The Centenary of 2BE, Belfast

In 2023 Ireland began a decade of centenaries in Irish radio history. After the 1923 launch of Ireland’s first yet short lived licensed radio station, 2BP, in September 1924 the first permanent radio station of the island of Ireland opened. This is that story…..

2BE, the Launch of Belfast Radio in 1924

“that it will not now be necessary for broadcasting station to arranged in the Free State. There will one in Belfast from which the programmes can heard free any charge. Let us hope the station in question will broadcast some really educational programmes”[1]

These words were the thoughts of a radio listener-in from Belfast in 1924. After the openings of stations on the British mainland, in 1924 it was Belfast’s turn to join the growing list of stations under the control of the British Broadcasting Company[2]. In March 1924, the BBC announced that station call sign 2BE broadcasting on 435m medium wave would take to the airwaves later that year. The BBC were already available in London (2LO), Birmingham (5IT), Bournemouth (5BM), Cardiff (5WA), Manchester (5ZY), Newcastle (5NO), Glasgow (5SC) and Aberdeen (2BD).

The opening of either new regional stations or relay stations for the BBC slowed as the company struggled to find new and clear frequencies. On March 7^TH 1924 it was announced by the British Broadcasting Company as it was still known as that the Belfast station had been given ‘official sanction’ and that the wavelength for listeners in Ulster was 435m medium wave. The Belfast Telegraph reported,

‘The power the station will kilowatts and a wave-length metre of 435 will be used. The call sign will be 2BE. A site has yet been found for the station, but the company hopes that it will be opened from two to three months’ time.’

By the end of March, Harold Bishop[3] the assistant chief engineer arrived in Belfast to lay the groundwork for the new station.

  

The studios and offices of 2BE, were to be located at 31 Linenhall Street, a central position in the city, while the aerial and transmitting plant to be erected at the Corporation Electricity Station at the East Bridge Street. The aerial was of the" sausage " type, and the ends were supported by the two tall smoke-stacks of the generating station, the halyards already being in position.

In 1919, 31 Linenhall Street was sold by Linen company of Daniel Currell and Sons. 

It was purchased by British Thomson Houston Limited a manufacturer of wireless valves. The company also had offices as Suffolk Street in Dublin. It would be their upper floors that would be used as the studios and offices for 2BE.

According to T.P. Allen in Popular Wireless Weekly

“The space now occupied by the offices and studio was originally one large flat, and this had to be divided off into the various rooms necessary for the staff. The studio itself is approached through a winding corridor, which divides the various offices, all of which are situated on the second floor and above the B.T.H. Company's Belfast premises. The corridors are liberally placarded with requests for silence, and a waiting -room is provided for artistes; those wishing to listen -in while waiting their turn may do so. The studio is treated in the same way as those " across the Channel," and is draped and carpeted, and has a canopy of light fabric, all with the idea of reducing echo. As a matter of fact, the draping was not finished when the station commenced its present experimental transmissions.”

In advance of the station opening Walter Montagu Douglas Scott was appointed as the Station Director. He was the cousin the Duke of Buccleuch, educated at Eton University, and described as widely travelled as both a traveller and a diplomat. An accomplished linguist, he was also keenly interested in musical and dramatic art and declared upon his appointment that he hoped to make making the Belfast station one of the most successful in the BBC system. Scottish born Edmund Thompson was appointed as his assistant. He had been educated at Edinburgh University. A Territorial officer, at the age of 21 was promoted to Major, He was in charge of a siege battery in France during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross in 1919. Local man Godfrey Brown was appointed the musical director with his assistant named as Thomas Corrin.

After a week of nightly tests for one hour, on Monday September 15^th, 2BE went on the air. The first voice to be heard on the airwaves was that of twenty four year old William Tyrone Guthrie. Guthrie was born in 1900 at Tunbridge Wells, Kent in England. He had just joined the BBC and his later career would be producing plays for radio and as a theatrical director. His second cousin was the Hollywood actor Tyrone Power.

