Britan’s EVIL War Against Pirate Radio 

📣Join my Discord! discord.gg/6W6HURBD

Pirate Radio stations were the lifeblood of the youth, especially during the Illegal Rave days.

I guess "People just do nothing" about these issues.

Thank fuck someone's still making decent videos about interesting things. Good lad.

A quick note about caroline, the boat shown in the video is the Ross revenge, Radio caroline began on a smaller boat called the Mi Amigo which sank whilst trying to escape police boats, Ross Revenge came later and for most of its life has been immobile in the middle of the Blackwater estuary, also caroline was raided by Dutch police at one point in which alot of records and machinery was destroyed. (source - i know people who ran/helped the boat during the pirate radio era)

Maaaate! These deep dives on British culture are utterly fantastic!

Unity 88.4, Defection 89.4, Rush 92.5, Dance 93, Centreforce 88.3, Sunrise 88.7, Kool 94.5, Friends 107, Pulse 90.6 and the mighty mighty Fantasy 98.1 📻 still remember the frequencies more than 30 years on, great times I feel blessed to have lived through.

In Sweden private radio stations were legalised in 1993, and honestly they're absolute dogshit. Because they're for-profit companies, they only play the most popular stuff that the largest amount of people like, so all they play is current and former top 10 pop hits. It's actually the public service radio where you'll find some alternative stuff. Of course radio mostly irrelevant now that Spotify and podcasts are a thing.

Squarespace would have been a good nickname for early BBC radio

🎶 Original pirate material, you're listening to The Streets, lock down your aerial 🎶 that's what I immediately think of on this subject. Which btw kudos for covering such a niche topic and doing it well.

Real pirate radio was the energy of the youth without all the nonsense of the mainstream. Pirate radio caused jungle and drum and bass and ragga, that's a good thing, this music wouldn't have been heard without it

I was on pirate radio all through the noughties . It was great fun .

This is really cool, pirate radio might be the reason we have such a great UK music scene now

My first time hearing pirate radio was also my first time hearing gangster rap. I would skim the stations as I went to sleep, and heard something new. The song ends, an American voice comes through (I was living in England at the time so it was odd to hear) and a clearly blasted fella says "That was uhh the uhh *sniff* uhh the D.O.C. Pretty good. This uhh this next song is called uhh... Just listen to the song" and I was completely baffled. I listened until I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was just static. I never heard that voice again. Pirate Radio was the best thing going, it'll never be equalled.

RIP Delta force Portsmouth using a lift sharft as an aerial late 80s early 90's x

Great video, pirate radio is such an underrated part of UK history. Radio Caroline are actually still about, they're still broadcasting from an old BBC AM transmitter ironically and you can go round their ship in Essex.

Great video. Well put together. So I can confirm that an officer from the DTI did die of a heart attack during a raid. This raid was taking place on a Manchester station called W.B.L.S. and the incident was around the late 80s early 90s. It happened in a tower block in the Hulme area. The officer was part of the team that took the stairs up to the top of the block rather than with others in the lift. He died of a heart attack before reaching the studio. The Manchester Evening News ran an article on his death at the time where it was suggested that the pirates themselves were something to do with his death, where as he actually died on the stairs, with none of the station staff aware they were about to be raided.

Another great video! There's a good movie about the 60s British Pirate radio scene called 'The Boat That Rocked', also 'People Just Do Nothing' about Kurupt FM is gold

If anyone hasn't seen the film "the boat that rocked" get on it, it's great 👍

In a sea of american creators that im subbed to i always love seeing your videos come up because it always gives me a feeling like I'm home 😂

Another banger mate, great stuff! That Thatcher commentary was absolutely spot on! "go out and start a business", but not that type of business... such hypocrisy.

Smooth Balls Radio... I'm dying over here 😂

I remember me and a friend discovering pirate radio back in 1990. We were hooked instantly. Pretty much put me on the path to a lifelong electronic music devotee (after loving a lot of crossover tunes that made the charts and loving Art Of Noise and Paul Hardcastle as a kid), a DJ (for a couple of decades, before retiring for the final time..... kinda) and opened my mind to the fact that there was a lot more to the world than what we saw on the surface and in the mainstream. Whilst other kids at school were listening to Madonna and only just discovering house tunes that had made it into the charts, I was there using the tape player in our classroom to record tapes from pirate stations during class. Even as a kid, you felt like you were part of some kind of secret club. Despite being years off being old enough to go to clubs or raves, we still kinda felt part of the movement and knew all the tunes. Big up all ye olde pirate radio stations on Shefieldf (UK) Fantasy FM, Hardcore FM, Dream FM, Pitch FM, Dance FM, as well as all the others.... DJs like Astrix & Space, Face & Goosey, Solid State, DJ Dream, Kaotic Destruction.... The list goes on. ''0831 847 955''

