During what was known as the golden era of Irish pirate radio in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the raiding of pirate radio stations in Ireland almost stopped. Up to 1977, if you operated an illegal radio station you would be subject to a raid by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs backed up by Gardai and charged under the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act. This was invariably followed by a court appearance and a fine but it all changed in 1977. The 1926 law was drafted just as radio broadcasting was in its infancy and setting up a radio station was a complicated, expensive engineering feat but as technology changed and getting on the air became cheaper, in a nation of a monopoly one station state broadcaster, RTE, pirate radio had the fertilizer to flourish and flourish they did. But why was the 1926 Act unfit for purpose as pirate radio moved from late night, weekend hobby pirate radio to the super pirates of the 1980s like Nova, Sunshine and ERI generating millions of pounds in revenue. The reason, a ship but not in the sense of offshore pirate broadcasting such as Radio Caroline or Radio North Sea International.
It
was built and launched from a Polish shipyard in 1974 and was destroyed by fire
while being refitted at Lisbon in August 1979, but in those five years the two-thousand-ton
factory fishing ship ‘Aurelia’ left its mark on maritime, legal and
broadcasting history on two continents. It was a registered vessel owned by the
Burgas based Oceanic Fishery Company in Bulgaria. It initially fished off the
British coast and was boarded a number of times by British naval fishery
protection vessels including HMS Chowton in October 1974. But it’s first major
brush with the law was on September 27th, 1976, when under the captaincy of
Jordan Kostan, from Valkanou, Bulgaria, she was detained off the Cork coast by
the Irish Naval vessel L.E. Grainne under Commander Peter Kavanagh for
illegally fishing inside the Irish territorial twelve-mile limit. She was
escorted into Cork harbour, and the captain was arrested and charged. He was
fined the maximum under the then legislation of one hundred pounds, but his
gear and catch were seized and confiscated and valued at £102,000 by Mr. Justice
Carroll, the largest seizure from a fishing vessel in the history of the State.
To complicate matters when the seized fish was being off loaded at the request
of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries a strike took place at the port.
The Evening Echo reported,
‘The work stoppage began last
Friday when the dockers, some forty of them, walked off
the Aurelia where they had been unloading confiscated frozen fish
since the previous Wednesday. The dispute arose over an alleged claim for
"hardship money" because of the fact that the fish had to be unloaded
from cold rooms.’
A
day later the strike was settled and the fish valued at over fifty thousand
pounds was off loaded and taken to Kerry.
But
the captain decided to appeal the lower court judgement to the High Court and
in a judgement by Justice McWilliams in March 1978, the forfeiture of the gear
and catch was deemed unconstitutional as the value of the seizure exceeded the
maximum £100 fine. This judgement was applied to subsequent fishing trawler
seizures especially those of Spanish trawlers in the late seventies until the
law was tightened.
The unforeseen knock on effect of Justice McWilliam’s decision was that it would be applied to the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act when a case against the pirate radio station Radio Dublin and its then operators Eamonn Cooke and Don Moore was brought. Following a raid on the station in August 1976, the subsequent court case discovered two loopholes in the antiquated law. Firstly, it was shown in court that the broadcasting equipment seized by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the Gardai could have been used for something other than broadcasting such as DJ training and secondly the precedent set by the ‘Aurelia’ was applied and as the value of the equipment seized from the Cabra based station exceeded the maximum fine of £50, the seized equipment had to be returned to the operators. This was later applied to the super pirates in 1983 when Radio Nova and Sunshine Radio, who were making millions from advertising. When they were raided, the maximum fine, still just £50, was levied but they had all their seized equipment returned on the conclusion of the case.
The
‘Aurelia’ returned to Cork and collected its confiscated gear and they were
reimbursed by the Department for the catch seized. Rather than risk fishing off
the Irish coast, the vessel, now under Captain Ivan Presnakov (1932–2003),
headed across the Atlantic and together with another Bulgarian vessel the
Ofelia and two Russian fish factory ships began fishing off the Argentinian
coast.