                                

The introduction of ‘Hello Hello this is 2BE, the Belfast station of the British Broadcasting Company’ got programming under way at seven o’clock. The Orchestra then played the National Anthem but shortly after the airwaves fell silent as a technical hitch put 2BE off the air for thirty minutes. The reaction to the first night was mixed. Former Director General of the BBC Tony Hall recounted on the nineth anniversary of the opening of 2BE that one writer to the newspaper in Belfast said that,

“I see from the papers that there is a large increase in the sales of radio sets. After last night’s programme I am selling my set too.”

The station’s director Douglas Scott spoke to his audience just before the close down,

“Belfast calling. Thanks to the efficiency and energy of our engineering staff, the Belfast Broadcasting station is established and should have commenced working at 7 this evening but owing to a technical fault we were delayed until 7.30. The official opening of this station by his Grace the Governor of Northern Ireland will take place in October upon a date which will be published later.

Our future endeavours will be to offer all our listeners an attractive programme. In all the British broadcasting stations there is a common keenness to offer the best. The wavelength to this station has been fixed in conjunction with the Northern Government authorities, also having regard to the wave-lengths of our existing stations. We trust that everybody will be satisfied and that this opportunity to claim indulgence for any sins of omission or commission and we also wish to express our hope that those listening at Bellevue this evening will have enjoyed the programme’.

This is the Radio Times listing of the first week of 2BE.

The BBC’s assistant controller for Scotland Millar Craig and the BBC’s chief Engineer Peter Eckersley were both in studio for the first night’s broadcast. The Freeman’s Journal reported listening-in to the first night’s broadcast but started their article with less enthusiasm than listeners north of the border.

“The first words spoken from the new broadcasting station in Belfast last night reached Dublin in a very English accent. It was the precise, careful modulation of Southern standard English, made familiar to listeners in this country by the official announcers from the English stations. I had just been listening through Glasgow to the sturdy accent of the Clyde and had expected from Belfast the accent of the Lagan, which, despite all our differences would have been more welcome than the intonation of the foreigner.

But just at present Belfast is more English, than the English themselves, and perhaps the choice of an announcer was motived by that consideration. Another straw showing the present direction of the Belfast wind was the fact that while the British, stations are content to finish their programmes with God Save the King, Belfast began its first programme with what most of its inhabitant’s regard as that good party tune.”

Not everything went smoothly in that first week, the Irish Sunday Independent on Sunday 21^st reported, Edward Dillon wrote,

“I tuned in the other night to the transmission from the newly completed Belfast station. Sure enough, shortly after seven 2BE came through with almost startling clearness and called, though with a very English accent, "Hello, everybody Belfast calling! This is the Belfast station of the British Broadcasting Company”, who are opening one station a month and then " Silence . . . And more silence. Had the station been blown up? Had the chief engineer started to discuss the Boundary Question with the Director of Programmes, with unhappy results to the microphone? Anyway, tune as we might not a sound from 2BE could we pick up after.”

After a month on the air, the station was officially launched on Friday October 24^th at a major event and outside broadcast from the Ulster Hall. Hundreds gathered in the hall, while thousands listened across Ulster and many more turned in as the opening was simultaneously broadcast across the BBC network. 

The band of the Seaforth Highlanders provided the music including the playing of the national anthem that announced the arrival of the Governor of Northern Ireland, The Duke of Abercorn[4]. Apart from the Duke’s speech, there were also speeches delivered by Lord Gainford, chairman of the BBC, Sir James Craig, the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Sir William Turner, the Belfast Lord Mayor who acted as MC for the event and Dr. Livingstone, Vice Chancellor of Queens University. Also in attendance was John Reith the chairman of the British Broadcasting Company. 

Each of the speeches were received with sustained applause but the biggest cheer and roar was reserved for the end of the night when the news bulletin was relayed from London stating that the then self-styled President of the Irish Republic and commander of the losing side in the Irish Civil War, Eamon DeValera, had been arrested in Newry.

At the end of the gala evening it was Antrim born Archibald McKinstry, a director at the British Broadcasting Company through his role at Metropolitan Vickers, that motioned a vote of thanks to the Governor and his wife Lady Abercorn.

In his speech Craig humorously intimated that the reason that the station was known as 2BE was that the station was in the Second city of the British Empire. This was a titled often spoken of as Dublin prior to the War of Independence.

