An In Depth Analysis of Radio Luxembourg's Impact on Irish Radio

 Review

This is a highly well-researched and insightful piece of historical writing. It goes beyond a simple "history of radio" and functions as a socio-economic analysis of 20th-century Ireland. It is an excellent piece of historical journalism. It provides a clear "cause and effect" chain: RTÉ’s conservatism + Luxembourg’s technical power + the invention of the transistor = the inevitable rise of the pirates and the eventual birth of 2FM. It treats the subject with the seriousness of a political history while maintaining the energy of a pop-culture retrospective.

For many years, RTE held a monopoly as the Republic of Ireland’s sole state broadcaster and the only authorised source of radio programming for the general public. This dominance faced its first major challenge with the introduction of a legal framework that paved the way for independent and commercial radio stations. The move toward legalising independent broadcasting was a direct response to the widespread popularity of pirate radio throughout the 1980s, which had demonstrated a substantial demand among listeners for alternatives to RTE. However, RTE’s position as the exclusive provider of entertainment for Irish audiences had already started to erode much earlier. The process of dismantling RTE’s monopoly began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the Irish public grew increasingly eager for new programming options especially for music listening. This period marked a significant shift in listener preferences, leading to a strong appetite for alternatives to Radio Eireann, which, despite its efforts, struggled to meet the diverse and growing demands of audiences across the country.

In 1953, Radio Luxembourg, based in the Grand Duchy, relaunched when its medium wave and long wave services[1] were merged on 208 metres medium wave. It was a truly commercial station with purchased airtime[2] and sponsored programming. The English language part of the station opened at 6pm and closed at midnight and its powerful 300KW transmitter was clearly heard throughout the British Isles especially during nighttime hours.[3] In 1953 its popularity in Ireland was recognised by the station when the Irish Hour was broadcast with requests once a week, with host Pete Murray.[4] The programme was an instant hit with the younger generation in Ireland who not only heard their own names and towns but the latest music emanating from the new rock and roll scene in London and the United States.

 

There was no escaping Luxembourg as in 1953, the Irish national newspapers were printing the stations daily schedule. On November 11^th, 1953, during a Dail debate on the allocation of funds to cover Radio Eireann, Oliver Flanagan TD said,

“No matter what praise we may have here for Radio Éireann, very few of our listeners listen to Radio Éireann while Radio Luxembourg is on the air. They usually listen to Radio Éireann when they have nothing else to listen to.”

This was the issue for the state broadcaster. The station had no competition during its daytime and evening programming[5] but as soon as Luxembourg opened at 6pm[6], the radios were retuned to 208. Ireland of the early 1950s was slowly emerging from itself imposition international isolation created by the De Valera government. It was still a deeply Catholic country and the national radio service reflected that, plus as a single channel it was attempting to cater to all needs and tastes but the ever growing youth demographic was ignored as conservative Irish listeners and legislators saw the emergence of the new Rock n Roll music with the same disdain they did when American jazz waved across the Atlantic in the 1930’s.[7] For the clergy there was also the emergence of American evangelism on this side of the Atlantic and perceived it as a threat. When a ‘paid for’ religious programme aired on Radio Luxembourg nightly at 11pm, just before closedown, with a significant audience carried over from its earlier more popular shows, the Catholic media in Ireland were upset. The Christian Broadcasting Fellowship aired nightly and promoted its show with advertisements in the Irish newspapers with a contact address of D’Olier Street in the centre of Dublin city, near O’Connell Bridge.

 

By January 1954, Irish advertisers were purchasing airtime on the station, a loss to Radio Eireann. The Bray Holiday Bureau[8] purchased a fifteen-minute slot once a week for three months advertising the town featuring the popular Irish tenor Joseph Locke on its first programme. The pressure on Radio Eireann, which was already cash starved by the Department of Finance continued throughout the 1950’s. Weekly Independent’s radio Supplement gave weekly schedule for Radio Eireann, AFN and Radio Luxembourg side by side. Luxembourg was broadcasting a mix of music along with serials like Dan Dare, Dr, Kildare and Perry Mason.

When an Irish reporter questioned the stations content, gives the answer, " What makes Radio Luxembourg tick?" It's quite simple, he replied, " When the people ask for oranges, we give them oranges. We don't give them bananas." By providing "oranges" (popular music and rock and roll) when the state insisted on "bananas" (traditional and conservative programming), Luxembourg successfully commercialized the Irish airwaves from abroad.

