Radio Limerick Weekly Echo Launch 1978

                     

The Irish Pirate Radio Rivalries - Of the 1930's

For many, the great pirate radio rivalries in Ireland were ERI and South Coast in Cork, Nova and Sunshine in Dublin in the 1980’s or the Radio Dublin and Alternative Radio Dublin’s battles from the seventies but a pirate radio rivalry erupted on the airwaves in the 1930’s between stations in Limerick and Waterford.

The 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act was introduced in November 1926, nine months after the official launch of 2RN. The Act would regulate the airwaves, write the rules on licence fees and deem what should and should not be broadcast. The Act was supposed to be a deterrent to illegal broadcasting but that did not stop illegal stations broadcasting taking to the airwaves. One man in Limerick would break all the rules. Jim O’Carroll attended the Technical Institute on O’Connell Avenue in the city and developed a keen interest in electronics. As a result while experimenting, he built a crystal receiving set that allowed him to listen to 2RN, the BBC and with improvements he began to listen to Short Wave broadcasts from America and Australia.

In early 1935, O’Carroll added an oscillator to his receiving set and turned it into a crude transmitter that was powerful enough to be heard all over the city. After testing its limitations, O’Carroll had to find a home for his new station, as living with his sister was not an ideal location for secrecy. He eventually found a location on the third floor at the home of his friend Charlie O’Connor at 84 Henry Street. The station began broadcasting in February 1935 on 360m, very close to the powerful transmitter in Berlin, Germany broadcasting on its allotted frequency of 356.7m, which meant that both signals interfered with each other  and often the Limerick station had to wait until the Berlin transmitter was turned off to get a good signal out across Limerick City. By April, reports of a Limerick ‘Mystery Station’ was reaching the national newspaper headlines.

The station was now named The City Broadcasting Station (CBS) as O’Carroll had been listening to CBS broadcasts from across the Atlantic and liked the sound of the name. He went on the air playing whatever gramophone records he could lay his hands on. On the air most nights from 7.30 – 10.30pm, the station continued with Billy Dynamite (O’Carroll) and Al Dubbin (O’Connor) at the controls broadcasting a mixture of speech, gramophone records, and relayed programmes from American radio, including the news and even swimming lessons on the radio.

The Limerick Leader reported on April 6^th,

‘The operation of a mysterious broadcasting station in Limerick for some past time had the citizens and officials agog. Listeners-in are occasionally startled when they hear an unofficial announcer make reference to local matters and some well-known personalities.’

The Liberator newspaper in Tralee on the same day reported,

            ‘The annoyance caused by this is distinctly perturbing to owners of sets.’

The appearance of CBS on the airwaves of Limerick was greeted by a variety of different headlines. The Irish Examiner (6/4/1935) headlined their article ‘Wireless Nuisance’, The Kerryman (13/4/1935) spoke of a ‘Secret Radio Station’ while the Irish Independent described them as the ‘Mystery Station’. The station continued from February to October with the only change being its location, when the station moved to the home of Michael Madden at 25 Wolfe Tone Street who had been providing the batteries for the station’s transmitter. The station went from strength to strength and became the first station in Ireland to carry a paid commercial rather than the sponsored programming aired on the national station, when the Wolfe Tone Dairy began to advertise its products. The owner of the dairy was John Toomey, who ran a successful grocer/dairy/vegetable shop and was the proud owner of an ice cream machine, selling homemade ice cream cones. Summer was coming and ice creams would be a popular seller. O’Carroll said after,

‘As I began to get a little bolder, I discreetly canvassed for commercials. My first contact was the owner of the Wolfe Tone Dairy, Mr. Toomey. He had a fine grocer's shop but, in addition, he made delicious ice cream on the premises. I told Mr. Twomey that I knew a man who could contact the elusive Pirate and arrange to have his delicious ice cream mentioned on the air. He was to make no payment until he heard the broadcast. He offered the incredible sum of £10 if I arranged this transaction. Ten pounds was about a month's wages at the time. For a schoolboy one could almost retire! Needless to remark, as far as I know, that was the first radio commercial in Ireland.’[1]

There were queues down the street for the ice cream encouraging John Toomey to invest in a second machine to keep up with the demand.

‘An enduring sight in my mind's eye is a very long line of people reaching in the direction of what was then Gleeson's public house waiting to purchase cones and wafers from a delighted Mr. Toomey[2]’ said O’Carroll

The station began carrying ads for Clohesy’s Pub on Charlotte Quay, one of the most popular pubs in Limerick at the time. O’Carroll also added in an interviwe with the Limerick Leader in 1976, that

‘a committee running a sports outing in Castleconnell asked us to advertise their sports meeting, we had a ‘What’s On Guide’ in Limerick cinemas’.