In March 1935 the station was renamed as the Northern Ireland Regional Service. After the Second World War it was renamed the Northern Ireland Home Service and today 2BE is known as BBC Radio Ulster.

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[1] Radio Notes Belfast Newsletter July 1^st 1924

[2] It did not become the British Broadcasting Corporation until 1927

[3] 1900 – 1983, Bishop was awarded a CBE for his services to broadcasting

[4] James Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn (30^th November 1869 – 12^th September 1953

Sources

World Radio History

Irish Newspaper Archives

British Newspaper Archives

BBC Archives

BBC NI

RTE

National Archives UK

Wireless World

2BE Commercial Sabotage by 2RN

 

When 2RN took to the airwaves on January 1^st 1926, two stations now operated on the island with 2BE broadcasting from Belfast. As soon as 2BE took to the airwaves in September 1924, the listening public south of the border demanded a domestic service from the Irish Free State government. They listeners demanded something different from apparently British and Unionist slanted output from the Belfast station. There was a sense of nationalistic pride in the opening of 2RN and while initially signal power would not see them as competitors to each other, their competition did however play out on the pages of the most read newspapers north and south of the border.

 

An unusual night of programming took place on both 2BE[1] and 2RN[2] on Friday February 19^th, just weeks after the launch of 2RN. When 2RN began broadcasting in January transmission times were just two hours, 8pm until 10pm. By the beginning of February one hour had been added, 2RN now broadcasting from 7.30pm until 10.30pm. Programming from the Dublin station consisted mainly of instrumental and operatic music which led to complaints appearing in newspapers and trade magazines and comparisons being made with 2BE and British mainland stations.

 

On that Friday night, 2RN began with a tuning note at 7.30 allowing listeners both to tune in and identify the station. Two fifteen minutes talks were then broadcasts, the first one on Egypt, the second on savings certificates. From 8pm for the following 90 minutes 2RN relayed 2LO from London. Dublin listeners were treated to the Hungarian String Quartet, Vivienne Chatterton, Soprano who performed a number of Hungarian folk songs and readings by Dorothy Warren.

From BBC Genome

Meanwhile at exactly the same time on 2BE in Belfast from 8pm and heavily advertised in both the Northern Ireland newspapers and the Radio Times, a ‘Concert by the Dublin Artists’. The Belfast station was clearly audible in Dublin with a stronger transmitter than 2RN’s at McKee Barracks. The 2BE show consisted of performances by Gerard Crofts, Baritone, Jean Nolan, Mezzo Soprano and already a seasoned radio performer on 2RN, Arthur Darley[3], Violinist and the stage comedian and humourist Jimmy O’Dea[4].  The 2BE proved extremely popular with listeners, with Dublin listeners complaining about both the content of the relay from London and the quality of the rebroadcast. The Belfast Newsletter reported,

‘A troupe of instrumentalists give a concert this afternoon at the 2BE studios when many popular musical numbers will be included. A select quartette of Dublin artists (two vocalists, a violinist and an entertainer) are visitors at the station this evening, when an astonishingly comprehensive programme of Irish folk and other music will be broadcast between 8 O’Clock and 9.30.’

 

It was important for the new medium of broadcasting that listeners could read the schedules in the daily newspapers. There was an antipathy towards the Unionist leaning Belfast station from Dublin newspapers. This manifested itself when the two broadcasters clashed for listeners on that Friday. The Evening Herald published its ‘Broadcasting’ schedule but to divert attention from the obvious attraction of ‘Dublin Artists’ for Dublin listeners, they purposely inserted the 2RN schedule into the middle of the 2BE programme. It was an attempt to draw readers and possible listeners to the 2RN broadcasts rather than Belfast, it was commercial sabotage.

The Evening Herald February 19th 1926

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[1] 440m Medium Wave

[2] 390m Medium Wave

[3] Played on 2RN’s opening night broadcast on January 1^st 1926 and died December 1929

[4] Identified in the papers as James O’Dea

1922, A Radio First for Castleknock College

While the medium of radio developed quickly around the world, in Ireland censorship rules and military disruption caused by the War of Independence and then the Civil War, stifled the development of radio broadcasting in Ireland. The ownership of transmitters was banned and amateurs operated in fear of arrest. Some though did try to develop radio especially as it moved from Morse point to point communications to mass communications with wireless telephony. Many of those who tried to advance the growing interest in radio were the clergy who found safety behind the walls of parochial houses and monasteries.