In August 1954, the station cemented its connection to Ireland with the unveiling of their first ever Miss Radio Luxembourg pageant competition. The winner was announced as Miss Phil Tubridy from Monkstown. Not only did she represent the station at various events including the Radio Review ball in the Hibernian Hotel on Dawson Street but also had a weekly fifteen-minute show on the station that ran until Christmas 1954.

By 1955 in a listener survey[9] Radio Luxembourg was the second most listened to station in Ireland. It reported that 85% listened to Radio Eireann and that 56% listened to Luxembourg, with smaller listenership’s to the BBC light Service and the American Forces Network. The poll also showed that Radio Eireann’s listenership was dominated by those listening before 8pm and in rural areas. This reinforced a survey a year earlier reported by the Catholic Standard Newspaper[10]

‘About one in three of the population over 16 tune into Luxembourg at same time during the evening and although there is less listening to radio in Ireland, listening to Luxembourg is at a higher level than in Great Britain. On an average evening less than two in three of the Irish listens in and of these more than half tune to Luxembourg.’

For a national station these were startling statistics as it leaked a growing number of listeners yearly. 

By 1958 The Irish Requests Show was being sponsored by Jacobs Ireland with quarter page daily ads in the Irish national newspapers on the day of their shows.  In 1960 the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes returned to sponsoring programmes on Luxembourg. With no access to advertising into the UK via radio for their lottery, Luxembourg provided that avenue. In 1935 the Sweepstakes were sponsoring programmes on the pre-war Luxembourg.[11]

After almost a decade of dominance by Radio Luxembourg over Irish radio audiences, its relationship with Ireland featured in numerous debates in the Dail. On February 24th 1960, Dr Noel Browne informed the sitting that,

“One of the sad truths about our society is that one of our favourite stations, outside Radio Éireann, is Radio Luxembourg, which is unparalleled in any society for unadulterated rubbish. Their sponsored programmes are under the control of advertisers and private enterprise products, the standard being the lowest common denominator.”

There were also complaints that the Dundalk based Carrolls firm were advertising their Sweet Afton cigarette brand on Luxembourg rather than Radio Eireann

In a debate of Broadcasting Authority Bill which would eventually lead to the launch of television and the creation of Radio Telifis Eireann, John Belton TD (FG) on March 16th, 1960, told the debate,

“The most popular station for radio listeners in the city of Dublin is Radio Luxembourg because it is producing modern programmes that have a greater interest for radio audiences than other programmes.” 

In May 1960, James Dillon (FG) added,

“I am sorry to have to tell the Deputy that that is not the reason recommended to me. It is usually a passionate desire to listen to "Elvis the Pelvis", and I cannot pretend to enjoy that buck. I recognise freely that there are others who do, and every man is entitled to enjoy what he likes best in the form of music, whether it be Elvis or Ludwig von Beethoven. Certain it is, however, that the net result is that Radio Luxembourg gets immense advertising revenue. If we could command a tithe of the advertising revenue Radio Luxembourg enjoys, we would be able to achieve what I think is the ideal: we would be able to cater on one wavelength for the fans of "Elvis the Pelvis" and, on another, for the enthusiasts for Mozart and Beethoven. Perhaps the Minister would explain to the uninitiated amongst us.”

Michael Hillard TD[12] replied,

“We would have to put the "Jolly Roger" up.”

James Dillon TD,

“There is something to be said for the "Jolly Roger" in certain circumstances. Great Empires have been built through the profits derived from the "Jolly Roger". In the old days, they were called privateers. If you got caught, you were a pirate; if you came home successfully with the loot, you were a privateer.”

This created a paradox in the Dáil, where politicians simultaneously decried the "unadulterated rubbish" of commercial radio while admitting the state could not afford to compete without adopting the "Jolly Roger" tactics of its competitors.

 

In June 1960, as the debate on the future of Irish broadcasting continued in the public domain, Maurice Kennedy writing in the Irish Independent,

“The rural cinemas, the Rock n Roll output of Radio Luxembourg and the car, on the family farm, all mean that rural teenagers are subject to the same influences as their city cousins.”

