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 6th,
‘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.’
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’
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 17th
, 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 28th
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 4th 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 16th, 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 4th, 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 25th 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.
