station floats including Radio Dublin, Radio Nova and in the bottom right hand corner ABC Radio.

Some more of the truck floats depart the GPO including top right the Westside Radio float 

and the small red Fiat was deemed the 

'Radio Nova Staff Car.' Bottom right the 'Staff Car' is passed by the No.3 bus on its way to Sandymount.

The thousands continue down O'Connell Street, passed Middle Abbey Street and onwards to cross over the River Liffey at O'Connell Bridge. A Nova float full of fancy dress pirates join the March.

Led by station operator Brian Matthews, this is the Community Radio Fingal contingent departing the GPO and then travelling south bound on O'Connell Street.

The march crosses O'Connell Bridge and travels down D'Olier Street where another pirate laden float joins the march. 

The March passes Trinity College and onto Nassau Street

The Marchers reach Clare Street passing the old Green's Bookshop and then left onto Merrion Street.

The crowds pass the National Gallery and begin to arrive at Government Buildings. TTTR and Community Radio Fingal banners feature in the lower two photographs.

The peaceful protesters reach Government Buildings and a letter is handed into the Minister's Office.

Minister's entrance in lower left photo.

It was not just the Dublin stations involved, here is a banner for South Coast Radio in Cork

More pictures from outside Government Buildings and around Merrion Square where the speakers on the floats entertained the crowds. Don't Take My Sunshine Away.

The Radio Dublin truck top right and top left the backs of Mike Doyle 

and Ray Jackson from ABC Radio

Some of the station owners and staff. Top left with the high kick is Paul Vincent (Murphy), and top right in the red jacket is the late Robbie Robinson, owner of Sunshine Radio. In the dickie bow is Radio Dublin Owner and later convicted paedophile, Eamon Cooke. 

The protest ends and the Radio Nova truck heads off into the sunset. 

The Daily newspapers covered the protest as the debate on pirate radio and raids continue. 

Within weeks Sunshine Radio, Radio Nova and many of the stations that closed out of fear across the country had reopened and would continue on air until December 1988. 

The archival photographs come from Paul Davidson at Anoraks Ireland who has donated his entire collection of photographs, audio tapes and printed memorabilia to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive at Dublin City University

Photographs courtesy of Anoraks Ireland

Press Clippings courtesy of the Irish Newspaper Archives

If you have been adversely affected by any of the photographs, helplines are available including the Rape Crisis Centre at 1800 77 8888

A Survey of Irish Radio Stations July 2022

In a survey of Irish radio stations available analogue (FM, MW, LW, & SW), online and in apps including RadioGarden, radio.ie, Live Radio Ireland

 

The Rise & Sudden Fall of London Irish Community Radio in 1988

 

The late Jimmy Smith made his name in Irish radio and made his pirate radio station TTTR (Tallaght, Templeogue, Ternure Radio) the number one country and Irish music station having helped the careers of many of the rising stars of Irish country music. In 1988, Jimmy, with the impending arrival of new legislation that would silence his beloved station, making way for a new legal independent commercial landscape, he decided to spread his wings but had those wings firmly clipped by the authorities.

 

With a staff of seven and broadcasting twenty four hours a day on 89.6mhz FM, Jimmy set up London Irish Community Radio, a pirate station dedicated to one of the largest ethnic groups in the UK's capital. The station was located on Hope Lane in Acton and followed the same successful formula as TTTR back in Dublin.

 

There had been an explosion of pirate radio stations in London from 1988. According to the Dazed website

‘Needless to say, it (pirate radio) wasn’t going anywhere, and between 1988 and 89, pirate radio stations rapidly started to appear to serve a youth hungry for new sounds that weren’t being catered to by mainstream radio. By 1989, there were over 60 pirate radio stations operating in London alone.’

According to the fanzine ‘Anoraks UK’ from July 1^st – 5^th there were ‘40 pirate radio stations, 11 in stereo’ operating in London. There was numerous ethnic based stations including London Greek Community Radio, London Asian Community Radio and London Turkish Community Radio.

From The House of Commons Hansard page on written MP answers

Just weeks after going on air at noon March 10th 1988, their powerful 500w transmitter blanking out smaller low powered pirates that broadcast on the 89-90mhz FM frequency. This included the ‘obliteration’ according to Anoraks UK’s London correspondent of long running pirate station ‘London Rock’ also on 89.5. Prior to the arrival of LICR, the Irish in the capital could tune on a Sunday lunchtime on the Brent based pirate station JBC on 104.3mhz. By mid April, LICR’s overnight programming of recorded shows was being relayed on another London pirate station ICE FM on 90.5mhz.

