Over the next few weeks, allmediascotland.com is to publish, each weekday, extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris. ‘More Thrills than Skills: A Half-life in Journalism’, is being scheduled for publication next year. In his younger days, Paul Harris wrote several books on offshore radio. In today’s extract, he reminisces about Radio North Sea International.
on Jul 1st, 2008 at 14:39
The political analysis of Paul Harris as it relates to MEBO, Radio Northsea International and the ill-fated PanAM flight are interesting because he loops it back through a Cold War plan constructed in Poland via a fleet of Communist radio broadcasting ships. The foundation for all of this seems to be a single Dutch newspaper article (allegedly based upon a leaked CIA report), and the personal observations of Mr. Harris which he claims were given by him to one of Britain’s spy agencies. Over the years these words of Mr. Harris have been challenged and I have not seen any additional proof offered by him to support these challenges. Nevertheless they are intriguing since it would appear that the so-called “British beat fleet” of the 1960s was in and of itself a byproduct of a faction of the British Establishment in conjunction with CIA interests. My most recent coedited findings regarding this matter were documented and published in 2007 as a part of New/Old Worlds: Spaces in Transition: The World Tomorrow radio broadcasts to the United Kingdom: 1965-1967″, Univers Enciclopedic, Bucharest. ISBN 978973637159-2.
on Jul 1st, 2008 at 15:28
How does Federal US law apply to a Swiss Company? There’s a lot more speculation about all this in his book To Be A Pirate King but nothing that can be verified. As we have only recently seen in the Iraq War intelligence information is unreliable.
The evidence linking Mebo to Lockerbie has also recently been discredited:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/sep/02/theairlineindustry.libya
A second appeal is now to be heard.
on Jul 1st, 2008 at 15:43
Mike raises the basic problem with many of the “pirate radio” publications: lack of credibility via academic standards of reporting. Paul Harris originally published his first work shortly after the demise of the original offshore stations and his writings were mainly unverified and inaccurate newspaper cuttings strung together without footnotes, references or a decent index. However, in the RNI-PanAM linkage Paul claims first hand knowledge which makes him a central player more than a journalist. Even then Paul has yet to provide documentation to support his own claims and if he can do this by unmasking the people he claims to have been working with in British intelligence, that would at least provide us all with something to examine and unravel.
on Jul 1st, 2008 at 16:15
The problem is that no one anywhere has written a “history” of pirate radio. Clandestine radio is a far different thing and mixing the two appears to be the issue here.
on Jul 1st, 2008 at 16:28
Lou, you may be correct is referring to a single “history” (singular), but there are historical records meeting academic standards that have been published and which cover aspects of events. On the other hand clandestine radio and pirate radio sometimes merge into one and the same subject and again there are credible works that do exist to document aspects of this subject.
on Jul 2nd, 2008 at 19:42
Paul Harris says ‘During the 1970 General Election, it mounted a campaign against the then Labour Government and was, in turn, jammed by the Post Office, a British naval radio station and the military’.
Unfortunately, Paul’s recollection is fundamentally flawed: it was the other way round ! This mistake must cast serious doubts on his other observations.
The jamming came first, much earlier in 1970, it being alleged that Czechoslovakia had complained of interference. For several months there was a cat and mouse game as RNI repeatedly changed frequency, only for the jammer to follow it within minutes.
Hardly surprisingly, RNI eventually retaliated by asking listeners make sure that their votes reflected their view on the jamming. It had not made any political comments before the jamming started.
on Jul 2nd, 2008 at 21:18
Gerry: If you consider the subject of the jamming itself, rather than the order in which Mr. Harris appears to have related it, does it not raise the basic question as to why the UK jammed RNI in the first place? After all there were major compaints by Italy against Radio England in the 1960s (to name but one offshore station alleged to have caused interference), but there was no jamming. Surely the wider issue is the one Mr. Harris is asserting - that RNI was a part of some covert political scheme that the UK spy services had become aware of. It is that issue that I wish Mr. Harris would address in detail because jamming up until then had been considered to be the work of totalitarian states.
on Jul 2nd, 2008 at 22:30
No less than 46 pages of government papers about RNI and the action the UK took against it have been published in Offshore Echo’s 122 through 125, all released under the 30 year rule, no evidence anything has been withheld, no sections on any of the papers deleted due to security concerns. The jamming started when the station was in Dutch waters on March 9 1970 and broadcasting on 1610 causing widespread interference to maritime services which in turn increased power. When they anchored off the UK, causing interference to maritime communications a 10kw transmitter acquired by the Ministry and began transmitting morse on 1610.
