REVISITING THE PIRATES

In the mid-1960s, Britain’s air-waves were awash with the sounds from unlicensed and unregulated ‘pirate’ radio stations, broadcasting from international waters off the country’s east and west coasts and in defiance of the BBC’s then official monopoly in radio broadcasting. Forty years later, for eight days over Easter 2004, a BBC local radio station ran a ‘novelty’ service called Pirate BBC Essex, which attempted to re-create the sound and appeal of these stations (BBC Essex). The paper begins by describing and analysing the background to, and reasons for, the emergence of the pirate stations. It will then analyse the cultural clashes which coalesced around the pirates in the mid-1960s, as well as the highly politicized nature of the opposition to, and support for, the stations, the arguments about the desirability of extending, or ending, the BBC’s radio monopoly, and the short and long-term impact and effects on British broadcasting policy and output which arose from the pirate era. Finally, it will discuss the appeal of Pirate BBC Essex for both listeners and broadcasters and how the issues and debates indicated above were reflected in these ostensibly ‘nostalgic’ broadcasts and the reaction to them. In doing so it will argue that the controversy generated by the original pirate stations and the government of the day’s response to them, presented a problem for a modern-day BBC service in representing the period in purely nostalgic terms.