All that effort Gordon Mac and Kiss went to in order to be legal, and what did they do? Sell out to Bauer and the whole station turned to garbage. The likes of Global, Bauer, Capital Group etc. have a lot to answer for. Fight for years to get independent local radio to the masses then decide that having (in some cases) 5-6 frequencies that hit a single area play the same damn station is a really good idea. Want local news? Forget it. It got to the point where the only local thing was the ads and even they got repetitive! Broadcast radio in pretty much most countries now is sadly a dead medium with the same few corporations holding all the power. The day of the decent local radio station is pretty much dead. We've recently got a proper local station back on DAB+ where I am, but many other areas of the UK sadly don't and are stuck with the generic crap from Global, Bauer etc. being fed to them from London or Manchester whether they like it or not.

For needle time, it wasn't just 30 hours. It was they had to have cover musicians or in house orchestras as well to perform the songs, some sources state that only a certain amount of plays of a record were allowed per week, and then you had to get the cover band to do any other plays of the record or filling in time, along with in house orchestras. The other big issue was the shows were entirely scripted and the Top 40 chart rundowns were not a thing, that was an invention of pirate radio, so for the BBC you would often hear the same sorts of music every time that show was on. Johnny Walker stated in a documentary in 2017 that Radio Luxenbourg had Decker and EMI and Capital Records sponsoring shows but they were just as scripted, whereas Radio Caroline, you took the records you liked and more arrived while you were on the boat to be played, and since you were outside of the three mile limit, there wasn't much the government could do at that time. If they were spotted you just moved the boat and anchored somewhere else.

Radio Luxemburg really brings back memories, listening to it under the bedclothes after being told to go to bed.

You can't always use "Just doing my job". There's a limit doing things just because you have to, for monies.

Good video, bit disappointed that jungle was entirely missed out

I was a dj on risk FM in the 90.s was great times! We kept it clean no swearing! The big stations just hated the pirates! Commercial radio is state propaganda! It controls you with BS! That’s main reason pirates get clamped down on! A good pirate had a good reach! That scared the establishment

FTP Bristol, I use to live in Bath and had a 15 ft aerial on the roof to pick it up :)

In the 1970s when I was just getting into rock music, it was very rarely heard on mainstream Radio. There was a progamme called 'The old Grey Whistle Test' which was Brilliant, but not much else. So, in the evenings, wE LISTENED TO A REAL pirate radio station calld RADIO CAROLINE. broacast from an old Trawwler ( if I'm not mistaken ) and it wa anchored in the North Sea, outside of Britains Territorial water.

My father was on Caroline and a few other stations that you mentioned! Always lovely to see people still talking about it