One of those was Father John Ryan CM who taught at Blackrock College and at one time had Eamon DeValera as a pupil. On Wednesday April 5th 1922, he is credited for having organised the first radio broadcast specifically dedicated to an Irish audience. For that unique occasion, the event did not take place in Blackrock College on the southside of Dublin but northside of the city at Castleknock College. The broadcast caused quite a stir in the media and while it was an Irish audience that would be entertained the broadcast itself came from Paris.

 Over a hundred students and interested amateurs filled the concert hall of the Castleknock College. The lecture began at seven o’clock and according to a journalist who was in attendance

‘The Reverend lecturer " tuned up" and throughout the hall we heard " dot and dash " from Clifden, Paris, Nauen (Germany), Karlsborg (Sweden), Warsaw, Moscow, and from ships at sea.

A gentleman in the audience actually took down and de-coded some of the messages there and then.’

Ninety minutes later the Reverend nervously checked him watch and then with some small adjustments to his equipment on stage, that had been supplied by the dealers Dixon and Hempenstall. The audience at Castleknock College were now so quiet you could hear a pin drop, were suddenly startled and astounded in equal measure.

‘Suddenly there crept through the hall sweet notes of a French soprano singing " La Patrie" - A pause - Now a baritone's full notes resounded in an appealing ballad. - Another pause - An orchestra playing most tunefully delighted our ears. - Another pause - Once again the soprano sang, concluding with the strains of "La Marseilles." Then a gentleman's voice was heard to say "Bon Soir mesdames, Bon Soir, messieurs'.

Imagine our amazement. We had heard a concert transmitted by wireless telephony. Then came the explanation. Father Ryan, having often heard music by telephony at his station at Blackrock, conceived the daring idea of writing to General Ferrie, at the Eiffel Tower Wireless Station, Paris, to ask for the transmission of some music by telephony at 8.30 p.m. on April 5, as he would lecture on "Wireless" that evening to the Castleknock students.’

The Paris concerts were broadcast on 2600 metres, normally aired in the afternoons as amateur listeners on crystal sets listeners to music concerts from Marconi’s experimental station at Chelmsford, 2MT, in the evenings. Ryan believed that relaying an English broadcast might incite passions after the recent end to the War of Independence. He contacted Gustave Auguste Ferrié (19 November 1868 – 16 February 1932), who was a renown French radio pioneer and inventor and appointed a general in the French army. In 1903 he proposed setting aerials on the Eiffel Tower for long-range radiotelegraphy. Under his direction a transmitter was set up in the tower, and its effective range had increased from an initial 400 km (250 mi) to 6,000 km (3,700 mi) by 1908. He would later develop mobile transmitters for military units which would be used by the French military during the First World War. It was fortuitous that the Paris Station based at the Eiffel Tower had significantly increased its transmitter power one month earlier. Father Ryan requested of the French General that the Paris station would organise and broadcast a special broadcast for the Irish audience at Castleknock College who were about to enter the Irish radio history books.

Paris sang to Castleknock, and Castleknock applauded enthusiastically.

Dublin's Pirate Radio Stations of the Early Twenties

The Irish Free State authorised 2RN to become the State’s official radio station and on January 1st 1926 it would officially go on air. Irish listeners, especially those on the East Coast, were already avid listeners to the new medium of radio. The sales of wireless sets had blossomed, with businesses like Hogan’s in Henry Street, Dublin supplying imported sets to those who could afford them. For those who could not afford them, a homemade crystal set gave them access to the airwaves. Listeners were entertained to broadcasts by London, Newcastle, Cardiff and Manchester amongst others. Following the formation of the new state, there was a divergence from the British laws that governed life in the country. Many of the laws were embraced by the Government including the British 1904 Wireless Telegraphy Act. Then in February 1924, the Irish Government implemented a licensing scheme for radio sets which was to be collected through the post office.