In the early sixties the new music of the increasing number of showbands were breaking through but with so many bands travelling around the ballrooms of Ireland and many of them recording tracks, an outlet domestically was lacking, and Radio Luxembourg was ready to fill the void. One of the most popular showbands in Ireland was the Capitol Showband, led by singer Butch Moore had their own show beginning in October 1963[13].  Their success was created by an enterprising manager, who himself would go onto a stellar career in broadcasting.  The Capitol’s manager was County Louth born Jimmy Magee who would dominate sports commentating on both RTE radio and television for decades. In December 1963 just as the Capitol’s run of programmes was coming to an end, The Cadets Showband took over with the Marlowe Dry Cleaners sponsoring their fifteen-minute show.

But in the sixties the strength and power of Radio Luxembourg and ergo their advertisers weakened not because RTE began addressing the younger listener, but the arrival in 1964 of Radio Caroline, the pirate-based radio ship. Caroline by 1967 had two ships, one operating off the coast of Essex on England’s east coast and a second ship anchored off the Isle of Man covering the west coast of the UK and all of Ireland. By the late 1960’s hobby weekend pirates were appearing on the Irish airwaves from Dublin to Cork to Wexford and Newry.

The younger listener, who by the end of the sixties had access to cheaper transistor radios, had been acclimatised to hearing the music they liked, not what their peers listened to. The new music of rock and roll, led by Elvis coming from America and the rise of the Beatles music in the UK, sidelined the Irish traditional music and even the showbands, consigning them to the older generation and Radio Eireann. While Radio Eireann and later RTE Radio had, like Luxembourg, sponsored programming, it was the type of music that was being played on the commercial stations that encouraged listeners to return time and time again. The commercial stations also attempted to replicate American broadcasting styles which offered a tantalising taste of other possibilities.  It was the ease of access to listen to Radio Luxembourg and later Radio Caroline that made them attractive to the young listener and therefore to the advertisers who were purchasing their sponsorship of the stations.

 

The growing demand for pop and rock music in Ireland, coupled with limited access for musicians and bands to Radio Eireann, led Irish artists and voices to seek alternative platforms. This quest for exposure resulted in many finding a place on the newly developing pirate radio scene. While pirate radio in Ireland during the 1950s primarily consisted of paramilitary style political broadcasts[14], the landscape began to shift. Hobbyists and amateur engineers started constructing their own medium wave homemade transmitters and basic, affordable studio equipment. This movement sparked a new era of pirate radio, paving the way for further growth in the following decades. As the influence of stations like Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg waned in the seventies, the reach and popularity of Irish pirate radio expanded. The impact of Radio Luxembourg on Irish listeners was substantial, significantly affecting RTE's audience and advertising revenue. In response to this shift, some of the lost revenue to RTE was redirected, with advertisers opting to place ads in Irish newspapers promoting Radio Luxembourg's programmes. While Luxembourg started the erosion, the arrival of Radio Caroline in 1964 and the subsequent rise of Irish pirate ships ensured that the monopoly could never be fully restored to its pre-1950s state.

Appendix 1: Some of the various programme sponsors on Radio Eireann and Luxembourg in the 1960’s

Luxembourg

EMI, Decca & Capitol Records, later Phillips (In 1968 all replaced by individual commerical brand sponsors)

Frys Chocolate

Elida Shampoo

Silvikrin Shampoo

Brunitex Shampoo

Racing Blue (Sports Newspaper)

Curry’s Limited

Raleigh Industries

Pye

Top Rank Bingo

Irish Hospital Sweepstakes

Beechams

Sweet afton

 

Radio Eireann

ESB (1950s – 1960s)

Lyons Tea

Associated Ballrooms

Knocknagram Chicks (Jan 1962)

VG Shops

Bulmers Cidona (6am Saturdays Only 1960)

Irish Hospital Sweepstakes

Hygeia

Andrews Liver Salts

Loxene Hair Cream (Men)

Waltons

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[1] Radio Luxembourg One on longwave was aimed at British audiences while Luxembourg 2 was aimed domestically on 208m medium wave.

[2] North American Evangelists

[3] Marnach transmitter was a broadcasting facility of RTL near Marnach in the commune of Clervaux, in northern Luxembourg.

[4] Murray joined Luxembourg in 1950 and was based in the Grand Duchy unlike many presenters who recorded their programmes in London and despatched to Luxembourg.

