Saturday, August 10, 2013
How life used to be
Back in the 1970s there was a thriving pirate scene on MW in the south of England. I wasn't actually around to listen, but I've read about stations and listened to the old recordings, and I get the impression it was very much like the Netherlands still is to this day. What a shame we don't still have all that activity of 40 years ago.
If you dig around the internet there are plenty of reminders of how the pirate life used to be here in England. On the south coast there was a station called Sun Radio. Click here to see a collection of tremendous photos and here to read some newspapers cuttings about their exploits all those years ago.
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What a great link! I'd never come across Sun Radio before, or the other station mentioned in the newspaper, cuttings, Bell Radio. Summer and Autumn 1969 puts it as contemporary with early Radio Jackie / the Helen Network in London.
ReplyDeleteTaking it back a bit further, although not terribly well documented, there were land-based pirates about before the main offshore radio boom of the middle 1960's. I had once read in a biography of Gwynfor Evans, the first Welsh Nationalist MP, that in South Wales an illegal protest station called Radio Cymru / Radio Free Wales had been operating on television frequencies after closedown as early as 1955. Now, a webpage collects a bit of that history together: http://www.hanesplaidcymru.org/?p=320&lang=en
Cheers
Terry