Whether it was his reputation preceding him or a suspicion of any Irish content on the radio as the troubles continued in Northern Ireland, in the first week in May the station was raided by the DTI and the police, closed after just five weeks of broadcasting. Jimmy managed to get the station back on the air within a fortnight on low power but he was quickly raided once again putting an end to LICR. In August backers were fined £400 plus £295 costs.

Alan Whelan and ex-pat and a councillor with the Social Liberal democrats said,

"I am against pirating but his radio station proved there is a need to be met".

Local Ealing North MP Harry Greenway made representations to the Home Secretary but to no avail as there would be no legal community license given to a station serving the large Irish diaspora at that time. For any Irish living in London today, to keep in touch with all things Irish tune in to https://www.irishradio.org/

Sources.

Hansard, the House of Commons Archive

Anoraks UK

The British Newspaper Archives

The Irish Post, London

The DX Archive

Radiowaves.fm

Dazed

AMFM.org

The Irishman who shaped Scottish Radio with 5MG in 1922

 

Editors Note: On an episode of the excellent podcast BBCentury with Paul Kerensa, which is telling and celebrating the centenary of the BBC (although nothing officially to do with the BBC), an episode looked at the experimental stations in Scotland such as 2BP and 5MG and I was amazed to find that it was a Dublin man who was behind 5MG and so I began to research this important pioneers story. This is it. - Eddie Bohan, Radio Historian

A draper’s assistant, born on the Upper Rathmines Road, Dublin, would become both a pioneer in radio broadcasting in Scotland and pave the way for another giant of global communications, Ryanair, to gain a foothold in affordable air transportation into Scotland. Months before the newly formed British Broadcasting Company (as the Corporation was originally known) launched their official Glasgow radio station, 5SC, in March 1923, Frank Milligan provided the Glaswegians with their own radio station, becoming a pioneer before the arrival of the BBC.

Francis Marshall Milligan was born on July 5^th 1883 at 111 Upper Rathmines Road, the eldest son of the seven children of Wicklow born accountant Andrew Mease[1] and Tipperary born Amelia Boardman. After a brief education, he began work as a drapery assistant in Rathmines but in February 1901 he joined the Imperial Yeomanry [2] of the British Army and found himself on the frontlines of the battlefields of the Boer War in South Africa. After being demobbed, he made his way to London and met and fell in love with Elise Adriene Barrett. Elise was better known as Elise Barone (b. London 1883 – d. Scotland 1971) and was an actress starring in silent movies such as ‘Tom Cringle in Jamaica’ in 1913 and ‘A Flirtation at Sea’ also that year. She also appeared in numerous, what became known as, cliff-hanger serials, an early form of soap opera. Her acting career ended when she married Frank in Paddington in July 1913.

The couple made their way to Glasgow, where Frank, having learned about the use of wireless in South Africa, opened a wireless sales business at 23-25 Renfrew Street in Glasgow. Milligan then found a partner to help him expand his fledgling business in George Garscadden, who ran a domestic appliance business at nearby 202 Bath Street in the city. In October 1922, the two men gather the necessary equipment to broadcast on the fourth floor of 141 Bath Street[3]. The Milligan and Garscadden’s station would be known as 5MG (also known as Milligan’s Wireless Station) and broadcast on 440m medium wave. At a of the meeting of the Wireless Club held in the Scout Hall, Southbridge Street on Saturday October 14^th 1922, it was revealed that a concert from Writtle[4] would be listened to,

‘Also, a concert specially transmitted for the meeting by the direction of the demonstrator Mr. F.M. Milligan FRGS from his own station.’

The first broadcast from 5MG took place from 7pm on Tuesday October 17^th 1922[5].

For their opening broadcasts the station broadcast gramophone records using a ‘Algraphone’. The ‘Algraphone’ was made between 1922 and 1926 by Alfred Graham & Co, who were better known for their Amplion loudspeakers, for whom Milligan was the franchisee in Glasgow. Live concerts began in the cramped studios with Herbert Carruthers on piano and Garscadden’s daughter Kathleen singing. Kathleen later revealed,

‘I and my choir, in which I sang, and my organist Mr Carruthers were invited to that little flat to come and experiment to see if we could send our voices through the air. It was really a comical set-up with cables from the kitchen to the dining room in the little flat, and a microphone like a soup-plate suspended from the ceiling. And we played and we sang night after night, but nothing happened But I'll never forget the night I was heard and my mother heard me in Sauchiehall Street, and of course that was a miracle.’[6]