 The advertising revenue was beginning to pay off for the radio entrepreneurs. The station would carry local news bulletins and because they broadcast late at night, they would collect the following morning’s national newspapers arriving in Limerick railway station at nine o’clock and broadcast the headlines for their listeners much to the displeasure of the Irish dailys, and this was replected in their coverage of the station.

Meanwhile in Waterford City another broadcaster was taking to the airwaves. The ‘Waterford Broadcasting Station’ was heard broadcasting on 280m medium wave and were on air from 11.15pm for an hour. On Wednesday April 17^th , the broadcast to the listeners of Waterford, which was described by the Irish Independent correspondent as ‘a most enjoyable broadcast’, included ‘gramophone records, vocal and instrumental items’ but ended with an unfavourable critique for their Limerick rivals. The announcer bemoaned that,

‘an amateur in Limerick had broadcast programmes which were injurious and objectionable.’

He added,

‘I would like listeners to understand that I disapprove wholeheartedly and condemn abuses by this amateur of the powers his transmission station gives him’.

The spat over the airwaves reached the newspapers the following day when the Irish Press on their front page headlined ‘Another Mystery Station, Radio Rivals’. Some of the issues related to newspaper reports that O’Carroll’s signal was interfering with listeners enjoyed of concerts from the Berlin station.

Further broadcasts from the Waterford station were noted on July 28^th at 2pm, when a thirty -minute broadcast of music was interspersed with announcements in Irish that there would be further broadcasts to follow.

In Limerick on October 31st, Halloween, while Michael Madden was on the air, the station had been tracked down and was raided by the police and an engineer from the Post Office Walter Dain. Madden was arrested and the equipment confiscated. O’Carroll partly blamed the raid on Madden himself, who had been drinking in local pubs boasting the fact that he was ‘the radio pirate’ and that information was relayed to the Gardai in Limerick. O’Carroll was in Dublin on the day of the raid visiting his mother and the day after the Limerick raid his mother’s house in Milltown was ‘ransacked’ according to O’Carroll as Gardai searched for links to a suspected IRA transmitter that was also broadcasting in Limerick.

Even before the court case following the 1935 raid had reached the courts, a radio station was reported on the Limerick airwaves in early February 1936. The station was advertising a local dance and encouraged listeners to support the event. Following a court case on February 28th 1936 Madden was convicted and fined £1 and 2 guineas costs. During the case Garda Lenihan said that,

‘during the illegal broadcasts names were mentioned and scandalous remarks used’.

It would be the first conviction under the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act.

In June 1936 another station was reported by the Irish Independent as being on the air, calling itself ‘The Curraghrock Station’. The newspaper reported two females were heard on air followed by a gramophone record programme. By July 1936 the tone of the station was causing problems for the authorities in the Limerick area and in Government circles in Dublin. The issue for the authorities this time was more urgent as the broadcaster was now broadcasting IRA propaganda. The announcer was reported as telling listeners that the station was set up ‘to disseminate Irish republican Army propaganda’.  This time the station used a frequency used by the Munich station and again like the station the previous year would have a better range once the Munich transmitter fell silent. The station was probably located in the Barrack Road area hence the confusion in the name as there is no ‘Curraghrock’ in Limerick.

This station was seized on September 4^th 1936, when a house on Newnham Street was raided by Post Office Engineer William Carroll and Garda Lenihan. Despite this raid, another Limerick pirate transmitter was back on the air by September 16^th, on the 360m frequency ‘treating listeners to a programme of gramophone records’ but while there were announcements, there was nothing of a political nature.

At the subsequent court case on December 4^th, Edward Quin of Clancy Strand was prosecuted for maintaining illegal transmitting apparatus contrary of the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act. The State prosecutor stated that the items seized were,

‘one medium wave oscillator, one low frequency amplifier, one carbon type microphone, and one short wave oscillator’

Garda Lenihan stated in evidence that Quin tried to pocket a value from the transmitter which he later claimed he took because he had it sold and didn’t want to lose it. Lenihan disclosed that he had spoken to Quin on a number of previous occasions about the need to stop illegal broadcasting. All the wireless articles found in the house were produced to the Court and the GPO engineer Thomas Carroll then described what had to be done to test the-apparatus. The test broadcast worked ‘quite satisfactorily’. According to a GPO Inspector he had received a test message from the transmitter and the ‘message was quite distinct’. His finding was corroborated by another engineer Mr. T. White. The prosecution was determined to achieve a conviction and were willing to call several experts to ensure the result. They wanted to send out a message to propagandists who wished to use the radio waves to propagate their messages that they would close them and that the only broadcaster allowed to broadcast in the Free State was Radio Eireann.