One interesting thing to me was hat it was a spare BBC transmitter from Brookmans Park and their staff helped with its installation. However a note made it clear that the BBC were not in any way to be identified with the operation.
They moved to 1578 and the ITU were advised that they were activating a transmitter due to complaints from Italy and Norway. And as Gerry says a cat and mouse game then ensued. All documented facts which have been completely ignored in this article.
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 13:38
Mike: Surely your comments support my question as to why the UK began jamming in the first place when you consider that the jamming began while RNI was in Dutch waters? Surely that was a matter for the Dutch to deal with? But even given the validity of the complaints about RNI interference, why did the UK resort to jamming in true Soviet style? Regarding offiical records: I have come across instances in which that which is stated on the record is but a politically redacted version of what has taken place off the record. I am not supporting the interpretation of Mr. Harris but asking him to step up and document his claims.
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 13:56
-The jamming came first, much earlier in 1970, it being alleged that Czechoslovakia had complained of interference. For several months there was a cat and mouse game as RNI repeatedly changed frequency, only for the jammer to follow it within minutes=
Why follow the frequency with jamming, Czechoslowakia was not on all RNI frequencies.
So, nonsense, and indeed, in the years before, there never was jamming when a foreign country dropped complaints about a pirate station. Actually, jamming makes the situation even worse!!! causing more interference!!!
The frequency trip RNI made was very exciting, =where wil they be now=and at a certain moment they wetre almost on Veronica’s frequency (1562). V. responded by going on max power and overmodulating.
-The jamming started when the station was in Dutch waters on March 9 1970 and broadcasting on 1610 causing widespread interference to maritime services which in turn increased power. When they anchored off the UK, causing interference to maritime communications a 10kw transmitter acquired by the Ministry and began transmitting morse on 1610.=
I cannot believe this, again, jamming causes even more interference to the maritime services. As far as I remember RNI had left 1610 long before they turned to the UK-coast. I listened to RNI almost day and night during the time they were on 1610 (ore ther-abou, anyhow a clear channel) and I do remember the morse from day 1, but my thoughts are that this was already there, only during darkness, and not to hinder RNI.
However this argument seems also false to me since many years ago Radio Vatican occupies the 1611 channel with a much greater power then RNI ever did. No jamming…(has God more rights then a pop-pirate)
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 14:55
RNi started on 1610 February 11, sailed to Clacton March 23 still on 1610, final transmissions on 1610 March 27.
Jamming is perhaps the wrong word for the 1610 action, the UK coastal stations increased the power of their transmitters on March 9, they needed to for their communications, this was reinforced with continuous morse code transmissions from Chatham with a 1kw transmitter between traffic periods. The coast stations were already on that frequency, RNI should never have started on 1610. Just from a listeners point of view many medium wave radios couldn’t pick them up as they stopped at 1602. I grew up on the English coast, Dutch stations can be received daytime with strong signals. Norway later had continuous transmissions on 6210 which was one of their maritime frequencies.
There were complaints of interference from countries other than Czechoslovakia. As you say Ruud they even affected Radio Veronica, the jamming transmitter wiped out reception of BBC Radio One in some areas!
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 15:07
Mervyn, regarding UK official records under the 30 year rule the Government had to give a reason why an entire document or parts of a document should not be published and an independent body had to accept those reasons, they could overrule them. I’ve seen documents where parts have been withheld.
There are also documents where they release the title of the document but not the document itself and give reasons, again that has to be accepted by an independent body.
