Paul Harris ....

If there was one person in the Sixties who could see that there was more to the story of offshore broadcasting than the mere transmission of gramophone records, that claim belongs to the journalist Paul Harris. He was born on July 22, 1948. and he died on May 24, 2018.

His first book 'When Pirates Ruled The Waves', was written and published by him in 1968, shortly after the Marine Offences Act became law in the middle of the preceding year. It was a dreadful book in terms of its contents, because it was a factually incorrect text cobbled together from a collection of newspaper reports that he had collected over the years since the dawn of offshore radio broadcasting in the Sixties.

However, because Paul had an interest in geopolitics, he began to draw upon his academic base when in 1977 he wrote: 'Broadcasting from the High Seas'. Paul also got involved with a new offshore radio venture, and this exposed him to some very interesting people that we have also been investigating. Sadly, Paul did not go far enough with his research and it opened him up to criticism from the pool of empty-headed anoraks who seem to mimic the cult followers in that Monty Python movie 'Life of Brian'.

One reason why we are referring to the pioneering work of Paul Harris at this time, is because other writers, not at all interested in offshore broadcasting, have also been writing about some of the same people that Paul Harris was writing about back in 1977, and we now have the means of drawing upon all of this previously published work. So we are taking a moment to acknowledge the fact that Paul Harris opened the door to that dark world which is guarded against entry by many vested interests, some of whom have made it clear that they would prefer for that door to remain closed.

​We think otherwise.