Aodogán's Latent Agenda, part 14 ....

By carefully reexamining of all available existing evidence, a totally new interpretation about how Radio Caroline came to be is now emerging. That reexamination is turning the accepted tales about the O'Rahilly family upside down.

Just as we have been claiming all along, the broadcasting and publishing world have been pumping out a lot of fake information about both the start of Radio Caroline, and the history of the O'Rahilly family.

First, 'The O'Rahilly' was not trying to start a 'Rising' in 1916, he was trying to stop one!

He was also the second, not the first person to call himself 'The O'Rahilly', and there was a third: the brother of Ronan O'Rahilly's father: Ronan's uncle. That man was both a barrister, and a Nazi sympathizer during WWII.

However, Ronan's father was a hardworking businessman who needed the help of various governments - including the Irish; British and American. He was not trying to attack anyone or upset anyone.  You have been told how his son Ronan showed up in London during 1961 with little money in his pocket.

But why did Ronan O'Rahilly show up in London?

Because although he denied it, he was still working for the family business called Weatherwell Limited, and that business had taken a downturn.

An infusion of investment money was being called for, and it was Ronan's job to help to find investors.

Why did Weatherwell Ltd need the money?

To develop two adjoining properties at Greenore that had been bought at auction. Those two properties were the railway terminal and the railway hotel which Weatherwell Ltd wanted demolish and use the cleared site to build a new factory. Their existing factory was near Dublin, and that is where Ronan's father lived.

Forget the silly stories you have heard and read about Ronan hanging around actors; clubs and beat groups, those stories are either distorted beyond all recognition of the truth, or they did not happen at all. Ronan was trying to make friends with anyone with cash who could be coaxed into an investment in his father's business in which Ronan had a stake. So if the world of show business offered entry into that kind of circle, that was a circle that could be explored by Ronan, because according to him, he arrived without any networking contacts. He had to make and find some new ones, by himself. So that is what he did.

We will come back to the history of Weatherwell Ltd., but first a word about Allan James Crawford, because he was the kind of man with links to money that Aodogán was seeking, via his son Ronan. Oh, we are well aware that Ronan told others something else, but you can forget that, because what you are now learning for the first time is the real story!

You have been told that Allan James Crawford ran out of money and that his company was bought out by Planet Productions Limited. Well, you can forget that nonsense as well. It was Project Atlanta that gained control of the Caroline organization until Philip Solomon took over, and Solomon was trying to do what Crawford had been doing by promoting his own independent record labels by which time the days of Caroline were numbered..

But let's go back to 1964 and that trip taken by Crawford in the company of young Ronan who took Crawford to see his father, Aodogán O'Rahilly. Supposedly, it was Crawford who went to see him as a potential investor in Project Atlanta Limited, when in fact, Crawford went to see him armed with money to ask Aodogán to allow the people that Crawford represented, to bring two vessels to the nearly deserted properties at Greenore, and quietly convert them into radio ships. Aodogán did not want adverse publicity, and Crawford was not trying to solicit publicity either.

It worked a treat because the ships had a home and Aodogán got some cash.

More tomorrow.