The
Argentinians were even less pleased than the Irish that their fishing grounds
were being illegally raided. On October 1st 1977, three Argentinian naval
destroyers intercepted the Aurelia and the three other vessels. The Navy fired
at the two Bulgarian vessels when they refused to heave to and be boarded. The ‘Aurelia’
was hit three times and one crew member, Nestor Tulev, was seriously wounded
and several others injured. Tulev was airlifted by helicopter to a nearby
aircraft carrier where he underwent emergency surgery. During the boarding, a
small naval boat overturned and three Argentine sailors, Carlos Gonzalez,
Ponciano Gonzalez and Jose Burak were drowned. The Ofelia and the two Soviet
trawlers, the Franz Hals and the Prokopevsk, arrived in Puerto Madryn on 2
October escorted by the Argentine Navy. The ‘Aurelia’ was so badly damaged that
it had to be towed to Puerto Madryn. At the height of a cold war, the US State
Department secretly reported their concerns that the Russian Bulgarian
infraction of Argentine sovereignty was part of a communist plot to destabilise
Argentina which at the time was suffering the brutal military junta of Jorge
Videla, who had deposed Isabel Peron.
Once
the ‘Aurelia’ was released by the Argentinians, it travelled back across the
Atlantic but it had been so badly damaged from the Naval gunfire, it required a
refit. It was in a Lisbon shipyard when it was badly damaged by fire. It was then
towed back to Bulgaria where she was broken up. Two small islands in the Antarctica
are named after the Argentinian incident, Aurelia Island and Presnakov Island.
And
as a result, the 1926 Irish Wireless Telegraphy Act was surpassed and impotent.
When Dublin pirate Radio Nova was raided in December 1983 after opening a
pirate television station, owner and operator Chris Cary was fined the maximum
under that law €50, equivalent to 3 seconds of advertising on Radio Nova, who
by 1983 enjoyed a 70% listener rating on the Dublin airwaves. The Evening Press
reported after Nova’s court appeared following a May 1983 raid,
“Mr. Stewart said that while the
legislation provided for the forfeiture of this equipment, and a maximum fine
of £50, on conviction, he had been informed that the State was not seeking such
a forfeiture. Justice Wine said that Nova had saved the State considerable
expense and time in pleading guilty to the charge. He was glad to see that the
Minister was not seeking forfeiture of the equipment, so he would just fine the
company £25.”
When
Robbie Robinson , owner of Sunshine Radio appeared in court also following the
May 1983 raids, the newspapers reported,
“Sunshine Radio, one of the Dublin
pirate stations, is to have £50,000 worth of equipment which was seized during
a Garda raid last May, returned to them, the District Court was told today. The
station, which operates from the Sands Hotel, Portmarnock was fine £20, after
pleading guilty to a summons for illegal broadcasting brought against them by
the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Justice Hubert Wine ordered that the
broadcasting equipment be returned to the stations boss, Mr. Robbie Robinson.”
It
was stated in the Dail that,
On 18 October 1983, in Dublin
District Court No. 2, District Justice Wine made a restoration order with
regard to the broadcasting equipment which was returned after a fine of £20 had
been paid. Justice Wine dismissed Sunshine Radio, saying that he favoured
competition in broadcasting and hoped that the situation would soon be cleared
up.
Former
Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Padraig Faulkner told his Dail colleague in
1985,
“When I was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs raids were carried out on pirate stations. Some stations were shut down and equipment seized. The Department found itself beset by all kinds of legal entanglements as a result. It was clear that effective action could not be taken as the law stood. One case that comes to mind relates to a judgement which cleared the defendants on the basis that, as the actual transmitter was not present when the raid took place, it was held that the remaining equipment could be used for purposes other than illegal broadcasting. The case was dismissed. In another case the Department seized equipment but later had to hand it back because of a technicality. In the latter case the public could not understand why the equipment had to be returned and there was much adverse comment in respect of that incident. It was because of a wide variety of matters resulting in decisions by the courts, the reasons for which the public could not appreciate, that there was a danger in the public mind that the law was being brought into disrepute. It became clear that new legislation was needed to deal with the matter and so the Broadcasting and Wireless Telegraphy Bill, 1979 was prepared and circulated to Deputies by me.”
A new Wireless Telegraphy Act was introduced in 1988 increasing significantly the penalties for illegal broadcasting and legalised independent commercial and community radio licensing was introduced bringing independemt radio on the air in 1989.