The station continued to entertain ever evening from 7pm with the Glasgow Herald saying that,

‘The entertainment has been of first class quality’.[7]

While Frank Milligan was creating radio history, he was also looking after a newly born daughter of his own, Madeline Primrose Milligan, born in April 1920. Primrose would go onto have her own stellar career in radio, initially as an impressionist and also on another new medium, television. According to her obituary in the Stage newspaper following her death on August 19^th 1999,

"I was always in there, trying," she once told me. "Then one day I 'plunked' school to go to Glasgow and audition for a bigger contest at the Empire." That show, Brian Michie's ‘Youth Takes a Bow’, is part of history because of two teenagers who competed with Primrose. They were Eric Bartholomew and Ernest Wiseman, remembered today as Morecambe and Wise. The girl from Prestwick (where she lived for most of her life) had savoured an early taste of showbusiness, running around her father's embryonic radio station. Those years were recalled when she featured prominently on the BBC Scottish Home Service as a leading member of the Jimmy Logan/Stanley Baxter comedy series ‘It's All Yours’. Primrose joined in with all the show's gags, sketches and catchphrases. The series still well-remembered was an early landmark in a career that embraced music hall, seaside summer shows, revue, drama productions and a tour to North America with plays from Glasgow's Tron Theatre. Primrose also worked in films in London and, in-between the performing jobs, as a fashion show compere. More recently, in her sixth and seventh decades, 'Primmie' enjoyed the fun of team camaraderie in the studio and on Loch Lomond-side location, playing Mrs Woods, a villager of fictional Glendarroch, in popular Scottish soap Take High Road. She also took cameo roles in Rab C. Nesbitt and other TV series.”[8]

In early 1923 there was a buzz created into city as a second temporary station took to the airwaves when Marconi on behalf of the Daimler motor company launched a brief station 2BP to promote the sale of in car radios. On March 6^th 1923, the BBC station 5SC came on the air in studios above Garscadden’s shop on Bath Street and using much of the equipment that had brought 5MG to the airwaves. 

The 5SC studios on Bath Street

Kathleen followed her father’s footsteps and the now experienced Kathleen Garscadden and Herbert Carruthers would join the new station, Carruthers as musical director and Kathleen as a singer and entertainer known on air as Auntie Kathleen. Lavinia Dervent writing in Dundee Courier[9] recalled,

‘The BBC under Lord Reith kept such a tight hold on the purse strings that the habit was difficult to break and employees hesitated before requisitioning even a new pencil. Yet, in spite of such restrictions, Auntie Kathleen in her day was a power in the land and will always inhabit a special niche in the annals of broadcasting, along with Uncle Mac (Derek McCulloch) who operated from London. For many years Kathleen's was the best-known voice in Scotland, eagerly listened to in cot and castle. She provided wholesome entertainment for myriads of young listeners—for old ones, too’.

Kathleen Garscadden died in Glasgow on February 20^th 1991.

Kathleen pictured outside the original 5SC studios in Glasgow

The Milligan’s, once their station was closed and competition increased in the radio sales, moved to Prestwick where Frank was appointed the Provost of Prestwick.  A Provost is the convenor of the local authority, the civic head and the lord-lieutenant of one of the principal cities of Scotland. In that position, after the end of the Second World War, he pushed hard for the former air base at Prestwick to adapted as an international airport. His persistence was rewarded and in his role as Provost was on hand to meet and greet famous celebrities including Princess Margaret in 1950 as she holidayed in Scotland and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands who stopped off as she made her way to the United States. Prestwick Airport also made global headlines when it is one of the few places in the UK where Elvis Presley landed.

Frank Milligan died on November 1^st 1956[10].

 

---

[1] Ancestry.com

[2] UK Military Records, Kew Gardens

[3] Scotland On Air

[4] 2MT

[5] The Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser

[6] ‘Carrocher in Conversation', BBC Radio Scotland, 3 April 1980.

[7] Glasgow Herald December 1922

[8] The Stage August 26^th 1999

[9] February 19^th 1990

[10] The Stage trade newspaper.

Sources:

The Irish Newspaper Archives

The British Newspaper Archives

Ancestry.com

World Radio History

Scotland on the Air

B B Century & Paul Kerensa

Wireless World Magazine

Google Maps

RadioSix.com

British Pathe News

UK Archives Kew Gardens

BBC Scotland