The Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 (c. 41), shortened to Marine Broadcasting Offences Act or Marine Offences Act, became law in the United Kingdom at midnight on Monday 14 August 1967.[1] It was subsequently amended by the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 and the Broadcasting Act 1990.[2] Its purpose was to extend the powers of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949 (which was incorporated by this act), beyond the territorial land area and territorial waters of the UK to cover airspace and external bodies of water.
At the time that the bill was introduced in Parliament in 1966, there were radio stations and proposals for television stations outside British licensing jurisdiction with signals aimed at Britain. These stations were anchored at sea but there were press reports of stations broadcasting from aircraft – Caroline TV,[4] and from a ship – Radex TV.[5]
The act was extended to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man in September 1967. The act meant that the operation of offshore, pirate radio stations became illegal if they were operated or assisted by persons subject to UK law. It prohibited "carrying by water or air goods or persons to or from it" which made tendering illegal. Station operators thought they could continue if they were staffed, supplied and funded by non-British citizens, but this largely proved impractical.
The power of the GPO covered letters delivered by the Royal Mail, newspapers, books and their printing presses, the encoding of messages on lines used to supply electricity; the electric telegraph, the electric telephone (which was originally deemed an electronic post office); the electric wireless telegraph and the electric wireless telephone which became known as "telephony" and later wireless broadcasting. In the 1920s the GPO had been circumvented by broadcasting from transmitters in countries close to British listeners. World War II terminated these broadcasts except for Radio Luxembourg.
Broadcasting pressure groups
In the 1950s a pressure group campaigned with the help of Winston Churchill to pass the Television Act 1954 that broke the BBC television monopoly by creating ITV. Some members wanted commercial competition to radio but were thwarted by a succession of governments.
By the 1960s several companies formed in the hope that radio licences would be issued. Radio monopolies in adjoining nations had been broken by transmitters on ships in international waters. The first attempt to broadcast offshore to Britain was by CNBC, an English-language station from the same ship as Radio Veronica broadcasting in Dutch to the Netherlands. CNBC ended transmissions but press reports followed that GBLN, The Voice of Slough, would transmit from a ship with sponsored programming already booked and advertised by Herbert W. Armstrong. GBLN was followed by reports that GBOK was attempting to get on the air from another ship, both ships to be anchored off south-east England. Many in these early ventures were known to each other.
Some of the commercial television group members had registered broadcasting companies and were working to create offshore radio. The first venture was "Project Atlanta" in 1963, which had ties to British political leaders, bankers, the music industry and to Gordon McLendon, who had helped Radio Nord broadcast from a ship off Sweden. When that was put off the air by Swedish law it became available to British entrepreneurs. Before Radio Atlanta got on the air, Radio Caroline began broadcasting in March 1964.
Texas connections to British stations led Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas to promote three American-radio format stations off Britain: Wonderful Radio London or Big L, Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio. By 1966 other stations had come on the air transmitting to Scotland, northern and southern England, or were in the process of doing so. Press reports included rumours of offshore television stations and the brief success of the Dutch REM Island operation called Radio and TV Noordzee heightened the fear of the authorities that de facto unregulated broadcasting was becoming so entrenched due to its popularity that it would not be possible to stop it.
Existing laws
Although these stations maintained sales and management offices in Britain, the transmitters were not under British law. In many instances, the ships were registered in other countries.
Claims of piracy
Parliamentary debates listed several reasons why unlicensed broadcasting should be stopped. Opponents referred to "pirate radio stations". Allegations of piracy included misappropriation of World War II military installations; wavelengths allocated to others and the unauthorised playing of recorded music. Other claims said the vessels were a danger to shipping and that signals could interfere with aircraft and police, fire and ambulance services.
Timing
In 1966, a dispute among offshore radio operators brought the issue of unlicensed radio stations to the fore. Reginald Calvert, operator of Radio City, had refused to pay Radio Caroline's operator Oliver Smedley for a substandard transmitter. Smedley hired some riggers to occupy the Radio City facility (on Shivering Sands, a disused offshore defence fort), and in an altercation at Smedley's house, Smedley killed Calvert. This incident strengthened the position of the Labour government of Harold Wilson, who wanted to bring the pirate stations under control, enough to see the passage of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act on 15 August 1967.
Results
The offshore stations fell into four groups:
Local operators of small stations such as Radio Essex and Radio City who conducted their businesses with limited budgets primarily from disused forts on offshore sandbars, plus the similarly based larger operation, Radio 390. The UK silenced these stations by bringing the sandbars within UK waters.
Regional operators such as Radio 270 and Radio Scotland who lacked the resources to relocate to other countries and staff their operations with non-British personnel.
The ship based stations of Wonderful Radio London, Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio. While Wonderful Radio London made money, the others had lost so they closed ahead of the law to save further expense. Radio London continued broadcasting until its last transmission on the eve of the new law.
The Radio Caroline ships announced they would move to Holland, with an advertising office in New York City. The reality was felt in early 1968 when two tugs representing the company supplying the ships with food, fuel, water, and spares towed the vessels away to satisfy debts.[6]
Continuing challenges
Although challenges began with Radio North Sea International in 1970, the British governments (both Labour, then Conservative) jammed it until it moved to a position off the Netherlands. There was no Dutch equivalent of the act until 1974; upon its introduction, RNI closed.
Radio Caroline returned through the 1970s using the MVMi Amigo, a vessel that sank in 1980, then returned with a new ship, the MVRoss Revenge, in 1983, primarily conducted with volunteer help. For much of this period Caroline's ships also hosted Dutch-language stations whose revenue, along with that of American evangelical broadcasts, kept the station on the air.