For many listeners south of the border, the arrival of 2BE in Belfast in September 1924 increased the urgency of having a Southern voice but there was division within Government circles as to whether the Free State’s venture should be commercially and privately run or State operated. In the end 2RN was a State body.

Many amateurs were building crystal sets to listen-in, but some inventive radio engineers were discovering that it was easy to turn their listening devices into transmitting devices. These amateurs were warned by newspaper columnists like ‘Radio Rex’ and ‘Jack Broadcaster’ that this was illegal and they should desist.

The so-called experimenters who were in actuality ‘pirate radio stations’ outside the law, were rebroadcasting British stations received on sophisticated sets in order that the amateur built crystal sets would be able to pick up a signal. This too was referred to in the newspaper columns with one declaring that,

‘Now I am informed that some people in what may be described as misplaced kindness are endeavouring to re-radiate received broadcast from their aerials to those of nearby crystal users. This is absolutely illegal and must on no account be attempted. You are not allowed to transmit. I shall be glad to assist those who try to locate offenders.’

On January 18^th 1923 in The Evening Telegraph, readers with an interest in radio was left in little doubt as to the legalities of ‘broadcasting’ rather than listening. It advised,

‘The position of the Free State in regard to the question of broadcasting, it may be taken for granted that broadly stated (1) Broadcasting of any kind is not legal yet in the Irish Free State. (2) That any instruments for the purpose of broadcasting are illegal. (3) That any attempt to bring in such instruments would be frustrated, the instruments of discord on-route would be sequestrated.’

Despite this information, an unusual pirate broadcaster turned out to be an attempted fraud and was exposed on the front page of the Evening Telegraph in November 1923. An authorised radio set dealer became aware of fraudsters who were selling sets at an unbelievably cheap price, purporting to receive all the British stations. He made an appointment to view the set and when the seller turned it on, he said that they were tuned into the Manchester station 2ZY. They listened to gramophone records and an announcer. After a period of listening the scam unravelled as the authorised dealer said that the announcers voice had a distinct Dublin accent. All was then revealed. The scammer and his confederate had set up a pirate transmitter nearby and was broadcasting the records and using a crude microphone to deliver the announcements pretending to be 2ZY. The ‘wireless set’ that they were trying to sell would barely be able to pick up a station that was just twenty miles from the receiver, it only contained a single value.  The uncover businessman remarked to the reporter that

‘The amusing part was that he had a rather clumsy contraption fitted up with the idea of humbugging innocent people into believing that the results obtained on his 'single valve set with a frame aerial were better than any of the demonstrations by the big wireless firms.’

He added

‘This kind of work is very good for experiments, but when it is done for the purpose of leading people to believe that they are listening to an actual station broadcasting, well it does general wireless work harm, first by making people suspicions and secondly by disappointing them by bad results.’

One pirate station seemed to make a genuine attempt to become the ‘Dublin station’ in advance of any officially sanctioned station. In May 1924, ‘The Grand Central Station Dublin’ was heard on the airwaves of Dublin on 390m medium wave. Reports said that on some of its broadcasts it suffered from interference from 2NO in Newcastle. The station broadcast from 9pm – 9.30pm. The ‘Dublin Studio’ as it deemed itself was located Northside of the city and introduced its pirate transmission with the announcement ‘calling Dublin, Glasnevin and everybody’. One writer to the newspapers wrote a critique of the broadcasts and offered some advice,

‘I would recommend that he is again whistling ‘Father O’Flynn’ for broadcasting that he should not blow directly into the microphone, as the result last night was more rushing wind that musical.’

The station carried on intermittently throughout the rest of the year with various reports appearing in trade magazines. They appeared to be coming from the one station although there were many experimenters as the frequency used was regularly on 390metres. In January 1925, The Radio Digest magazine in the United States reported in its ‘European Notes’ section that,

‘broadcasting is being carried out nightly from an unknown location near Dublin, Ireland, much to the annoyance of the Irish post office authorities who have been unsuccessful in their attempts to locate the illegal station’.

Pirate radio would be a thorn in the side of the authorities throughout every decade up to the present days with many pirate radio stations still taking to the air.