From 2005 you can use the Freedom of Information Act to request documents instead of waiting 30 years. They also said in 2005 that they would start a review of the 27,000 files classed as closed description, so sensitive that even the one line description remains secret. But relying on that for a case is Donald Rumsfeld unknown unknowns territory.
As so much has been published to prove any security concerns someone needs to go down to the Public Record Office and find any documents Offshore Echo’s hasn’t published, or any that have a one line description with the rest withheld. If that’s the case I believe you could then challenge that.
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 18:17
Mike: I am not disagreeing with you at all, I am instead suggesting that specifically with regards to official records, sometimes the official record is “off the record” and no record is kept. You refer to Rumsfeld who certainly operated in a climate of secrecy, and now this practice is filtering down to emails that had been sent by commercial companies for strictly commercial reasons: they have discovered that is better not to create the record in the first place. While much has been written about the pirate stations, as Lou suggested above, a lot more needs to be written using academic standards. Unfortunately Mr. Harris did not follow those guidelines. However, rather than being strictly an observer, Mr. Harris claims to be one of the players in the RNI story and since Mr. Harris holds himself out as a journalist in other areas, we should demand of Mr. Harris a true and documented accounting for his own claims. By the way, while it is now suggested that the counter transmissions by the UK were not jamming, I believe that the official records do indicate that it was the intent of the UK to jam the broadcasts of RNI using a succession of transmitters and facilities.
on Jul 4th, 2008 at 08:18
I agree with Mervyn that Paul Harris should after all these years substantiate his claims with some real evidence. As yet that has not and I doubt will ever happen.
However I myself am very dubious about the claims against RNI being the trigger for the governments jamming campaign.
I have known several people who worked on the Mebo 2 and nobody has ever said there was anything of a sinister nature taking place.
As one of them said to me, different governments do different things at different times to deal with different situations.
In 1974/75 they harassed the Radio Caroline organisation, in 1985 there was Euroseige and back in 1970 the jammer was the tool used to try and put the pirates out of business. If there was a real threat to national security would the jamming have stopped? I think not.
It makes a great cloak and dagger story which Paul Harris for one has played upon since the early 70’s, but my view is that is all it is.
on Jul 4th, 2008 at 10:31
I’ve looked through all the papers in the UK Public Record office, relating to RNI, and have copied some of them, and some have been published in Offshore Echo’s.
There is no mention of any suspected “spying” type activities anywhere, although of course is possible not all documents have gone on public record - some may have gone through the shredder (I wonder if any current documents will appear in 30 years!).
That MEBO Ltd did business with the Stasi doesn’t automatically make MEBO and RNI spies, simply that MEBO was an international business.
As for the jamming, from the public documents, the UK Government considered forcibly boarding the MEBO but were concerned about creating an international incident. Jamming was considered the easier option.
Chris Edwards, Offshore Echo’s
on Jul 5th, 2008 at 04:40
There seems to be a lot of confusion over the sequence of events, so here’s the true story. Note that the British government had nothing to do with the station when it was in Dutch waters, even though they had made it clear that they were not happy with its existence.
RNI began on 186 Meters ( 1610 kHz ) off of the Dutch coast. This frequency was not officially on the Medium Waveband and there were morse signals from time to time on a frequency about 1 kHz different. RNI’s carrier modulated the morse and caused something like a 1 kHz morse signal which was most aggravating. RNI was effectively jamming itself.
( A question that I have always wanted to know the answer to is how, with all the expertise required to get a radio station broadcasting, they decided on such a stupid wavelength. Primarily, they should have broadcast on the Medium Waveband and secondly, if they had broadcast on the same frequency as the morse, there would at least have been no 1 kHz tone. )
However, they continued on 186 and after a few weeks, sailed across the North Sea during the night, broadcasting as they went. As soon as they arrived off of the English coast, the problems began as, for the first time, they caused interference to the coastguard. The news was reported by ITN the day they arrived. It wasn’t long before RNI apologized and left the air announcing that they would be back on 190 Mtrs ( 1578 kHz ). This they did but after a day or two, the jamming began with the excuse that RNI was interfering with Norway and Italy.
RNI presumably assumed that the excuse was genuine and switched to 217 Mtrs ( 1385 kHz ). However, the jamming soon started on there too and so it bacame clear that they were going to be jammed wherever they went, so they moved to 244Meters ( 1232 kHz ) so close to the BBC’s Radio 1 that they couldn’t be jammed without the jamming interfering with Radio 1.
Unbelievably, that is what happened and with the jamming transmitter located in Rochester, it meant that many people had Radio 1 jammed and if you lived near enough to the RNI ship ( Mebo 2 ) off Clacton, then you couldn’t get Radio 1 there either, because RNI’s signal was so strong that it obliterated it.
And so they continued on 244 till after the general election in June. There was just one day when RNI moved right next to Radio 1, broadcasting on 1223 kHz. That was the day of the cat and mouse game. Every few minutes RNI switched back and forth between 1232 and 1223 with the jammers trying to keep up with them. It was reported in the press the next day, but it achieved nothing. On the day of the general election, the jamming was much increased so that hardly anyone could hear the Conservative propaganda which was RNI’s response to the jamming.
After the election, the jamming continued, much to the dismay of RNI and its millions of listeners, so after the new government had been in office for a couple of weeks, they tried moving to 217 Meters again, but the jamming followed, so they returned to 244. A little later, they switched off the MW transmitter and returned to the Dutch coast where they switched on again, still on 244 and hey presto, there was no jamming. This appears to be something in the way of proof that Paul Harris has got it wrong.
Soon afterwards, RNI had a complaint from the Dutch that they were now causing interference to Hilversum 3 on 240 Meters ( 1250 kHz ). They switched to 217 again, but the strength of another station on the same frequency was so great that RNI could hardly be heard at night, so they switched to 220 Meters ( 1367 kHz ). In September they closed down but came back again on 220 meters early in 1971 and stayed on 220 until the end in September 1974.
So this is how it went : 186 - 190 - 217 - 244 - 217 - 244 - 217 - 220. This isn’t a cat and mouse game, as some have commented; it is part of a story and each change was for a reason.
As for Mr. Harris, the modern world abounds with people who make money from unproven stories, such as those concerning flying saucers or the numerous female authors who had a relationship with Elvis Presley and ended up with a daughter by him.
N.B. Medium Wave channels occupied slightly different frequencies in 1970.
on Jul 5th, 2008 at 10:47
Thanks, Steven, for a good and comprehensive account. For those who weren’t around then, here are a few other snippets for completeness.
The original jamming from Beacon Hill (Chattenden, http://tinyurl.com/5gb4q4) was a rapidly repeated bleep. When RNI moved close to Radio 1 (which was MW only), the jammer obliterated Radio 1 throughout the Medway Towns and far beyond.
Later on, the jammer changed to an unmodulated carrier which rapidly varied its frequency over a range of a kHz or so, heterodyning with RNI to give interference sounding similar to a police siren. Being unmodulated, it no longer splattered all over Radio 1 or caused interference to local telephones.
However, cat and mouse games were played on an hourly basis for weeks. RNI would play a jingle, pause and cut the carrier; it would resume a few seconds later a few kHz away, just out of reach of the jammer. Equally often, the jammers would switch off, measure RNI’s frequency and move back on it. The jamming became increasingly desperate as the election approached, a very powerful transmitter at Canewdon (Essex) finally being used.
As others have noted, the key issue is that interference allegedly caused to other countries was only a feeble excuse to jam: complaints of (daytime) interference could not possibly have been received from foreign broadcasters and acted upon within minutes. Conspiracy theories about communist plots seem unsubstantiated by hard evidence or by the official records, so what was the real reason for resorting to a totalitarian practice that had seldom, if ever, been used before, even in wartime?
on Jul 5th, 2008 at 14:00
Steven: thanks for the details which now raise many more questions. The first that comes to my mind is why would RNI’s owners spend so much money to build a commercial general audience radio station that the general audience could not listen to and commercial sponsors would not want to use? Moving from spot to spot on the dial with or without jamming is hardly a way to build an audience. Commercial advertisers would ignore such a medium.
Gerry: Your last sentence and question brings the issue back to where it all began by begging an explanation. Paul Harris provided one but he does not provide any form of supporting documentation other than his own personal experiences.
In his latest reports on the original site (that began this present controversy on this site), Paul Harris seems to be telling a tale rather than reporting anything. He is a journalist, yes - but journalism covers both hard news and entertainment. In his latest episode he even gives a grooming evaluation of a professor of journalism from the University of Texas!
But be that as it may, everything comes back to his original premise which may or may not be true: Nothing that has been reported here so far has been able to refute the claims of Mr. Harris - that RNI was built for a purpose other than making money as a commercial broadcasting station which happened to be located on a ship.
on Jul 5th, 2008 at 16:38
I’ve read the article on allmediascotland.
Mr. Harris writes :
Radio North Sea International was bigger, better and flashier than any other pirate. Aboard a Norwegian coaster converted into the radio ship Mebo II in a Hamburg shipyard, it came on the air on January 23 1970.
The MEBO II was not converted in Hamburg but it was converted into a radioship in The Netherlands at De Groot en van Vliet shipyards in Slikkerveer near Rotterdam.
Bearing this misinformation in mind, How many question marks can we raise by reading
The other issues like the espionage, real purpose of the MEBO organization etc.
on Jul 8th, 2008 at 14:16
As Steven says the UK coast stations were on 1612.
Documentation shows the UK did follow a procedure before activating the inband jamming transmitter. When RNI started on 1578 April 10 they contacted Italy, Spain and Portugal by telex. Italy and Norway replied saying the transmissions were causing harmful interference and requested that the UK assist in bringing them to a spot. Further Norway asked if the UK would activate a transmitter on the frequency to safeguard their right to use it.
The UK then did so and notified the ITU, quoting treaty obligations under International Radio Regulation 422 (prevention of offshore broadcasting), and that it would operate under article 115 of the radio regulations. Similar procedures each time RNI changed frequencies.
To put this into context The Times published a letter from Des Colling, then editor of the World DX Club and a good friend of mine at the time, pointing out that the BBC was operating on 15070, aeronautical band, and 9410, 12095 fixed utility band and that a very large number of European medium wave stations were on unauthorised channels according to the Copenhagen plan. I remember this being read out on air.
On May 24 the Ministry said they were looking at an alternative transmitter site. In mid June a reserve 50kw BBC transmitter at Crowborough was installed at Canewdon and used for jamming, by this stage RNI was transmitting as Radio Caroline International and campaigning for the Conservatives in the General election.
This transmitter has an interesting history as it was originally built for use by Radio Caroline in 1965, for the full story scroll down here:
http://www.rossrevenge.co.uk/tx/othertx.htm
on Jul 8th, 2008 at 19:46
Mike, I always regard your contributions on this and other sites as some of the most expert and reliable ( as, indeed, I try to make my own ).
I refer to your comment : The UK then did so and notified the ITU, quoting treaty obligations under International Radio Regulation 422 (prevention of offshore broadcasting), and that it would operate under article 115 of the radio regulations. Similar procedures each time RNI changed frequencies.
Are you saying that the British government checked with other countries every time that RNI changed frequency ? I ask this because firstly there had been no great fuss when the numerous offshore stations of the sixties were broadcasting and it seems amazing that RNI should be so bad at choosing frequencies that they always caused interference. Also, the jamming started so soon after they changed frequency that it wouldn’t have had time to go through such lengthy correspondence.
Also, when they anchored once more off of the Dutch coast, the Dutch authorities didn’t resort to jamming on 244 mtrs, even though their TX would have been even closer to Czechoslovakia then. Nor did they jam them on 217 or 220, which they happily broadcast on for nearly 4 years, presumably without causing interference.
So a question to emerge from this would have to be “Why did the British government cause such a fuss and to do when the Dutch didn’t ?”.
