My Journey Researching Sectraian Pirate Radio in Belfast with Insults for Free

 

In 2018, I began researching a book on sectarian pirate radio in Belfast and I had an article appear in a number of newspapers asking for anyone with information and providing a contact email address. On August 18^th, 2019, I received an email from an account titled ‘the beer society’ but signed c/o Michael Steven. I responded and there was a back and forth with emails and eventually I agreed to travel to Belfast and said I would met up perhaps in a hotel in the centre of the city.

 

On August 20^th I received an email asking to meet with Stephen Caves at his home which I was informed was off Tennant Street which is off the Shankill Road near the Spectrum Community Centre. I told Michael to tell Stephen that I would visit Belfast and on 27^th August I travelled north from Dublin, staying at the Maldron Hotel located to the rear of the famous heritage pub The Crown Liquor Saloon.

 

On the morning of the meeting, while I perhaps should have been nervous or apprehensive, I was in fact excited and looking forward to the meeting and gaining a valuable insight into pirate radio in Belfast. For someone born in the early 60s, I was aware of all the events that made up the Troubles propelling it to front page news around the world, but being from the South, I had little understanding of what it was like living in that maelstrom of sectarian violence and paramilitary activity. There was no sense that I perhaps was entering ‘enemy territory’.

 

I stepped out onto the street and jumped into the back of a taxi at the rank. I told the driver ‘Coniston Close, off Tennant Street, please’. There was a moment of silence, and the driver turned to me in the back seat and calmly enquired

‘With that accent?’

This was a reference to my obvious southern, Dublin accent and here was I asking this driver to take me into what would be seen as the heart of unionist/loyalist life in Belfast. I said yes and he moved off. After two sets of red traffic lights, we reached a third and eventually the driver asked the obvious question ‘why?’ I dd not want to go into too much detail so I said that visiting a radio engineer as a radio historian. We drove up the Shankill Road, the rows of union jack bunting, union jacks on every lamppost and the infamous UVF, UDA and British military murals decorating several gable walls.

 

I arrived at the house and the driver, I think out of concern, asked me if I wanted him to wait, I said no as I did not know how long our conversation would last for but in fairness gave me a card with a taxi number on it. I knocked on the door after asking a couple of neighbours exactly where Stephen Caves flat was, each one looking me up and down suspiciously. I eventually entered a flat designated for Stephen who was wheelchair bound, missing part of a leg from the knee down.

 

He introduced himself as did I likewise and explained my research into the thorny subject of (a) Illegal broadcasting and (b) the sectarian use of those broadcasts. Stephen’s friend and what appeared to be a carer, Michael arrived dressed in a grey suit and obviously had a hearing issue as he had aids in both ears and an unusual way of speaking that took me a few minutes to get a hold of to understand.

 

Stephen Thompson Caves was born in November 1951 in Belfast. He was just 18 years old when the Troubles began in August 1969. The Troubles would continue until 1998 when a peace agreement known as The Good Friday Agreement eased tensions, saw paramilitaries disarm and installed democracy at Stormont. In January 1971 Stephen, described as 19 and unemployed of Tate Street, was charged with riotous assembly with 22 others at Urney Street on January 24^th. The following month was sentenced to six months in prison for both the original offence and failing to turn up in accordance with bail conditions.

 

Stephen told me that he was a loyalist and was involved in Radio Shankill in the early years of the Troubles. But once he imparted that part of the story to me what followed was quite remarkable as his involvement in pirate radio continued.

 

He told me he ran numerous pirate radio stations usually broadcasting on 101mhz FM. One of the longest running stations was Speak Your Peace. He described the station as a community instruction station, grassroots radio giving voice to his community. When I asked him was any of the stations ever raided by the RUC (now the PSNI), he told me once. I asked if it was for illegal broadcasting or interference to legal broadcasters he said no,

‘They knocked on the door one Friday evening, cause we, I had a friend who knew how to identify and dismantle a pipe bomb that may have been placed under your car. And the coppers believed that if this person knew how to dismantle one, he knew how to build it. But they were in hard luck as we only used a tape to play the information, he wasn’t there in person on that occasion’.

He went onto also tell me that they would broadcast a comparison style show, not for petrol, insurance or foods but where to find, how much to pay and what was the best drugs to buy in Belfast on any given weekend. I was shocked but he reassured me that the show that followed that was a ‘gardening show’, which he explained was someone telling listeners how to grow their own drugs like marijuana.

 

Speak Your Peace first went on the air Sunday 2nd October 1994 from 9am to 8pm. The transmitter would be fired up every Sunday for as they said, ‘up to Christmas to give a voice to the oppressed and depressed’. However, the station was raided on Monday December 12^th 1994.

 

Over two hours, I asked questions and I listened to him telling me tales of the various stations he ran interspersed with questions about how safe I felt visiting ‘enemy territory’ just off the Shankill Road. I was in no doubt from what was said, names discussion and at times what was not being said that Stephen had loyalist paramilitary links.

 

As the conversation continued, he told me that one of the stations he was involved with was known as ‘Out 101’ in 1995 which was on the air supporting LGBT rights in Belfast. This seemed such a dichotomy, on one hand the Christian conservative ‘anti-homosexual’ Loyalist and Orange Order and the other a man who was definitely Protestant and loyalist in leanings but was a supporter of something so opposite to what I had been led to believe was hard to take in.

 

Other stations in the 101-fold were ‘BARC, the Belfast Autonomous Radio Collective’ and one of the first uses of the transmitter in 1986, Radio Free Ulster, described as broadcasting.

 ‘With an undiluted programme of loyalist music and songs.’

That station operated during a loyalist workers strike in March of that year.

 

Towards the end of April 1994, the station was opened identifying itself as May Day 101 in the run up to May Day. The city was still in the grip of sectarian violence and one presenter stated that in the three days since the station came on the air, nine people had been murdered in the city. He added,

‘As we listen to the soundtrack of Belfast (the sound of Army helicopters flying overhead outside the window of the secret studio) we’ve got the RUC, the British Army, the UDA, the UVF the IRA and the INLA claiming to be our protectors, but we are hostages. MAY DAY 101 is a boil on the bum of broadcasting, the acne of the airwaves.’

 

In advance of my contact with Stephen, with the help of a friend I interviewed to another gentleman in the Spectrum centre, known as ‘Graham’. He too was involved in pirate radio in the early 1970s in Belfast and had a fascinating story to tell but it was the after that visit that I was to relate here. My colleague asked me if I wanted him to call me a taxi or would I like to walk down the Shankill Road towards the city centre. To me I felt it was a chance I would never get again, so along with a friend of his, we began to walk down the Shankill Road, I was taking in every shop window, every business, every SUV with well-built men with loyalist tattooed arms intimidatingly leaning out the open windows. Halfway down the road, they asked if I wanted to have a beer, and I felt this was a now or never moment. We went into the pub, unions jacks hanging from the ceiling, pictures of the then Queen Elizabeth II on the walls. We sat at a round barrel in the middle of the floor, and they ordered a pint of Tennent’s for me. We chatted quietly, encouraged to keep my southern accent on the down low.

 

Fifteen minutes in and just about to leave, an older customers, late fifties or early sixties stood beside me and uttered,

‘it must be terrible being a Southern Catholic’

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, my embarrassment for the two lads was churning. They reassured him that I was with them and that I was OK!

 He continued,

‘What a southern catholic Fenian doing in a decent pub like mine?’ even though he was just a customer and not an owner or management.

Another few comments and I reached the end of the tether.

‘How do you know I’m a southern catholic, I could be Protestant, atheist, or even a Jehovah’s Witness?

‘I know by the look of you you’re catholic.’

‘OK you’re right, I am a southern Catholic from Dublin, but I know what I am. I’m like a box of corn flakes, you know what you are getting, you are the multipack of cereals, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Free Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Church of England or but I know one thing for sure, you’re the box no one likes.’

There was an uneasy silence, I was either going to be flattened or run like a hare being chased by a greyhound out the door. It seemed like ages before he said anything.

‘Hi, fair play to you kid’ and with that he tapped my back and actually sat down and joined us while we quickly finished what was left in or pints. I eventually arrived at the end of the Shankill, said my goodbyes and thank you and returned to the Maldron to muse over what had happened and begin to transcribe the notes I had made.

Soon after as I continued my research on the opposite side of the divide, including a very informative and generous visit to Radio Failte's headquarters,  I stopped into a pub near the Falls Road, the nationalist side. I ordered a pint and off handedly remarked to the bartender that his pint was 10p dearer than a similar pint on the Shankill Road. He paused, had a good look at me, leaned down slightly and queitly said,

'Once you finish that one it's time to head off pal.'

 My Dublin accent accounted for nothing here.

Then on February 9^th I received this message from Michael.

Dear Eddie,

Stephen Caves died on 2nd February 2020 from terminal cancer. We both knew he did not have long to live when we met you. 

 

Stephen wanted his pirate radio show recordings to be sent to you on audio cassette. I have also noted that he has some pirate radio advertising leaflets that he wanted to send to you as well.

 

I am currently putting Stephen’s cassette tapes into a pile for illegal transmissions and another for legal transmissions.

 

I hope through sending you these recordings, a wide range of people will not only be able to hear Stephen’s pirate radio recordings but remember Stephen as well.

Thanks from Michael Steven

 

Stephen’s passing was announced to the Belfast community,

 

‘It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Stephen Caves, Director of Trans Pride NI, who passed away this morning. A long-term activist, human, disability and environmental rights campaigner, he will be sorely missed.’

Michael wrote in tribute,

It was lovely to see my old comrade resting in peace yesterday. He was wearing the grey waistcoat that I gave him, when he was an amazing groomsman at my wedding in 2014. I was also pleased to see that he was wearing the purple Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood tie, a Society that he was a member of right up until his death. Stephen took great pleasure in handing out leaflets from this Society and many other human rights, disability and environmental groups he was involved with. In his later years, he even instructed his dog walkers to collect money they found on the street to Hearing Dogs for the Deaf! His kindness and caring nature will be greatly missed.

 

I was devastated and saddened. Michael had offered to post the cassettes to me but when in subsequent emails told me there were over forty tapes, I suggested that I would travel once again to Belfast to collect the donation to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive.

I arranged to meet Michael in the MAC in the Cathedral Quarter. He asked if his partner could join us for lunch while we completed the handover, I said no problem and as a gesture I would pay for lunch. Adrianne joined us and I honestly became confused, to the point when as I drove back to Dublin later that day, I had to stop at a services station just to put everything into context.

The life in Belfast that I had been brought up to seemingly know and understand was a different and more diverse city that I ever could have imagined. Michael Steven, Stephen’s friend, had been born female and known as Lindsay while his married partner Adrianne Elson, they were married in 2014, was born a man named Adrian. In 2022, it was revealed in the newspapers that the couple had given birth to beautiful twins named Mavis and Christin.