1930's Irish Radio Analysis - Part Four. The Irish Language More Than a Cupla Focail

For an Irish radio station it was not until 1937 before the station became familiarly known in the Irish Language as Radio Eireann prior to that it was known as 2RN or Radio Athlone which upset Irish language activists. Despite the constant effort by these activists to force the Irish language centre stage by and the call for more native language programmes on the State station it would not be until 1939 before the first GAA hurling match between Limerick and Kilkenny would be broadcast entirely in the Irish language. All the more remarkable when we learn that a year earlier the first all Irish pantomime had been broadcast from Galway.

From the first inception of Irish radio, there was a battle by Irish Gaelgoirs to use the medium to rejuvenate and reinvent the Irish language and utilise the national aspects of the stations availability. English was the predominant language in Ireland and despite the best efforts of Conradh na Gaeilge amongst others to have Radio Athlone broadcast more in Irish, the native tongue was consigned to a second language and at times struggled for that position. Throughout the thirties the station carried linguistic learning courses in French and German. The Irish language activists became alarmed as the decade continued as the station began to broadcast a number of programmes in the universal language of Esperanto. During long periods of the late nineteen thirties there were more programmes broadcast in Esperanto than in the native language.

In the early days of Irish radio the Irish language supporters believed that the airwaves were not being used properly for the promotion of the native language. Activists initially wanted the state run station to be solely broadcast in Irish and that it should support National ideals and traditions but there was very little support from the political establishment who were unsure how to treat the new medium and were suspicious of the intentions of traditionalists. Over eighty percent of the station’s output was in English, the language of Government and the Irish language did not even make up the entire remainder as French, German and Esperanto all received significant airtime. Less than half of all music played on the new station was Irish traditional and this caused much debate in the newspapers of the day.

It was not until 1970 that a group of activists crowded into a small caravan in Galway and asserted their right to have a dedicated Irish language radio station on the air. Two years after those pioneering pirate broadcasts Radio na Gaeltachta took to the airwaves and has been broadcasting nationally ever since. In recent years other stations have provided programming in the native tongue including Radio Na Life, Radio Failte and local community stations across the country. These have been augmented in recent years by internet based Irish language radio stations. In 1989 when the Independent Radio and Television Commission perused proposals for the new commercial national franchise there was derision in the media when former pirate broadcaster Chris Cary (Radio Nova) in his submission advanced his proposal for an Irish language ‘word of the day’. This English born entrepreneur seemed unable grasp the importance of the native tongue on a national stage but fast forward twenty years and the national franchise now Today FM offers a thirty second occasional slot ‘creid é no ná creid é’ not far off Cary’s 1989 thoughts on the subject in 1989.

Radio Eireann in 1939 was the chief provider of Irish language broadcasting but this year would see four different stations in three different countries broadcast ‘as Gaeilge’. Vatican Radio aired Irish programmes at 7.30pm hosted by the Rector of the Irish College in Rome broadcast on short wave for the faithful in Ireland to listen to. In Germany, Nazi state radio began broadcasting in Irish on December 10th 1939. The presenter was Hans Hartmann and their propaganda was anti British and an overt attempt to reinforce Ireland’s position of neutrality during the Second World War. Covered in the excellent book by David O’Donoghue ‘Hitler’s Irish Voices’ Irland-Redaktion was heard on short wave and 395m medium wave. The station was the brainchild of Ludwig Mulhausen of the German propaganda department, a professor in Celtic studies at Berlin University who had visited Ireland especially the West of Ireland many times prior to the war. Also assisting in the Irish broadcasts was Adolf Mahr who had been the director at the National Museum.  For the first two years of broadcasts were delivered only in Irish but from 1941 until its final transmission on May 2nd 1945 the station broadcast both in English and Irish but aimed at an Irish audience both in Ireland and the Irish Diaspora in Britain.

The final broadcaster ‘as gaeilge’ was the IRA’s broadcast station which was located in Ashgrove House, Rathgar and began all their broadcasts with a speech in the native tongue usually delivered by Seamus Byrne. The station was raided and closed at the end of December 1939 bringing the decade to a close.

