Radio Kaleidoscope

In 1969, Radio Kaleidoscope began simultaneously broadcasting on medium and short wave bands (Canadian 43 Set TX), assuring it an international coverage, with listeners as far away as Holland and Germany feeding back on its shows. The team had a rather a close call during this period whilst using a transmission site in Rochford, after a member of the public had noticed an antenna affixed to a farm building, and alerted the local police, who arrived whilst Radio Kaleidoscope was still on air. Despite the awkward situation, the team showed the attending policeman a hastily-filled out ham radio licence, claiming they had permission for an experimental radio station . When the constable took the information back to the station to investigate further, the team took advantage of his brief absence to dismantle the equipment and make a run for it!

Life for pirate radio stations became increasingly difficult at the turn of the decade, with the Prime Minister of the day, Harold Wilson, focusing heavily on pirate radio. He saw pirate stations as a particular threat to him given the upcoming elections, concerned they would lobby people to vote for other parties, and therefore made it a priority to shut them down. The government set up a number of jamming stations around the country to try and drive the pirates into silence. The offshore stations were the hardest hit, with Radio Caroline off-air, and Radio North Sea International finding it difficult to continue in the face of the government's action.

In response to this aggressive policy, Radio Kaleidoscope joined together with over a dozen other pirate stations to form the Pirates' Protest League (PPL), who organised a collective jamming of the BBC's Light programme at 11.30 am on the 18^th April 1970. Given the phenomenal power of the BBC's transmitter, this was more of a token gesture of defiance than a protest, but it did receive attention in the local press.

The political tension surrounding the run-up to the election culminated in the disastrous raid of Buster's home by MI5 in 1970. They seized a good deal of the equipment and pre-recorded tapes stored there, as well as Buster's address book and his list of contacts. The family was devastated, and although their house was being kept under surveillance, Buster managed to put the word out to other members of the team to let them know what had happened.

With just a few weeks to go before the election, the majority of the other pirate stations had been forced off the airwaves or had shut down voluntarily. Radio Kaleidoscope chanced a brief transmission from a site in Southend-on-Sea, urging its listeners to “Vote Today! Vote For Free Radio!” Within its first ten minutes on air, the team received a telephone call from an excited Buster, who announced that Kaleidoscope was being jammed, and was therefore the first and only land-based pirate radio station to be jammed by the Government. In response, Radio Kaleidoscope played a dedicatory record to the staff on the jammer - “Fool on the Hill”, referring to the jamming station's location close to Bluebell Hill in Kent – which the GPO acknowledged on-air, before Radio Kaleidoscope closed down, and ceased transmissions until after the general elections.

Subsequently the jammer was moved from Kent to somewhere in Essex, and after a great deal of searching it was finally traced to the Marconi site in Canewdon by Chris McCarthy, who used the adjacent telephone box to spread the word to other pirate radio stations and supporters. The removal of the transmitter to this new location caused a great deal of resentment, both among residents, who could no longer listen to the radio nor use their telephones properly, and among Free Radio supporters, who descended upon the town in a matter of days, and remained there for several weeks. After the elections, many telegrams were sent to the newly-elected Conservative government saying, “CONGRATS TED WHAT ABOUT THE JAMMER?” Unsurprisingly, the jammer disappeared.