Finally, have you got your own blog and if not, couldn’t you start one ?
on Jul 14th, 2008 at 16:02
Steven, in addition to the Offshore Echo’s material dug up some magazines published at the time including an article I wrote.
They went through a procedure for 1233, RNI began on 1233 with 100kw on May 16 having tested it May 13. Jamming started May 21. The Ministry had notified the ITU, who had notified Czechoslovakia and Morocco. The Czechs complained of interference. You’d need an accurate timeline for the other frequencies as they only used some for a very short period of time.
How severe the interference was could only have been determined from independent reports from within the country. I spotted that the Norwegian transmitter on 1578 was on continuously but only opted out of the national programme from Oslo, which was also broadcast on longwave, for daytime regional programmes. Difficult to imagine now that Norway just had one public radio network in 1973. I wrote to them asking about the interference from RNI. I was told that 1578 was used for external services from 2300 and that the interference had been reported by fishermen in the North Sea.
The sixties pirates had lower power transmitters so the issue was more them being affected by nightime interference. Britain Radio closed down at night due to interference complaints from Italy. I believe that RNI operated theirs at around 60kw when they moved back to Holland. Robert Chapman’s Selling the Sixties book says that jamming was considered early on but rejected. The politics were also different, Conservatives in power in May 1964 when Caroline came on, election in October which Labour won, there were soon several stations operating from within the UK as no anti-pirate legislation with UK backers, including ex Conservative MP’s, and they had large audiences. How could you jam all of them? The politicians waited until a Council of Europe agreement on introducing Europe-wide legislation came into force in May 1965, they still didn’t view legislation as a priority until the Calvert shooting.
When they went back to Holland quoting from a UK government document in Offshore Echo’s:
“The Dutch have been parleying with the pirates to secure a slight change of frequency to prevent interference with local programmes. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office feel the Dutch are behaving badly and are making strong representations to them”
The Dutch hadn’t ratified the Strasbourg agreement, had no domestic anti-pirate legislation and had tolerated Veronica since 1960. It’s often thought that RNI upset all that as subsequent events between the two stations showed.
Sorry can’t commit the time for a regular blog, watch the anorak messageboards
on Jul 14th, 2008 at 21:42
In addition to the historical errors already noted in the article by Paul Harris, here’s another glaring one.
He says…
“From the window of the office we could see the three pirate ships – Caroline, Capital and RNI – impudently at anchor in a row, three miles offshore in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the Dutch authorities.”
That however, could neber have been the case. Yes the Capital & RNI ships could have been seen together in August & September 1970. But, as the Capital Radio ship ran aground in November 1970 and the Mi Amigo, the Caroline ship did not arrive of the coast of Holland until September 1972, then all three ships could never have been seen together off the Dutch coast.
This and the other glaring errors give little credibility to the other claims made in his recollection of events of the time.
Mark Stafford
on Jul 15th, 2008 at 01:51
There is an additional major factual error in Paul Harris’ article when he writes…
“I was able to infiltrate the Mebo office operation which was located in a suite in the Grand Hotel in Scheveningen on the Dutch coast. From the window of the office we could see the three pirate ships – Caroline, Capital and RNI – impudently at anchor in a row, three miles offshore in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the Dutch authorities.”
It would have of course been Veronica, Capital & RNI off the Dutch coast in 1970. As Paul admits, he was just a footsoldier in his conatcts with the secret services, playing a double game and therefore the veracity of his own recollections must be taken which a pinch of salt as those of an apparent ’stooge’.
I think the Dutch newspaper article Paul refers to might have been down to a misjudged informal discussion that Andy Archer had with a journalist in which he is reported to have claimed that the Mebo II had ‘listening devices installed for the purpose of tracking NATO submarines.’ I have never seen the article but have only heard and read anecdotal stories about this. I believe that Andy Archer has since retracted these claims or put them down to a ’strong fantasy’ at the time.