1930's Irish Radio Analysis - Part Three. The Catholic Church

The Eucharistic Congress in 1932 was a logistical nightmare for the under resourced Irish radio station 2RN. Despite the fact that station just six years old it carried out a number of major outside broadcasts from across Dublin. These programmes were relayed by landline to Athlone whose new transmitter was operating at sixty kilowatts allowing coverage over much of Europe. The powerful transmitter allowed for coverage across Ireland. For those with radio sets it was a massive improvement in quality but the broadcasts were relayed on receivers in churches and halls across the country allowing everyone access for the first time to listen to 2RN. The Congress marked the first time that the overwhelmingly Catholic population heard the voice of the Pope relayed over the Athlone transmitter on the final day of the Congress. Reaction to the broadcasts in the print media was positive and commended the station on their achievements.

The first Eucharistic Congress was held in 1881 under Pope Leo XIII. The congresses were organised by a Papal Committee for Eucharistic Congresses to increase devotion to the Eucharist as a part of the practice of faith, and as a public witness of faith to Catholic population at large. The 31st International Eucharistic Congress was held in Dublin, 21-26 June, 1932. It was the premier international Catholic event. The 1932 Congress provided the platform for the Irish Free State Government of DeValera to assert their position as a leading Catholic nation. It had been the largest public gathering in twentieth-century Ireland until the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II. There was even an act passed by the Government specifically for the event titled the Eucharistic Congress (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1932.

Congresses were often linked with anniversaries or other events special to Christians and in particular to Catholics of the country in which they took place. The 30th Congress which took place in Carthage, Tunis, commemorated the death of St. Augustine. The Dublin congress commemorated the death of St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.

The new Irish State mobilised its meagre resources in order to meet the challenge posed by this show case. The arrival of the special Papal Legate, Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri at Dún Laoghaire Harbour at the beginning of Congress Week was greeted by thousands along the harbour piers and the Papal Mass in the Phoenix Park six days later was attended by over 1,000,000 of the faithful. The event was considered to be an outstanding success. The Irish State had successfully entertained literally thousands of churchmen and laity who came to Dublin from every corner of the globe to pray and Irish radio was there to cover every minute of the event.

In 1934 despite the success of the Eucharistic Broadcasts the New South Wales Press reported

‘Many readers may be surprised to learn that there is not a Catholic radio station in Ireland. No doubt the reason is that because the country is so overwhelmingly Catholic, people believed that when the DeValera Government founded the powerful Athlone station it would be a Catholic station. Perhaps it is in a sense, but as it is a Government service most of its work is civic. The announcement is now made that an exclusive Catholic radio station may be opened in Ireland. There is no official confirmation of the news, which appeared in a Dublin newspaper, but on the other hand it has not been denied. Negotiations are said to be proceeding with the Government, and Mr. DeValera is known to be favourable to the project, which, if it succeeds, would enable an effective relay of the Vatican station. Wireless experts have been busy with suggestions since the project was announced, and these include the provision of a shortwave station and the establishment of a landline from Italy.’

It was a source of frustration for the Church authorities and Catholics in general that the national radio station did not carry weekly Mass. This was all the more difficult when the faithful knew that the station in Belfast broadcast a Daily Service and a Sunday service from various Protestant churches across Northern Ireland. The Church authorities viewed DeValera and his Government with suspicion despite the success of the Eucharistic Congress. The Church Hierarchy had supported the Pro Treaty forces and Cosgrave’s Government during the Civil War and DeValera had been excommunicated for his anti treaty activities but this was quietly ignored after he won the 1932 General Election. DeValera’s Department for Posts and Telegraphs never pressured the state broadcaster to broadcast Mass.

Although not officially an anti Catholic stance, the lack of religion and religious services was a great source of annoyance for the Church. The Church had been a great supporter of radio when it first went on air in 1926 believing that ultimately it would be an extension of its dominance over a subservient faithful population. This stance seemed to be annually contradicted when 2RN (later Radio Athlone and Radio Eireann) ceased all broadcasts on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Easter Week up to 1936 when the only silent day was Good Friday.

The church exerted further influence on broadcasting in Ireland with the Anti Jazz movement which we will cover in the next post.