[5] There were a small percentage of daytime urban listeners who tuned into the BBC

[6] The station broadcasting in 5.30am – Noon, German Noon to 5.30pm, Luxembourgish 5.30pm to 6pm

[7] That led to the anti-jazz movement of the 1930s led by Father Confrey from Mohill Co. Leitrim

[8] A seaside resort on the border of Dublin and Wicklow

[9] A Poll of 7,000

[10] January 22^nd 1954 by Social Surveys Limited

[11] The Radio Pictorial magazine

[12] The then Minister for Posts & Telegraphs with responsibility for broadcasting

[13] First show 7.45pm October 9^th 1963

[14] Several incarnations of ‘Irish Freedom Radio’ were based in Dublin and along the Northern Ireland border

The Time For A Dedicated Independent Irish Radio Archive is NOW

 

We have harvested wood and bogs to heat and cook, we’ve tamed rivers to provide electricity and now we have harnessed the wind, the oceans, and the sun to create renewable energy but the ether has been a natural resource that we’ve utilized successfully, using it to communicate and entertain ourselves for over a century. The radio waves that help us land planes on the Aran Islands and listen to the Cranberries have also been harnessed. According to the most recent JNLR ratings 80.2% of the adult Irish population listen to Irish radio every day. It is our heritage.

 

Our love affair with radio has propelled Irish radio history onto a global stage. From Marconi’s Irish mother encouraging her son to experiment, to the rebels of 1916 ensuring that Ireland became the first nation in the world to be declared by radio to Clondalkin born Ronan O’Rahilly helping to revolutionise radio with his Radio Caroline, we have a rich tapestry in radio and it continues to evolve from analogue to digital to online.

 

 We are now entering a celebration of Irish radio milestones. 1923 and Ireland’s first licensed radio station 2BP takes to the airwaves, 2BE is launched by the BBC in Belfast in 1924, the new Free State inaugurates 2RN in 1926, while Cork sees the arrival of 6CK in 1927 and 1932 sees radio take the Eucharistic Congress to a global audience.

 

Are we remiss in not exhibiting our immense radio history? How will scholars of the future discover how and why in this modern age of social media that analogue radio listenership is still over eighty percent? Unlike many nations of a comparable size, Ireland does not have a centralised radio archive or museum both open to both donations and research. Our disregard of our broadcasting heritage is shameful. The memories of those in front and behind the microphone seems lost in the mists of time.

 

The largest radio and audio archive is RTE’s. While not complete, the only recorded snippet of the opening nights broadcast comes courtesy of the BBC who rebroadcast part of the opening night to the UK, it is an invaluable resource but spending cuts within the broadcaster has seen its staffing levels and importance reduced. An independently funded body should be put in charge of maintaining, updating and making available all radio archives, including RTE, commercial, local and community radio.

 

We have the archives; it is scattered to the four corners of the island. We have a unique collection of invaluable Irish radio artifacts gathering dust on shelves in the Cork City Gaol Museum, a passion of the late Paddy Clarke, degrading as I write this impassioned plea. Without County Louth born Fr. Nicholas Callan and his work on the induction coil in the mid-19th century, Marconi may not have ended up leaving Italy, his archives are in Maynooth University. Without the work of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society to save the work of Colonel Meade Dennis, the world’s first radio ham, another remarkable story would be lost. His equipment was donated to the Computer and Communications Museum at NUIG. The RTE scripts of the past are located at UCD. The Hurdy Gurdy Museum in Howth, a personal achievement of the late Pat Herbert is a treasure trove of Irish radio history. The Irish Pirate Radio Archive is located at Dublin City University. There is the RTE archive, totally under resourced and haemorrhaging staff, a massive an invaluable archive unfortunately for scholars hidden behind a pay wall. There are the archives of the independent sector for which limited Sound and Vision grant money is available. The archives of at first the IRTC, then the BCI, later BAI and now Coimisiún na Meán are a vital thread to understanding and studying Irish radio history. This scattered approach is diffused and disorganised and without a centralised online guide. Our radio archives physical and audio should be housed in a dedicated sound and audio archive like the Centre National de L’Audiovisuel in Luxembourg or the German Broadcasting Archive.

 

Whether its Clifden in 1907, O’Connell Street in 1916, 2BP’s broadcasts in 1923. 2RN in 1926, Radio Caroline in 1964, Radio Nova in 1981, Atlantic 252 in 1989 or Christmas FM in 2008, the physical and audio archives should be centralised so that those who have kept safe their treasures over the decades have somewhere to donate their collections. There should be strategic policy developed for Irish radio archiving and history protection.

