World: Of Skulls & Crossbones

A daring Dane beat Denmark’s state radio monopoly with Europe’s first illegal maritime transmitter way back in 1958. He was copied by a handful of Swedes, Norwegians and Dutchmen, but it was left to the bold and buccaneering nation that fathered Sir Francis Drake and Captain Kidd to make pirate radios into big business and a national British pastime to boot. From creaky ferries, minesweepers, freighters and abandoned World War II antiaircraft towers just outside the three-mile limit, impudent stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London blast out the siren songs of the Beatles, the Stones, Ella, Frankie, Dylan, Gardol and S. & H. Green Stamps to 17.5 million listeners a week, or one Briton in three. Not only is the sport good for advertising bullion; the pirate stations have also become a symbol of the rebellion against the BBC, whose hoary morning Housewives’ Choice is apt to consist of an Elvis Presley side, a Hawaiian number, a march, a Chris Barber moldy-fig opus—and, with luck, something as fresh as I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Last week Britons were shocked by the murder of one pirate captain bold, while another was charged with the crime. Amid the uproar, it even seemed possible that Harold Wilson’s government would retaliate by shutting down all the other pirate radios as well.

Beyond Lawsuits. It began one pitchy night when a brawny gang of eleven swarmed with catlike tread into the cabins of Radio City, one of the smaller pirate stations located in a renovated wartime lookout in the Thames Estuary. The marauders surprised the seven sleeping disk jockeys and technicians, who surrendered without a struggle and allowed them to cut the station off the air. Leaving nine men to hold the fort, their leader, Major Oliver Smedley, 54, a bemedaled World War II paratrooper, former Liberal Party vice president and director of twelve companies, sailed back to shore.

His reason for the raid was simple. He had “loaned” Radio City’s transmitter to its owner, Reginald Calvert, 37, a sometime hairdresser, clarinetist, popcorn manufacturer and promoter, and Calvert was planning to sell the whole station to a syndicate. Smedley had no way of suing, since Radio City was located twelve miles out in international waters for the express purpose of avoiding British jurisdiction. Smedley figured, as he later told police, that “possession is ten-tenths of the law.”

The following night, Calvert drove up for a chat with Smedley at Smedley’s 17th century, thatched country cottage 40 miles north of London. At 2:40 a.m., Smedley summoned police. There lay Calvert, dead of a 12-gauge-shotgun blast in the chest. Police arrested Smed ley, who, though admitting the raid, pleaded innocent to the murder.

Soft on Anarchy? In Parliament, Labor M.P. Hugh Jenkins demanded action from Postmaster General Anthony Wedgwood Benn, warning that “piracy is an aspect of anarchy, and when the government condones that, as it has in effect been condoning it for the last few years, gangsters soon take over.” Wedgwood Benn agreed with relief. He announced that legislation was finally being drafted to outlaw the pirates, probably by making it legal to prosecute advertisers who use them, or newspapers and magazines that print their schedules. Notably absent from his statement was any indication that the socialist government planned the simplest tactic of all: licensing legitimate commercial stations.