It is true that MEBO Ltd. did business with the secret services of Eastern European states and Libya. Whether there was an ideoligical motive behind this, we will probably never know unless Bollier himself speaks out. It seems that Mebo Ltd’s clients were not limited to East European security services, and post Cold War included the German Federal Police.
When it comes down to investigating the activities of the secret servies, I agree that any records will not reveal the true extent of their deviousness and reasoning. Mad magazine’s Spy vs Spy comic strip, for me is closest to the surreal, paranoid and absurd ambience in which they operate with Graeme Greene and John Le Carre providing the human context.
If there was any ideoligical tendency behind RNI, it seemed to be pro-European and pro-commercial radio, both policies which were strongly advocated by Edward Heath’s Conservative Party at the time. Harold Wilson’s maverick leadership of his Socialist government had raised the ire of many in the UK establishment and his refusal to support our ’special relationship’ with the US by actively backing their intervention in Vietnam did not endear him with our pals across the pond.
It is most likely in my opinion that the jamming was generated from a determination to stem a revival of offshore radio aimed at the UK, which they thought they had thwarted when Caroline’s dogged determination to continue, run out of steam in 1968. There are personalities and ’spirits of the age’ to also take into consideration. For Caroline’s founder Ronan O’Rahilly, the battle against Wilson had become very personal, hence his intervention with RNI at the 1970 General Election. He convinced Meister & Bollier that the UK publics love of Radio Caroline and its support of the Conservatives, would sweep away Labour and augur in a new age of ‘free radio.’
The battle over control of broadcasting was a very significant issue at the time. The Labour Party remained tied to the BBC’s Reithian values of wanting to decide what they knew was good for you, whilst the Conservatives claimed to propsoe a free market/free choice philosophy. In the case of broadcasting, one which they failed to fully provide and instead contrived with establishment ‘control freaks’ to initially roll out non-competitive commercial licences on a basis of one station per market (with the exception of London where there were two,) and with strict compliance required on the format of each station (and most likely ownership too.)
I do not rule out Paul Harris’s assertion that the secret services east & west took an active interest in offshore radio and probably infiltrated and dabbled with it from time to time. I agree with those however who demand a more academic evaluation even if it may be impossible to verify. I believe the true motivation of many offshore radio projects including RNI lies with those passionate, visionary, defiant and foolish enough to fulfill a polular demand denied and opposed by governments. I think irrational decisons, as much as they can be explained, are down to projects being driven by passion and not necessarily commercial motives and the inability to evaluate the reaction of authorities faced with defiance, and the need to swiftly react to those reactions. Other irrational, naive or foolish decisions by some may also be explained by the wind of idealism and the penchant for mind altering substances which were fashionable at the time and an optimism that one could change the world!
on Jul 18th, 2008 at 16:12
Hans Knot wrote an article about the Andy Archer allegations, it’s in Dutch but right click, click page info then translate into English and you can get the gist. There’s some other articles on Paul Harris’s allegations linked at the bottom.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/RNI/rni16.shtml
Hans taped the shortwave frequencies through the night, they were being used for messages from the ship to Zurich about what they needed on board.
As to closed rooms as Roger Day said in Offshore Echo’s: “People say there were locked rooms. If they say that then they are lying. There were no locked rooms on the Mebo 2. I’ve been in every room on that boat even with the shortwave equipment”
In the reactions to the De man van MI-6 article Francois Lhote of Offshore Echo’s says (translated):
“I remember very well that Andy Archer himself once told me that the allegations of espionage by his side was a joke because he was fired.”
Going back to nightime interference in 1973 medium wave was organised according to the 1948 Copenhagen Plan, a new agreement, GE75 the Geneva Plan, came into force in 1975.
In May 1965 a Wireless World pointed out that:
More than 50% of long wave and medium wave stations in Europe are at present operating on frequencies other than those allocated by the 1948 Copenhagen Plan… Let us go no further than to say that in the present free for all some people have recently drawn attention to themselves by being a little more free than most.
Paul Harris in his first book said that in 1968 there were 510 stations, 302 on unofficial wavelengths and that many of the 208 authorised stations were using unauthorised transmitting power.