 

With the GPO relocating its offices from O’Connell Street to The Point, perhaps the GPO could be used to house a unique collection of radio memorabilia, artefacts, archives, and audio. We need action now as each and every day new material is created, new memories are made and yet voices are lost.

The Original 2RN in 1924

The history books tell us that the forerunner of RTE Radio One, 2RN began broadcasting on January 1^st 1926. The callsign 2RN had been assigned to the new Irish broadcasting station by the British post office but 2RN was not the first applied for callsign and the Little Denmark Street based station was not the first application of the 2RN callsign.

In 1924[1] when negotiations were taking place as to whether a new Irish Free State radio station should be a commercial enterprise or a state run monopoly, a Dail wireless committee heard that a group of five companies led by Andrew Belton’s Industrial Developments Limited had coalesced into the Irish Broadcasting Company. The IBC was to apply for the licence as a commercial station but a political scandal involving Belton and a committee member Darrell Figgis led to the decision to be taken that the Irish station would be state run. In anticipation of obtaining a licence, Belton applied to the British Post Office for the callsign 4RN[2] as in ‘For Erin’ but at the time there was no callsigns with the number 4 designation. Instead, the British Post Office allocated the callsign 2RN as in ‘come back TO Erin’ instead.

The issue initially was that there was already a wireless operator with the callsign 2RN. It had been assigned to David Daniel Richards, a resident at ‘Mametz House,’ 36 Bontnewydd Terrace in Trelewis, Glamorgan, Wales. Richards was a demobbed British soldier after the First World War who had acquired wireless operator knowledge at the front. To allow for the Irish station to use his callsign, in 1924 his callsign slightly changed to 2 ARN.

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[1] Maurice Gorham’s ’40 Years of Irish Radio’.

[2] The 4RN callsign would later be used by a Queensland radio station.

A Salute to the Men who Put 2RN (& BBC TV) on the air in 1926 (Part 2) William Beatty

In part two of our salute to the men who brought 2RN to the airwaves in January 1926, we look at the engineers who bought the Marconi transmitter in the UK, had it shipped to Ireland, renovated the wooden hut in the grounds of McKee Barracks and installed the framework for broadcasting at new studios on Little Denmark Street. These men were integral to the early success of radio in Ireland and their key roles have almost vanished from history...until today.

William Arnold Beatty was born in Cork to parents from Bangor County Down. As soon as the young Beatty could access a place in the School of Wireless Telegraphy on the Mardyke in the city centre, he enrolled. Once qualified in the new profession as a Wireless Operator of Marconi equipment he found himself travelling the high seas of the world in ships wireless rooms despatching morse messages for his employer Gugielmo Marconi.

 

He was on board merchant ships crossing the Atlantic as the First World War raged and shipping encountered a new deadly threat, being torpedoed by German submarines. In 1917, off the coast of Tory Island, his vessel was torpedoed and sunk. He was saved by being prepared and engaging with all the safety measures at the time. A year later he watched from the deck of the SS Highland Pride as a British cruiser was sunk as it protected a convoy of ships crossing the Atlantic from South America.

 

In 1922, as the new Irish Free State Government took control of the affairs of a devastated and war torn country, Beatty returned to land and joined the new National Army of the Free State. With his skills he was immediately attached to the Signal Corps. Many of his colleagues in the Signals Corps were fellow former Marine wireless operators who were renowned as being face with the Morse codes key. He was in charge in the Wireless Room at Portobello Barracks on August 22^nd 1922 when the first news of the assassination of Michael Collins at Beal na Blath reached the capital.

 

In 1924 Beatty left the Army and in October the following year he was hired as the Assistant Engineer for 2RN with an annual salary of three hundred pounds per annum but interestingly with no pension. He worked under TJ Monaghan, who had been seconded from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs to overseas the opening of the Free State’s first radio station. He was at the heart of the McKee barracks hut transmitter location and the nearby aerial array. The transmitter was a 1.5kw Marconi transmitter and his engineering knowledge, training and expertise was invaluable in getting the signal on the air.

