Sealand News

Before Paddy Roy Bates proclaimed the deserted anti-aircraft platform Rough Towers to be the Principality of Sealand, he ran a pirate radio station.

In the early Sixties, pirate radio was bigger than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Daleks combined! Radio Caroline, England’s first pirate radio station, was started by Ronan O’Rahilly, who managed blues singer Alexis Korner and Georgie Fame. When he learned that neither the boring BBC nor the popular Radio Luxembourg would play the records of his artists, O’Rahilly decided that he would start his own radio station. Setting up an independent radio station in the UK was illegal, but O’Rahilly soon found out that it was technically legal to broadcast to the UK from international waters. Radio Caroline began broadcasting on Easter Sunday, 1964, from the MV Caroline, a ship anchored just outside the UK’s territorial waters and British radio was changed forever. By the autumn of 1964 Radio Caroline had more listeners than the three BBC stations combined.

The sensational success of Radio Caroline made imitation inevitable. In December 1964 Radio London arrived on the scene, Britain Radio and Swinging Radio England went on air, Radio 270 started off the Yorkshire coast and Radio Scotland anchored off the Scottish East coast. Abandoned wartime sea forts in the Thames Estuary made excellent transmitting platforms and were quickly claimed by Radio 390, Radio Invicta, Radio City, Radio King and others. The pirate radio stations rapidly won an enormous and enthusiastic audience and provided a non-stop pop music soundtrack to the swinging Sixties.

In November 1965, former British Army Major Paddy Roy Bates occupied the British naval defence platform Fort Knock John and started Radio Essex, that later changed its name to Britain’s Better Music Station. Bates discovered that Fort Knock John’s location was within British territorial waters and he was convicted of violating British broadcasting law. On Christmas Eve 1966 Bates moved his broadcasting equipment to the nearby Roughs Tower, another abandoned anti-aircraft platform further out beyond the boundary of the UK’s territorial waters.  His pirate radio station never began broadcasting from this new location but Paddy Roy Bates decided to stay on Roughs Tower and live there with his family.

The introduction of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act on August 14, 1967, killed the pirate radio star and only Radio Caroline remained.

Not even a month later, on September 2, 1967, Roy Bates proclaimed HM Fort Roughs to be the Principality of Sealand, the smallest country in the world, and gave himself the title HRH Prince Roy of Sealand.

A new Pirate Radio Station is supposed to set up shop in Sealand.

History repeats itself as a group of young radio DJs are negotiating with the Principality over using the former British anti-aircraft platform as the location for their new “Free Radio Sealand”. More…