The Whiz-Kid and the Audible Wallpaper

By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

ANYONE given to supp.)se that crop-haired, tough-minded, dynamic Mr. Wedgwood Benn, inheritor from thirteen years of Tory mis management of one of the more conspicuousl inefficient government departments, lover o gadgets, much given to such phrases as 'hays '1 reality' and the need for 'blasting holes cotton-wool complacency,' was nevertheless onl playing at being a whiz-kid, must have been pulled up short by the blunt determination of his statement to the Commons. Legislation to suppress the pirates, he declared, 'will be intro- duced as soon as practicable.'

That was on February 4 of this year.

Last Wednesday, his determination refreshed by a year in which the GPO had not only raised its splendid new tower but had also introduced more glossy, dynamic new stamps than in the whole of the fuddy-duddy, complacent, Victorian era, Mr. Benn returned to the charge. 'Legisla- tion,' he bluntly declared, 'will be introduced as soon as practicable.' Or, as Mr. Benn's predeces- sor Reginald Bevins had put it, in June 1964, 'legislative action is being considered.'

To those of us given to the suspicion that the public life of this country is becoming increas- ingly conducted in an atmosphere of pure fantasy and myth, the 'pirate radio affair' has been, from beginning to end, perfect and reassuring evidence that our suspicion was entirely well founded.

The first time I heard whisper of the affair was in February 1964, when at a party given in fact by the Spectator, I ran into Jocelyn Stevens, debonair proyrietor of the Queen magazine. He seemed more than usually excitable, and had hardly swallowed his first cheese biscuit when he gleefully announced: 'I am just about to do something—I can't tell you what—that within a few weeks will be on the front page of every newspaper, will• provoke a minor Government crisis and may even end up with me in jail.'

Radio Caroline began broadcasting from its rusty old hulk off the Suffolk coast on March 28, 1964. It was run by a company registered in Liechtenstein, who had bought its 750-ton ex- passenger ferry, previously named the 'Frederika,' in Rotterdam, it was largely organised by the twenty-three-year-old proprietor of a Soho teen- agers' club whose grandfather--'The O'Rahilly' —had been one of the heroes of the Easter Rising in 1916, and it was backed by five rich City figures, among whom was Jocelyn Stevens. Ronan O'Rahilly had himself been 'given the idea' by an Australian bomber-pilot- turned-music-publisher named Allan Crawford. Who had been working on the legal technicalities of 'pirate' broadcasting for four years, and whose own meticulous preparations were eventually to bear fruit in the second pirate station, Radio Atlanta, which went on the air in May, from a mooring less than a mile from Caroline.

But already public reaction had been sharp and twofold, quite apart from that of the enormous numbers of people who actually welcomed the new day-long chorus of 'yeah, yeah' as a long- overdue addition to the English broadcasting scene. The first line of objection was simply a sort of general outraged puritanism—summed up by the Guardian, which asked, 'Are the coasts of Britain to be dotted with floating radio stations filling the air with gramaphone [sic] music interlarded• with "commercials" because nobody can think of any legal way of stopping them?'; and by The Times's classic declaration

that there wasn't 'a shred of evidence' to indicate that 'these vessels provide a service which the public wants' in the very week when a Gallup Poll showed Radio Caroline already rivalling the seven-million audience of Radio Luxemburg.

The second and more specific objection was summed up by L. Marsland Gander in the Daily Telegraph, Olen he wrote on April 13, 1964, 'The case against pirate radio ships is strong and simple. Uncontrolled wavelength-grabbing for entertainment purposes must inevitably lead to steadily worsening quality of reception for everyone.'

And so the pattern was established, which has gone on more or less ever since. On the one hand, impotent outrage—that came to its first head in the summer of 1964, when, after futile wrangling in Cabinet and in the Commons, Mr. Bevins finally referred the whole matter to the Council of Europe. On the other, the pirates waxing fatter and fatter, their audiences ever larger, until the point today where probably twelve million people (including, on his own con- fession that he listens to Radio Caroline in the bath. Mr. Wedgwood Benn himself) are com- mitting an offence under the Wireless Telegraph Act (1949), punishable on the first conviction by a fine of £10 and on the second by a fine of £50 or six months' imprisonment.

Throughout the history of the 'affair' there has, of course, been a strong mixture of farce. There was the night spent in Jocelyn Stevens's pent- house office haggling between Caroline and Atlanta over wavelengths, with Atlanta deter- mined to broadcast on exactly the same wave- band. There was the 'Screaming Lord Sutch' episode, with three government departments all disputing their own particular responsibility for the forts in the Thames Estuary. There was the Post Office's first attempt to point out that Caro- line on 199 metres was interfering with coast- guard broadcasting on 184—until someone pointed out that the Light Programme put out a much stronger signal on 194. And there was the embarrassment of Reginald .Bevins when, having just declared that he put his trust in British advertisers not to support the pirates,

he learned that among the buyers of 'time' was the state-owned Egg Marketing Board.

But that, of course, was all in the bad old days of Tory Britain; and the Tories had their own reasons for not wanting to smash the pirates. In October 1964. however, in came the dynamic Mr. Wedgwood Benn. And one of his very first inisterial pronouncements was that when the ouncil of Europe finally reported, the bright ew Labour government would do everything in is power to uphold the decision reached.

The Council made its report on December 17 —the very same day that the Dutch police, arriving by helicopter on its heaving deck, cut off Holland's pirate TV station in mid-song. The Council's recommendation was that all member nations should introduce legislation as soon as possible to outlaw the operators of pirate stations —and to make it illegal for their subjects to supply them with any service, from advertising to food. It was also the very same day that, with the opening of the partly American-owned and American-run Radio London, British pirate radio finally became properly professional.

1Of course, Britain signed the Council of Europe greement. And, of course, Wedgie the Whiz lethered on about 'audible wallpaper' and intro- ucing legislation 'as soon as practicable'—even though the Council of Europe's own lawyers soon found that the type of legislation recommended would be unenforceable. It is even just possible that, in his latest show of determination (the force of which had been somewhat blunted in the public mind by leaks to certain newspapers from dissident Cabinet colleagues that the pirates were to be given the 'go-ahead'), Mr. Benn may actually do something about the offshore forts. But as for Radio Caroline and Radio London, short of either sending a gunboat to blow them out of the water or of permitting local commer- cial radio in Britain, there is nothing. he can do.

It would have saved successive governments and successive Postmasters-General a great deal of wasted breath, not to say public respect and esteem, had they right from the start of the pirate radio affair remembered the reply of Lord Reith when, in the 'thirties, he was asked whether the Government shouldn't do something about the infringement of the BBC monopoly by Radio Luxemburg and Captain Plugge's Radio Nor- mandie. His memorandum was typical and con- cise: Won possumus.'