           SEE WILLIAM BEATTY & THE 2RN TRANSMITTER HUT IN BRITISH PATHE NEWS

 

He was in charge of many of the first outside broadcasts carried out by the station. This included its very first when 2RN was still in the test transmission phase in December 1925 before the official launch on January 1^st 1926. The first outside broadcast came from the La Scala Theatre on Princess Street, beside the GPO on O’Connell Street. In March 1926, he operated outside broadcasts from various locations around Dublin but with limited equipment, it meant that Beatty would have to load and unload the equipment from taxis as he moved from location to location. In May 1926, the first OB from Cork took place and Beatty was on hand to ensure the broadcast went smoothly. The variety show took place in the Cork Municipal School of Music located on Union Quay. He would make several trips to Cork through the following year as the second Irish station 6CK was readied to open from the old Women’s Gaol overlooking the Southern city. A similar broadcast came from the Town Hall in Sligo on June 15^th 1926 with Beatty once again in charge of the OB. The system operated meant that the microphone Beatty transported west was attached to the telephone line in the Mayor’s office which in turn was linked to the telephone exchange in the GPO and then by telephone line to the studios in Little Denmark Street and according to newspaper reports it worked perfectly. [1]

 

It was Beatty who set up the heavy cumbersome microphone on the side-line at Croke Park for 2RN to become the first station in Europe to broadcast a live commentary of a field sport. So primitive was the ‘Press’ facilities at Croke Park at the time, a 2RN employee had to spend the entire game standing with an umbrella over the microphone to protect the expensive equipment. On another occasion when covering a rugby game at Lansdowne Road, the ball hit and damaged the microphone, the game being held up until temporary repairs were made and the link to the city centre studios restored. In November 1927[2], Beatty was in charge of the technical infrastructure for an OB from the Empire Theatre, Galway. Not only did Beatty set up the broadcast equipment but he acted as the announcer from Galway on the night linking to Dublin.

In September 1928, the Irish Independent reported that,

‘Major Bell, lessee of the Capitol Theatre in his review of the position of the cinema trade before a party of Pressmen on Thursday, mentioned that the Capitol was installing such a system and mentioned the fact that useful ideas on the subject had been put forward by Mr. W. Beatty, engineer, Dublin Broadcasting Station.

Yesterday and Irish Independent representative saw Mr. Beatty and got from him some views on the subject. Mr Beatty is at present seeking protection for an invention of his dealing with the phono-film.’   

 

Beatty left the station in 1930 and moved to the United Kingdom where he initially took up a role with the International Maritime Radio Corporation who were installing powerful equipment on ocean going liners including those of Cunard and White Star. His fascination with sound and the moving picture led him to Alexander Palace outside London and working with someone who is considered by many as the Father of Television, John Logie Baird. He was one of the main engineers on Baird’s mechanical system of television broadcasts who was competing with EMI/Marconi’s electrical system, which ultimately won the battle to be the main system used by the BBC. In 1936 he was the Production Manager at Baird. [3]

 

After losing to EMI/Marconi, the Baird company went into a slump and eventually receivers were called in. Beatty moved on to HMV overseeing the production of new wireless receiving sets and later to Philco. With each company he worked for including the International Standard Electric Company and the Anglo- American company Kolster-Brandes Limited, he was refining equipment being used in both transmitting and receiving radio and television signals. He applied for and was granted numerous patents[4] for these improvements.

 William Beatty passed in Sussex away on January 26^th 1949[5] leaving behind a wife, Barbara.

 

Part of William Beatty’s engineering team at 2RN were Andrew Kettle. Kettle would later work for the ESB and serve as the Honorary Secretary of Bohemian Football club and represented the north Dublin club on the FAI Council.  James Nolan from Walsh Island Offaly, involved in attacks by the IRA on Black and Tans including ambush at Mount Lucas near Edenderry in February 1921. Joined the national army and was attached to the signal corps where he discovered that he was a competent wireless engineer and finally Michael Nugent. Without the hard work, ingenuity, professionalism and dedication of these men, 2RN would not have joined the world’s cavalcade of radio stations on January 1^st 1926 and Radio Eireann would not have been so quickly embraced by the Irish listening public. Thanks lads.

