The London Radio Pirates

An adventure story of growing up in London,UK in the sixties as a land based Radio Pirate challenging the status quo.The background setting is the heyday of North Sea offshore pirate radio stations and their land based clones around London, and other Government decreed subversive Rock and Roll music broadcast over the airwaves. All this intrinsically intertwined with growing up as working class teenagers in London. Particular attention is given to the role and impact amateur land based Pirate Radio stations in London impacted our lives at the time. The GPO under the guise of enforcing UK broadcasting laws, whilst protecting the BBC monopoly, was empowered to monitor, pursue, arrest and prosecute any person or persons deemed to be illegally transmitting in the UK. If the pirate radio station broadcast Rock and Roll the more zealous the GPO response as it became almost an ideological battle between traditional music and the new wave Rock and Roll. It was an unequal battle fought not only by the large advertising funded Pirate stations in the North Sea, but also across the land, especially London where land bases Pirates regularly challenged the GPO monopoly and were determined to have Rock and Roll broadcast. It is fair to say it captivated a generation of youth and is essentially my formative teenager years associated with Pirate Radio situated in and around North London and Epping Forest and most of the locations are still there today..