Another great video, very comprehensive. Tiny technical point, the news broadcasts at 0:45 & 0:57 were actually on Irish television, referring to the Dublin stations Nova and Sunshine×. The Irish pirate scene in the 1970's & '80's was pretty mental, developing in a manner quite unlike its British counterpart and is worth a video in its own right. Admittedly were such a video to be made, it might be more within the remit of someone like RingwayManchester(?) I believe a TV programme called (I think) "Bring Back Radio Nova" may still be available on RU-vid? Admittedly that programme focuses mainly on the eponymous and legendary/ infamous (take your choice!) 50kW behemoth, Nova, but it does give give a feeling for the times, when there were upwards of 70 stations operating with impunity (notwithstanding the raids referred to in the news bulletins), this in a country of barely 3 million people at the time! Every town had at least one station, with the bigger towns having several and dozens probably operating in Dublin - everything from hobbyists in barns with biscuit tin transmitters to multi~million pound outfits like Nova using top - of - the - range American built equipment and picking up audiences on the British West Coast. Actually, a little later, in the '90's, one station, the 'Border Blaster' KISS, pushing a reputed million Watts, and operating at the extreme fringes of the technical geographical capabilities of FM, was beaming Rave music into Belfast with a clearer signal than that city's own _legal_ stations... and this a station whose primary purpose (unlike, say, Nova) wasn't even to make money, though this they _did_ do, hand over fist, but reputedly to provide a beacon for the saucers!👽🛸 Yeah, F.R! In an atmosphere of complete government inertia, and indeed, indulgence (in contrast to the situation in the UK), these station were able to flourish over a period of a couple of decades, indeed it wasn't unknown for political parties to take out advertising with them, and for government ministers to give on~air interviews! Predictably the State broadcaster RTE, who was being beaten into the dust by the pirates on the listenership front, and not happy at the very food being taken out of their mouths, and observing the government inaction, went to war, undertaking a jamming campaign against their major competitors. This in addition to the usual criminal shenanigans between the pirates themselves, though notably these would rarely reach the levels of viciousness that one might encounter on the British scene... Along with increasing strife with trade unions and an emerging sense in government that the status quo had to change and something really, _actually,_ did 'need to be done' to regularize the situation, and finally by the late '80’s, there really was the sense of the ending of an era. With the promises of licences, the plug was finally pulled in June of '89, leaving the airwaves a virtual desert, but for the odd die~hard. This is where the script would meld with the British version, with the government reneging on promises made, media conglomerates taking over, bland music and blander opinions becoming the order of the day (not that the pirates had particularly made waves musically here, with 1 or 2 honourable exceptions), the creeping automating out of human voices at night, and so on - until now we find the clock has gone back to 1989, with little to nothing being to hear on the bands _at all,_ especially on Medium and Long Wave. It's just different times, now... Why would you listen on radio when you can pick what you like on a streaming service? Still, I like it that there are still a few DJ's out there who feel like company and are allowed to play music of their choice, music that might be new & interesting to me! I know, fossil or what?! Sorry about the essay, "Tiny technical point", lol! I honestly hadn't any intention of waffling on for an age like this! ×No relationship with the current Dublin stations using those names.

I love the way this channel explains culture in a larger societal/historical context. And it’s current focus on larger societal issues/divides. Keep up the great work!

Well done Mr Giant, I don't know how you do it, but all your videos are extremely informative and also great fun! Keep up the great work! Thanks for the time 👍

Another great doc Jimmy! Keep ‘em coming

Great vid, your stuff's been getting really good recently

yes jimmy these nuanced topics are so great, can tell you're passionate for it.

I love these vids, completely new and interesting info. U are the man 🔥🔥

Mate, your catalogue is incredible. Such high quality videos - always interesting, genuinely funny, and uniquely presented. Hope your channel blows up soon.

Slightly surprised you didn't mention the film, The Boat That Rocked, when going over pirate radio in the 60's. I'm still waiting to see your take on the Hash House Harriers subculture.

I DJ'd on a London Pirate station for 5 years called Origin FM. I'm glad I got to be part of that generation!

Funny how I randomly type in uk pirate radio & you upload a video about it 18 hours ago

Another great documentary from Jimmy The Giant - Thank you soo much 🎉🎉🎉

I'm so glad I watched this. Had it saved for a while. This was very interesting and informative. Good job!

What a good documentary style video. Really liked this. Well done.

Man i love the topics you choose, keep it up!!

Excellent documentary, looking forward to the next one.

Loads of big djs started on pirate radio,john peel,kenny everett.....tony blackburn

Amazing report

i love these videos. thanks jimmy!

Absolute 🔥 content once again! Thanks brother.

I forgot when kiss fm radio was illegal. Thank you for taking me back to my youth! The 80's pirate radio for me was everything!!! Your vids are brilliant!!!

Absolutely fantastic video and topic!

Thanks,Jimmy! Greatest story that needs to be told!

This is fantastically well researched. Well done!

Just subbed well done mate, interesting content well delivered

Another Banger Doco explaining my youth...THX :)

I DJ’d on various London pirate radio stations during the 2000’s, what a brilliant time it was. One day I’m gonna format some of the crazy & insane scenarios that happened during those years. Thanks for making this great video 🙏🏾👊🏾

Loved this!

Awesome Vid! Thank You very much for Your Work! Greetings from Germany

Fascinating presentation thanks xxx. A great history lesson in state propaganda and class war.

I finally understand an episode of The Goodies, thanks for that.

It was either Greed from the government as they weren’t paying their licence or some dumb thing Or Regular people thinking ‘What’s the actual difference between them and mainstream radio stations’

yay a new jimmy video

Fascinating!!! Thank you.

I remember this, and there were pirate stations I'd tune into like coolfm and such in south london. It is a fucking joke that our government enforce licenses on every faucet of our lives.

Playing the Pirate's Anthem right now. Thanks for this excellent video. Brought back some emotional memories to an old DJ. 🎶 💃🕺🏿

love this channel!