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[1] The Sligo Independent June 19^th 1926

[2] The Connaught Sentinel November 22^nd 1927

[3] The Sunday Independent 31^st May 1936

[4] The US & UK Patents Office

[5] Northern Whig Newspaper

A Salute to the Men who put 2RN on the Air, (Part One) The Irish Eckersley, TJ Monaghan

 

Peter Eckersley was a famous name associated with the early days of radio in the United Kingdom. A sometimes eccentric extrovert, he was initially involved with the first broadcasting station, 2MT, before moving onto 2LO and then the amalgamation of radio stations that became the BBC. He was a controversial character but there is little doubt that without him the success of the BBC would have been stalled. In Ireland we had an engineer who was described as the ‘Irish Eckersley’[1]. He was a powerful Civil Servant who held sway over his domain unchallenged for over a quarter of a century, he controlled all engineering decisions over radio broadcasting, telephone and aeronautical communications. Yet very little is known or remembered of Thomas Joseph Monaghan, ‘The Irish Eckersley’.

 

T.J. Monaghan, as he was known, was born on April 21st 1887 near Accrington, Lancashire, England. His parents were Galway born doctor Thomas Monaghan and Josephine Maguire. He was educated at Xaverian College boarding school at Mayfield, Sussex. In 1902 he began attending South-western Polytechnic. Founded in 1895, one of the principal aims of the South-Western Polytechnic Institute was the provision of education for the poorer inhabitants of London. An emphasis was placed on instruction in handicraft, trade and business, together with access to recreational facilities, sought to improve the career prospects and their physical, social and moral conditions. This initiative initially took the form of day and evening classes for men and women over fifteen years of age, with the Institute offering well-equipped laboratories for the study of subjects such as mechanical and electrical engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry and metallurgy, in the hope of attracting male students keen to learn a trade and enter industry. Practical training was additionally available in carpentry, brickwork and advanced cookery; whilst classes in economics and commerce offered training in shorthand and typewriting for lady secretaries together with examinations for appointments in the civil service and the post office. Students were also afforded the opportunity to attend lectures in literary arts and to receive instruction in languages. He left the College with a Batchelor of Science degree in Engineering, passing with first class honours.

 

 

Following his graduation, he received practical training variously at the Royal Small Arms factory at Enfield, Yarrow & Co. at Poplar, and Simpson-Worthington at Newark until 1909. In 1910, Monaghan then joined the General Post Office (GPO) as an assistant engineer at their H.Q. in London. The General Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand, later known as GPO East, was the main post office for London between 1829 and 1910, and during that period was the headquarters of the General Post Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and was England's first purpose-built post office. It was demolished in 1912. It was the UK's second purpose-built post office after Dublin's GPO, which was completed in 1818 to a design by Francis Johnston, and still in use.

 

He was transferred to Belfast in 1910, spending two years there, then moving to Dublin and then to Cork in 1919, during which time he was in charge of works and maintenance of telegraphs, telephones, and wireless. In August 1913 he married Winifred Hackett in County Offaly.  At the beginning of the War of Independence in 1919, he was transferred back to the London HQ of the GPO on special wireless work and in 1921 he was appointed as officer-in-charge of the Leafield Wireless Station in Oxfordshire responsible for plant erection and the running of what was then one of the principal wireless stations in the world. Leafield was a powerful wireless station with a 250 KW arc transmitter that was to be part of an Imperial Wireless Chain that would connect the empire. Officially opened by the then British Postmaster General E G Kellaway, it initially connected with a similar station at Abu Zabal in Egypt.

 

 Following the end of the War of Independence and the creation of the Irish Free State he returned to Ireland in 1923 and became a staff engineer at Department of Posts & Telegraphs in Dublin responsible under the engineer-in-chief for a variety of aspects of the work of the department, including the initiation of the Irish broadcasting service. His first big project was all the technical aspects of the arrival of radio in Ireland and the launch of 2RN. He was seconded from the Department to 2RN and in tandem with the building of the transmitting apparatus was on the committee that appointed key personnel including the station director. That was the inspired appointment of Seamus Clandillon but Monaghan had his input on all aspects of the arrival of State sponsored radio in Ireland.

He was the man charged with putting 2RN on the air along with fellow radio engineer William Beatty. They purchased a 1.5kilowatt Marconi transmitter and installed it in a wooden hut on the grounds of McKee Barracks near the Phoenix Park. Aerials were erected and by mid November 1925, the first test transmissions from the station began. The station officially went on the air at 7.45pm on January 1^st 1926. A year later he was involved with installing the transmitter for the second Irish station 6CK in Cork. 6CK was based in the former Women’s Gaol in the city.

