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Movies, Mayhem On Land, The Second Era and Loving Awareness
Ronan becomes a guru for love and peace and gets the chance to start again.
Ronan suggested that when Caroline was off air, the anguish he suffered,
adversely affected his health. One wonders how he felt as the sixties drew to a
close and the seventies dawned, while his ships lay rusting, vandalised and
looted by souvenir hunters. The only temporary revival had been a few days on
the transmitters of Radio North Sea.
In the time that Caroline operated from Holland, he had embraced aspects of
the mellow Dutch life style. The dapper businessman became transformed into a
softly spoken guru with beard and flowing grey hair. He was however not inactive
and was considered to take over management of the Beatles.
Other O'Rahilly projects included a homeopathic hospital and modular housing
for overseas and inner city use. He made the film Girl On A Motorcycle which
while dated by todays standards was considered Avant Garde for its time and
achieved cult status, thus funding various of his wilder schemes such as a water
powered engine. He invested in the design of a space vehicle, to the stage of
being shown a ' working' scale model. 'It was supposed to just lift up off the
ground' he told a friend, indicating that at the time he had been so relaxed
that the simplest thing could command his attention indefinitely.' I watched it
for a very long time I never did see it move'.
In the UK, while the offshore stations had been defeated, the radio air waves
were not pirate free. Resentment over the Marine Broadcasting Offences act had
motivated various groups to hit back. Generally these were young technical
college students or apprentice electricians who realised that it was not
difficult to build a small AM radio transmitter and have their own pirate
station. The first two who appeared, with substantial publicity since the matter
was still newsworthy, were London stations. Radio Free London and Radio Free
Caroline. Their high profile made it inevitable that they would soon be found
and silenced, using existing legislation in the Wireless Telegraphy act. But the
fines were not excessive and the operators enjoyed a 'Robin Hood' status. Not
surprisingly the weekend and overnight air waves soon crackled with the music
and chat of Radio Telstar, Radio Jolly Roger, Radio North West , Radio Pamela
and countless more stations who could appear anyplace, anytime on spare radio
frequencies which the authorities suggested did not exist. As a cottage industry
sprang up, producing pirate transmitters and associated equipment it seemed that
two stations appeared for every one that was closed down. It was only the fact
that the operators were independent loners that prevented the development of a
city wide or regional consortium of pirates, capable of giving the government
insurmountable problems.
The task of locating and silencing land pirates was carried out by the
British Post Office who sent out teams of technicians who became adept at
scaling roofs ,climbing trees and chasing miscreants across fields. Sometimes
blows were exchanged. The most durable of the land stations was Radio Jackie
with its theme tune ' Catch Us If You Can'. Jackie eventually opened an office
and operated 24hrs a day before being raided and fined out of existence. A
similar fate befell Radio Sovereign who pioneered the Gold format now widely
used throughout the industry. With the start of FM broadcasting land pirating
became more technically convenient and additional frequencies became available.
The pastime, hugely refined in both operation and detection, continues to be an
ongoing problem for the authorities.
The two
Radio Caroline ships impounded in Holland. The Mi Amigo (left) took to the
seas again in 1972 whilst the Fredericia (right) was scrapped
| By 1972 the tendering company Wijsmuller who had seized the Caroline ships
for debt, decided to sell them while they still had some residual value. The
larger MV Caroline was scrapped but the smaller Mi Amigo after being knocked
down at auction for £2.400 became the property of Hofman Shipping Agency acting
for a client, soon revealed to be a young Dutchman Gerard Van Dam using funds
allegedly borrowed from his Grandmother. Again Ronan challenges strongly this
version of the story suggesting that the funds came from another well wisher
connected with the same company who had previously towed the ships in for debt.
It may be that Van Dam and his 'Dutch Free Radio Organisation' were simply
acting as front men and putting up a smoke screen that the ship was to be made
into a free radio museum. A team of volunteers laboured through the summer
remedying what they could of the decay and vandalism that the vessel had
suffered. Again a variance exists between Gerard and Ronan's recollection for
while Van Dam suggests he accepted finance from the charismatic Irishman and,
perhaps unwisely, then handed over important papers for the ship, O'Rahilly
insists that Van Dam was never a major player. Certainly as events progressed
the Dutchman found himself and his insistence that the Mi Amigo stayed off the
Dutch coast being sidelined until eventually all influence and connection which
he had with the ship and the station ceased.
In September 1972 Mi Amigo left her berth at Zandaam and was towed along the
canal connecting with Ijmuiden which then gave access to the North Sea. The
authorities were told that the ' museum' was being taken to England where it
would have greater tourist attraction. In fact, once in international waters
and, while the ship was still incomplete and unserviceable and as Van Dam says
'never, ever would she be seaworthy' Mi Amigo dropped anchor off the Dutch coast
near the port and seaside resort of Scheveningen. The second and in many
respects more significant era of Radio Caroline was about to commence.
At this time Ronan was producing the movie Gold,' The Story Of The New
American Dream', having previously acted in another piece of alternative cinema,
Universal Soldier. Gold, another Avant Garde offering was to premiere in
London's West End Without funds to mount a conventional publicity campaign, the
possibility of massive radio promotion must have been tempting and one can only
guess at the degree that Ronans actions were influenced by this and how much he
simply wished to revive his radio dream.
By the same token, he was also questioning attitudes in modern society where
it seemed acceptable and commonplace to express feelings of dislike or downright
hatred whilst it was difficult and embarrassing to express affection. This was
based on his observation of the uncomfortable reactions of a group of adult
friends when a child unknown to them all toddled up and told them that she loved
them. O'Rahilly decided that love was not getting a fair hearing and that he
would redress the balance. Locating a bunch of unknown musicians he told them
that they were the 'Loving Awareness Band' and sent them off into comfortable
isolation to think loving thoughts until they were ready to produce an albums
worth of music on the subject. The Loving Awareness band produced only one album
which probably forms part of the record collection of every Caroline fanatic, so
heavily was it later plugged on the station. However it was not the album that
Ronan mostly wanted to promote, it was the whole Loving Awareness ethic behind
it. He decreed that the reborn Radio Caroline would sell love and a very hard
sell it turned out to be.
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