While Madden and O’Carroll in Limerick were pirate broadcasting for entertainment purposes, a more sinister type of broadcasts had appeared on the airwaves in Dublin. On Friday October 25^th 1935 at 2.30pm listeners on medium wave reported hearing a ‘mystery transmitter’ announcing that it was

            ‘Radio Phoblacht na hEireann, The IRA broadcasting studio.’

The station’s announcer gave a lengthy statement on the Irish Sweepstakes and announced a list of winners. The station then played some gramophone records including those of the famous Irish born tenor Count John McCormack.  The broadcast lasted about forty minutes. But the illegal broadcasting of entertainment programmes or occasional broadcasts from subversive organisations would become the least of DeValera’s problems as the nation faced into neutrality during the Second World War.

Greater rivalries would consume the Irish airwaves in the decades to come but these stations proved that the battle for hearts and minds on the radio could consume time and newspaper columns. 

---

[1] From an article by Jim O’Carroll on Limerickcity.ie

[2] In O’Carroll’s story John Toomey was written as ‘Twomey’ but his death notice in 1951 denoted Toomey as the proper spelling.

THE IRISH PIRATE RADIO EXHIBITION (Nationwide Tour)

At Midnight on December 31st 1987, the new Wireless Telegraphy Act came into force and began to regulate the chaotic Irish radio airwaves. It brought about an end to a golden era of pirate radio in Ireland that ultimately had created a radio industry that still flourishes today. According to the latest JNLR figures (July 2018) 3.1 million Irish people listen to the radio everyday for an average of 4 hours per day. That's 85% of the entire population of Ireland listening to the radio.

From the very earliest radio experiments by Marconi which were conducted in Ireland to today's State radio and legal independent radio sector Ireland has a colourful radio history. During the 1916 Easter Rising the rebels led by Padraig Pearse launched their own wireless station and they began to broadcast communiques declaring the Rising had begun and that a new Republic had been declared. Ireland had become the first nation in the world to be declared by radio, by pirate radio.

Throughout the decades up to 1988 Ireland officially had a State broadcaster originally known as 2RN, the Radio Eireann and as it is today allied with a television service Radio Telifis Eireann (RTE). To compete with this monopoly and to cater to an emerging younger, liberal and rebellious population from the late 1960's, pirate radio began to fill a void.

From 1960 to 1988, thousands of pirate radio stations went on air in every city, town, village and even parish. Some were hobby in nature, some were community orientated while many began known as the super pirates, with powerful clean signals playing a diet of pop music and commercials making many of them quite financially successful.

The South Dublin County Library 

Many of these stations are now just pleasant memories but their paper and audio trails still exist and are an important  part of Ireland's radio and social history. They demonstrate a changing society and how the illegality of pirate radio can sit sometimes very comfortably with state institutions such as Revenue, Unions such as the NUJ and politicians.

Pirate radio has at times being of a political nature and the first man to die on hunger strike following his conviction for pirate radio broadcasting Sean McNeela died in 1940 having operated a station that broadcast IRA propaganda. Sinn Fein stations in the 1980's contributed to the election of a number of Maze hunger strikers which prevented a Charles Haughey led Fianna Fail government getting back into power.

RTE, TV 3 and some of the commercial and community sector are awarded grants from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) to conduct archiving and it would be remiss of us as a nation to allow the wealth and depth of the pirate radio archive to be lost for future generations of scholars and radio listeners.

In May 2018, after months of gathering materials I launched the Irish Pirate Radio Exhibition at the South Dublin County Library to show some of the memorabilia and to let visitors discover the history of pirate radio (and television) in Ireland. The exhibition includes pop up banners, rate cards, car stickers, mugs, court summons and even an FM pirate radio transmitter built by Sean McQuillan in a biscuit tin for the writer Pat McCabe (The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto) for his station Radio Butty.

The Waterford Central Library

The exhibition then traveled to Waterford Central Library and is currently on at Dungarvan Library on the Quayside. On August 7th it will move to the Granary in Limerick City. The hope is to create real interest in the history of Irish pirate radio and to create momentum for the creation of an archive and perhaps most importantly for any project to generate funding whether through grants or donations.

The Dungarvan Library, Waterford

Stay tuned to our facebook page 'Dublin's Pirate Days' for details of the exhibition visiting somewhere near you.

The Irish Pirate Radio Exhibition heads to Limerick