In November 1928 he replaced L.J. Kettle as the Chairman of the Trinity College Physical Laboratory. In lecture when he assumed the position, titled ‘Efficient Communications’ he said,

'It would take 100 years of constant human speech to generate enough energy to boil water for a single cup of tea.’

 

Monaghan travelled to the various wavelength conferences that saw the wavelengths of both 2RN and 6CK change regularly. The range of the two stations was limited and the Government decided that a more powerful transmitter would be purchased and installed somewhere in the centre of the country. Monaghan and his team of engineers, including John Lyons, undertook painstaking research testing various locations including Tullamore and Portlaoise before settling on Moydrum outside Athlone.

With the intended launch originally scheduled for 1933, one of the biggest events to be staged in the new Irish Free State was the 1932 Eucharistic Congress of the Catholic Church. Monaghan was put in charge of ‘broadcasting’ the entire event. Installation at Moydrum was sped up and the new transmitter was operating in time for the first blessing in June 1932 and the signal strength meant that all the island was able to tune in. Not only was Monaghan in charge of the radio broadcasting end of the event, but he also increased the capacity of the telephone system and he provided facilities for the overseas Press attending the event to keep in touch with news desks around the world.

 

Another success for Monaghan was the installation of over three hundred loudspeakers wired throughout the city to relay the ecumenical events from the Pro Cathedral, O’Connell Bridge where an altar had been erected and from the Phoenix Park where Mass was celebrated.

 

By the late 1930’s as war loomed, the Irish Government under Fianna Fail and Eamon DeValera wanted to be able to speak to the Irish diaspora abroad. Up to that point they relied on special broadcasts surrounding St Patrick's Day but a new Short Wave service would assist in the dispersing the Irish Governments neutral stance when war did break out. The short wave service achieved limited success and was eventually discontinued. When transmissions were heard abroad and listeners wrote with reception reports, it was Monaghan who would reply with QSL and conformation letters.

 

During World War Two or the Emergency as it was known in Ireland, Monaghan joined the Irish Army and the Signal Corps. He helped set up an emergency broadcasting station in Eamon de Valera’s house should the main studios or aerials be bombed and put out of action. He also, with the help of the BBC, synchronised the frequencies of the Irish stations at Cork, Dublin and Athlone in order to prevent enemy pilots identifying their location from radio broadcasts.

 

But not only was Monaghan looking after radio from his offices in Leitrim House in the offices of Dublin Castle, he was controlling the progress of telephone services in Ireland including the arrival of the automatic telephone exchanges. His remit also had him looking after aeronautical communications and as the result of Ireland’s position at the edge of Europe, closest to continental America’s, aircraft communications was a vital area especially post World War Two.

 

Monaghan represented Ireland at numerous conferences across Europe and the United States. These conferences allocated frequencies for his radio station, now known as Radio Eireann, discussed modernizing Telephone systems and formatting safe flying for the expanding aviation industry.

  

He became engineer-in-chief in 1930 and moved the family to 15 Clarinda Park North, Dun Laoghaire. Monaghan was elected MICEI in December 1929, served on council, was a vice president and served as honorary secretary, becoming president in 1942. He was also a member of the IEE and served as chairman of its Irish branch.

 

During the war he joined the Irish army signal corps and was promoted to the rank of Colonel. In 1951, he was instrumental in forming the Signals Club made up of ex members of the Signal Corps. Monaghan married Winifred in 1909, a daughter Judith was born in .. Judith met her future husband Gatt Westerhout at the radio conference in Dublin in 1955. They married a year later and her Dutch born husband carved out an extraordinary career in astronomy. They couple had 5 children two sons, Gart and Julian Westerhout; two daughters, Magda Westerhout Mobley and Brigit Molony, with her partner of 56 years passing away in 2012.

TJ Monaghan retired in April 1952. In 1958 he was appointed as Chairman of the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards and in May 1958 he joined the board of the National Board and Paper Mills, the Mills located in Granard, Co. Longford. Also appointed to that board at the time was the former Minister for Industry and Commerce, Daniel Morrissey.

T.J. Monaghan died at his home at 18 Summerhill Road, Dun Laoghaire on 10 July 1971.  

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[1] Described by Seamus Hughes, station announcer in the Irish Independent December 16^th 1925, two weeks before the official launch of 2RN on January 1^st 1926.