In 1984 Caroline was joined by Laser 558 another station with American backing, and while the latter gained a huge audience, the legislation plus a sea embargo monitoring supplies out to its ship, MV Communicator, drove its operators into insolvency as well as putting additional pressure on Caroline. An attempt to revive Laser under new management only lasted a few months from 1986 to 1987. The arrival of Laser had increased knowledge of Caroline's presence, and its closure plus a change in Caroline's music policy resulted in an increase in their younger audience.
Further amendments to the act had resulted in Radio Caroline having to move its operations into wilder water, and the Great Storm of 1987 damaged their antenna tower, which collapsed a few weeks later. A smaller antenna system was built but was less efficient. The Dutch and British governments then raided the Radio Caroline ship and removed much of its equipment, but again it limped back onto the air until late 1990 when, with its funding running low, the final amendment to the act, instigating a 200-mile limit, came into effect. Attempts to secure more funding proved futile, and thereafter it pursued legal means of broadcasting.
Apparent conclusion of unlicensed British offshore radio
The end of the offshore Radio Caroline came when the Broadcasting Act 1990, which built on all similar and related legislation, together with a storm that caused its staff temporarily to abandon the ship, caused the station to come ashore in 1991, where enthusiasts continue to build a broadcasting business using the new licensing system available to British broadcasters.
Similar legislation in other countries
Denmark 1962, Belgium 1962, Ireland 1968,[7] France 1969, Netherlands 1974.
The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy". Later radio history increasingly involves matters of broadcasting.
A pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license.
Offshore radio is radio broadcasting from ships or fixed maritime structures. Offshore broadcasters are usually unlicensed but transmissions are legal in international waters. This is in contrast to unlicensed broadcasting on land or within a nation's territorial waters, which is usually unlawful.
BBC Essex is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Essex.
Radio London, also known as Big L and Wonderful Radio London, was a top 40 offshore commercial station that operated from 23 December 1964 to 14 August 1967, from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles (5.6 km) off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England.
Pirate radio exists in most countries in Europe.
Radio Atlanta was an offshore commercial station that operated briefly from 12 May 1964 to 2 July 1964 from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England. The radio broadcasting vessel was owned, at that time, by Gordon McLendon and Clint Murchison of Dallas, Texas, and leased to a British company for day-to-day operations. It was named after Atlanta, Texas,
Pearce Reginald Hartley Calvert was an English artist manager, born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England.
Pirate radio in the United Kingdom has been a popular and enduring radio medium since the 1960s, despite expansions in licensed broadcasting, and the advent of both digital radio and internet radio. Although it peaked throughout the 1960s and again during the 1980s/1990s, it remains in existence today. Having moved from transmitting from ships in the sea to tower blocks across UK towns and cities, in 2009 the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom estimated more than 150 pirate radio stations were still operating.
Radio Scotland was an offshore pirate radio station broadcasting on 1241 kHz mediumwave, created by Tommy Shields in 1965. The station was on the former lightship L.V. Comet, which had been fitted out as a radio station in Guernsey using RCA technology and engineers, it was anchored at locations off Scotland, usually outside territorial waters.
Swinging Radio England ("SRE") was a top 40 offshore commercial station billed as the "World's Most Powerful" that operated from 3 May 1966 to 13 November 1966 from a ship in the North Sea, four and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England. While the station was dubbed a pirate radio station, its operation took place within the law and its offices were in the West End of London. Its representation was by a company formed earlier in the year to represent in Europe the ABC radio and television stations of the United States.
Wireless Telegraphy Act is a stock short title used for legislation in the Republic of Ireland, South Africa and the United Kingdom relating to wireless telegraphy.
Radio City was a British pirate radio station broadcasting from Shivering Sands Army Fort, one of the abandoned Second World War Maunsell Sea Forts in the Thames Estuary.
Radio Veronica was an offshore radio station that began broadcasting in 1960, and broadcast offshore for over fourteen years. It was set up by independent radio, TV and household electrical retailers in the Netherlands to stimulate the sales of radio receivers by providing an alternative to the Netherlands state-licensed stations in Hilversum.
Radio 390 (1965–1967) was a pirate radio station on Red Sands Fort,, a former Maunsell Fort on the Red Sands sandbar.
Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal as such due to operating outside any national jurisdiction, although after the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it.
Radio Atlantis was a Belgian-owned offshore pirate radio station, which operated in 1973 and 1974 from the coast of The Netherlands and Belgium. The station began broadcasting from the Radio Caroline ship MV Mi Amigo on 15 July 1973. The station was owned by Belgian businessman Adriaan van Landschoot who ran a chain of companies all named Carnaby:
Robbie Robinson, better known by the name Robbie Dale and nicknamed The Admiral, was a British radio disc jockey who was the chief DJ of Radio Caroline during the 1960s.
Mi Amigo was originally a three-masted cargo schooner, that later gained international recognition as an offshore radio station. She was built as the schooner Margarethe for German owners. A sale in 1927 saw her renamed Olga and she was lengthened in 1936. During the Second World War, she was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine and served as an auxiliary ship between 1941 and 1943. In 1953, the ship was again lengthened to 133 feet 9 inches (40.77 m). In 1959, she was sold for conversion to a floating radio station and was renamed Bon Jour. Subsequently, she was renamed Magda Maria in 1961 and Mi Amigo in 1962. She served, intermittently, as a radio ship, until 1980, when she sank in a gale.
Patrick Roy Bates, self-styled as Prince Roy of Sealand, was a British pirate radio broadcaster and micronationalist, who founded the self-proclaimed Principality of Sealand.
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