Kmflett's Blog

61 years since the start of Radio Caroline & Tony Benn’s part in its downfall.

Radio Caroline first broadcast test transmissions 61 years ago on 27^th March 1964. In its original form it lasted until August 1967 when the Marine Offences Act made broadcasting from a boat off the UK mainland illegal. That meant the end for most of the ‘pirate’ stations that had broadcast, primarily off the Essex Coast, although Radio Caroline continued and was joined for a period by Radio North Sea which was run out of Holland.

Many of the DJs on the pirate ships went on to work for BBC Radio One which was set up as the official alternative including of course John Peel.

The Wilson Labour Government had pushed through the measure- the Minister ultimately responsible being Tony Benn- because of concerns about how the pirate ships operated and also because of issues with interference with communications channels.

Benn was Minister for Technology in August 1967 but had spent much of the time since 1964 as Posts Minister. In his Diary he lays out a future for radio which the Act started to put in place. He noted a dislike of commercial stations and the people who ran them but wanted to promote both popular music on the BBC and set up a series of local radio stations.

Benn reports that the BBC showed no interest in devoting more air time to pop music as this would be pandering to popular tastes. Dominic  Sandbrook’s suggestion in his book White Heat, a social history of the 1960s, that the BBC was behind the 1967 Act appears mistaken. It was the Post Office and to some extent the Musicians Union, concerned that they and their members gained no direct benefit from records played on the pirates.

The reality is though without the pirate ships pop music culture would not have made the impact it did on 1960s Britain.

There was something of a radical element of shaking up the stifling conservatism of post-1945 British popular culture but the stations were commercial affairs. They were the forerunners of the independent radio stations that operate throughout the UK today and many of the leading DJs were hardly radical themselves. Indeed one, Roger Gale, became a Tory MP having previously joined Radio Caroline as a DJ in 1964.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline