The 50th Anniversary of RTE's Radio Liberties

2025 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of one of Ireland's unique radio experiments. This is the story of RTE's Radio Liberties 

Almost fifty years ago RTE launched a new experiment in local radio broadcasting that while it brought local communities their own pop up radio station, unwittingly RTE created a monster as these local communities saw the benefit of having their own radio station and soon after the RTE’s mobile van departed, in that town, village or community, a pirate station opened to replace it. By the mid-eighties while RTE were still travelling the highways and byways of Ireland with their small radio station, a pirate radio boom swept the country with as many as one hundred and fifty illegal stations on air each weekend across the nation. In 1975 the Dublin inner city locality of The Liberties was the location of the first in this unique decade long experiment from the national broadcaster. For the duration of the local arts festival, RTE would bring their new mobile radio van which not only contained a studio but also a small low powered transmitter. While the technical elements would be overseen by RTE, all the programming from research to production and presentation would be conducted by a committee of locals. The on-air presenters too would be local voices often inexperienced but many were caught by the radio bug. The concept was originally credited to the then Director General of RTE George Waters. For many years the man tasked with being the go between with RTE and the committee was Paddy O’Neill. Paddy was born near Skibbereen in County Cork and after a brief career as a national schoolteacher he became involved in the Abbey theatre from where in 1951 he joined Radio Eireann. At the station he became a producer, one of his most influential roles as producer was for the popular Din Joe’s ‘Take the Floor’.

Paddy was also a greyhound enthusiastic both racing them and being involved in the organising of races. Under the alias ‘Paddy O’Brien’ he became Radio Eireann’s greyhound racing commentator later taking up the role of Chairman of Bord na gCon in 1983.

                                                       

At 10am on Friday May 9th 1975, Radio Liberties came on the air on 96.6mhz FM (or still described in 1975 as VHF) and would stay on for the next ten days. The transmitter had a two mile radius. They would broadcast twice a day, in the morning from 10am – 12.30pm and in the afternoon from 3pm – 5pm. The RTE van was based across the road from the church on the High Street and two of the main presenters were Harry McGurk and Eileen Reid, a well-known Showband singer. Interviews with locals were conducted by legal secretary Maura Ryan and house painter Tony Clabby. The station was a tremendous local success. While initially the van carried only a FM transmitter by 1977 they had also added a medium wave transmitter on 202metres.

The RTE van with BBC logo being used for Radio Rhonda

The RTE van would visit one hundred and forty venues staying for between three days and one week until their final outing in October 1987 when the RTE Community radio station visited Dun Laoghaire as Radio Phobail Dun Laoghaire.

 

According to the Nenagh Guardian,

‘Radio Liberties opened at 10 a.m. last Friday morning. It came on the air from nothing more sophisticated than a white caravan, parked on a street corner between decaying buildings and obstructive blocks of flats, with a slight Liffey aroma in the background. It was a complete definition of the word Local’.

 

The then recently appointed new RTE Director General Oliver Maloney invited members of the national press to Montrose for a free lunch and they were then bussed into High Street to see the mobile station in action. Apart from the national newspaper reports, other media coverage came from another Dublin media broadcasting experiment when a crew from Ballyfermot Community Television arrived in the Liberties to conduct interviews with those who were on the air in the mobile van on the High Street.

 

The following year RTE were back in the Liberties. RTE Community Radio Liberties went on air on Saturday May 15th and would continue until May 23rd. This year the broadcasting hours were 3pm – 5pm and 7pm to 10.30pm. What was unusual about this visit was that on the day of their first broadcast and despite being technically operated by RTE, Radio Liberties was the only legal station on the air in Dublin. A strike by thirty carpenters who worked for the State broadcaster meant that the rest of the stations staff refused to pass the pickets and RTE was closed. As the strike continued to black out RTE Radio and Television, Radio Liberties was gaining a wider audience as their low powered FM transmissions were being relayed on the main Dublin medium wave frequency. The strike would last thirteen days before a settlement was reached.

 

This would not be the last time RTE’s Community Radio service would visit the Liberties as their final visit was in April 1981 but they would travel across Ireland to towns and villages and city suburbs to provide the impetus for local community radio and unwittingly creating that golden era of pirate radio in the 1980’s. The Liberties would have their own pirate radio station in the late eighties Liberties Local Community Radio (LLCR).