An Irishman's Diary

Ah yes, I remember it well. The fights, the hopes, the craic, the music

Ah yes, I remember it well. The fights, the hopes, the craic, the music. All were part of working at Sunshine 101, Dublin's first super-pirate radio station. It closed just over 10 years ago, at midnight on December 31st, 1988.

The Independent Radio and Television Commission was to begin hearings for the new independent radio licences in early 1989 and anyone still broadcasting then need not apply. So Sunshine and an estimated 70 pirates across the country all went silent that night.

So many memories. . . The 1997 Eurovision win for the UK by Catriona and the Waves, for instance, brought back so much. Their one previous hit, Walking on Sunshine, was our alarm call at the station. If we heard it on air we were to rush to the studios and clear out as much broadcasting equipment as possible before whatever Garda/Department of Communications raid was about to take place.

Radio Caroline

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Sunshine had been on air since 1981. It was set up by Robbie Robinson and Chris Cary. Both had worked on Radio Caroline, the pirate station which broke the monopoly in British broadcasting in the 1960s and which had been started by Dubliner Ronan O'Rahilly, who once said "the Irish breed rebels where the English breed gentlemen. The English like to watch the action: the Irish provide it." Chris Cary pulled out of Sunshine early on and later set up Radio Nova.

Robbie was a decent employer, generally. I worked for him for four years. He fired me three times. On each occasion he re-instatated me. The last time it was on condition I accepted voluntary redundancy. I did. Exhausted and weary after a succession of battles on all fronts I left the fire for the frying pan (freelance journalism) in April 1987.

I do not blame him, Lord, I do not blame him. I made his life a misery with my principles and union activism. So at the very first Sunshine reunion last November, at our old stomping ground - the Sands Hotel, Portmarnock - I was really glad to meet him again and to see that he looks so much younger now than when I finished with him over 11 years ago.

For me it all began innocently. I was asked by Emer Woodful (now at RTE), then head of news at Sunhine, to fill in for Cathy Creegan (FM104) who was going on holiday in June 1983. Emer and I had done a course together at RTE. Cathy's holidays co-incided with my own. I was a teacher but was really interested only in journalism. I had tried every newspaper in Dublin for work, but in each case was told I had to be a member of the NUJ first. The NUJ said I had to be earning 60 per cent of my income from journalism before I could be a member.

Filling in for Cathy, preparing and reading news bulletins, it dawned on me that this was a route into journalism. So when she returned I stayed on at Sunshine for £60 a week, which even then was less than you could make begging on O'Connell Bridge. That September I returned to school but continued at Sunshine over the weekends. In December Robbie made me an offer I could have refused, but jumped at. And I began full-time at the station while most of those who knew me insisted I had lost my head.

RTE opposition

Emer left in January 1984 and Robbie appointed me as her successor. It did not take much to convince him it was in the station's best interest if we were to become members of the NUJ. But that was a long haul as RTE members opposed us all the way. By then all official agencies including the Garda, Government Departments, trade unions, and the political parties were co-operating with us. The only exception was the then Workers' Party which saw us, - in a Portakabin, with one phone, one typewriter, and "exhorbitant" wages - as the thin edge of rampant capitalism.

We needed union support to improve our conditions and the NUJ acknowledged we were meeting all the necessary criteria. It also saw the way the wind was blowing, radio-wise. We were admitted, finally, and became very active in the union. I was elected to its Irish Council. This precipitated one of those treasured events so rarely experienced in life. RTE members were seriously miffed at having to share the same union as we sans coulottes and made this known at every opportunity. The Irish Council elected a person annually whose function was to represent broadcast members' interests at monthly meetings in the union's London headquarters. I stood for the position.

So did two RTE members. This split their vote and I, an unreconstructed pirate, suddenly found myself going to London every four weeks to represent members at RTE. And did they squeal! They huffed and they puffed and they demanded I resign. I told them to, ah, be polite! They jumped up and down. They screamed blue murder. And I took pleasure in it. It did not help when, in my new role, I began a vigorous anti-Section 31 campaign in January 1987.

Back at the ranch all was far from smooth. Robbie and I - now also NUJ father of the chapel (shop steward) - clashed repeatedly over wage levels, especially as the station was doing so well. Hence my frequent sackings. But we could always work it out. Then along came Bill.

Bill Cunningham was of American invention - a radio doctor. He came to ailing stations, revamped their programme schedules, and made them "better"."You are as you are perceived," he kept preaching at us, and we dearly hoped it was not true where he was concerned. His plans for Sunshine entailed a radical dilution of news content. War was inevitable and soon also involved the disc jockeys. One, Ernie Gallagher, resigned rather than change his name to "The Iceman". Another, Kieran Phillips, was fired on the spot when, in protest at the new regime, he snored on air all the way through the number one hit of the day, I Want to Wake Up With You.

Whistling for keys

That sacking provoked one of the most hilarious scenes witnessed at Sunshine. Kieran's car keys were missing. The key ring responded to a whistle. Soon a highly charged situation gave way to complete farce as Bill, Robbie and others everyone chased around the studios whistling for his keys, the faster to get him out of there.

It was also the Cunningham changes which provoked the final row between Robbie and myself. Bill has since gone to the great radio doctor in the sky following a car crash in the US.

By now, however, I am sufficiently distant from it all to begin to value those fraught and often happy days as we tawdry revolutionaries set about freeing the airwaves for Ireland. And I rarely hear Paul Young's Wherever I Lay My Hat, George Michael's Careless Whisper, or Nina's 99 Red Balloons without drifting back in spirit to that Portakabin behind the Sands hotel. It's still there too. Hasn't gone away, you know.