The British government and Dutch PTT together actually forcibly boarded Radio Caroline in August 1989 and raided it, removing and smashing up studios and transmitters, records etc. This occurred in international waters. The raid was later deemed illegal and equipment returned but not until Caroline was long off air due to running out of money and a new law that actually did ban transmitting in international waters. My point is that if the government can stop a pirate radio ship in international waters, then why can't they stop migrant boats? The answer, they don't want to.

Steve devonne on INVICTA fm,with the mastermind roadshow,the first hip hop show in the uk.

Jimmy about to be one of the best documenters on youtube

excellent video!

Shabba Ranks & Home T - “Pirates" Greensleeves Records.... Decades before Mike Streets was even a twinkle In him daddy's eyes...... 😅😊

You've just got better and funnier, content still very original. Writing style has matured as have I. Great effort mimickery, all the enchiladas!

Nice! This was an intresting one 🙂

You were considered an adult at the ripe old age of 14... ''Her is your pick axe, now get to work''.

Idk what it is but sometimes its just really relaxing to zone out and have @jimmythegiant teach me random stuff in a chill UK accent Please keep up the video bro!

Tower Block Dreams is a documentary worth checking out about pirate radio, Charlie sloth is in it before he was famous.

I had to study Pirate Radio for GCSE media, wish you posted this one a few weeks ago 😂

Your making the best videos on RU-vid right now

Excellent video

mr jimmy man i dunno what to say fam, you come up with the raddest fucking case studies bro, please man never stop creating bro, big ups g, sick video again

Pirate radio was the only reliable way to get underground and urban music especially the burgeoning garage scene. They would even censor swearing in music until after 9 p.m. Aspiring M.C.s and DJs had the opportunity to showcase their talents too. A lot of British talent got their start on pirate radio. Local black businesses would advertise on them too like hair salons and fast food places. One advertisement for a place called Tennessee Chicken was that much of an earworm I hear it in my sleep. Tennessee Chicken has bullet proof glass to protect against robberies as it was slap bang in one of the worst places in Birmingham. The girls that served you were big Jamaican women who had the worst attitudes and customer service skills I've ever seen. They would suck their teeth when you ordered and stomped about like they hated you. The food was so amazing that I would put myself through that misery just to savour that chicken, ribs and fries combo. It wasn't a race thing either, I am white but they had disdain for everyone. Never once saw those women smile.😂😂 One of the biggest in Birmingham was Passion FM. They were putting across a good message with a diverse range of music. The mornings were reserved for soul and easy listening and the evenings were for the youth. It was such a shame when it vanished one day. Passion was attracting the youth with a shared interest in music and broadcasting. Shutting that down probably pushed a lot of young people involved back onto the streets. Passion had a good run of a few years I suppose and I thank them for playing the music I loved so I could tape and keep them. That music encapsulated my youth. That's one small story about a listener in the late 90's and early 2000's about the good a pirate station was doing for their community.

Britain be like “oi you goh a loicense for that”...

Atlantic 252 was what we listened to in Scotland in the 90’s. Locally it was more popular than BBC……. Fire up the Prelude mum. Great videos by the way👍

Pirate radio and the rebellious power of music go hand in hand together perfectly

Jimmy, absolutely amazing video! The way that you handle delicate issues like the race solutions in the '80s. Not just on this vid but other things as well like the riot vid, you really are one of the most underrated RU-vidrs going!

good video!

Rave FM Notts Power 101 Derby Radio Freedom Derby Undercover 108 FM Derby … just a few close to my heart Wasn’t even born then & I know those times will remain so much better and unable to be replicated

I love turning on my old cheap am/fm radio at night and looking for the last pirate stations

Watch tower block dreams documentary and thank me later. They are actually the REAL people just do nothing

anyone else seeing the paralels between this and the current mainstream media vs the internet news sources?

That was very good, thank you.

What a lovely Jamaican dutch bit at the end 🫠

Another banger of a video, and was absolutely not expecting to see an ashens clip either.

Interesting shit man

Radio Caroline now resides in the water between Felixstowe, Shotley and Harwich. seen it so many times growing up. really fancinating

Best vid and considered opinion I've seen in a while dude. Can't disagree with any of that. Keep up the great content Jimmy 👊

I loved the offshore stations. They got treated terribly by successive governments with lies & bullying. So the fact that land based pirate stations happened & it annoyed those in authority pleased me very much.