EPISODES IN OUR CHRONOLOGY
NOTE: ADDITIONS ARE UNDERWAY. This project is an outgrowth of several different ventures which all originated in the Metroplex of Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas, USA after 1980.
Its inspiration centered upon three people who came to know and work with the now deceased Don Pierson of Eastland in West Texas, who was the creator of the broadcasting stations 'Radio London'; 'Radio England' and 'Britain Radio' which transmitted from off the southeastern coastline of England in the 1960s.
In 1980, a publishing venture with Don Pierson brought together Mervyn Hagger and Genie Baskir. At about the same time Eric Gilder was completing an academic thesis at university that included the offshore broadcasting work of Don Pierson. It was Don Pierson who then introduced Eric Gilder to Mervyn Hagger.
The backround to these events and its subsequent lead-in to the story of the investigation that followed, is explained in the oriented chronology of events that are documented below. This trio of investigators identify themselves as YesterTecs. They do not call themselves traditional historians.
The backround to these events and its subsequent lead-in to the story of the investigation that followed, is explained in the oriented chronology of events that are documented below. This trio of investigators identify themselves as YesterTecs. They do not call themselves traditional historians.
1966 - EPISODE ONE
1966
Background: The events that led up to the writing and publishing of the June 27 half-page newspaper feature in the Wolverhampton Express and Star (shown right), are explained below.
This newspaper feature was written by Mervyn Hagger using the pen name of John LeRoy. Although he was an accredited writer by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), and other journalistic bodies, this article was written as a freelancer while he was working full time for a major car company in their research department. It was therefore necessary to maintain a wall of separation between his full-time employment and his freelance work, hence the necessity for a pen name.
The timeline below is in skeleton format and will be expanded upon in due course. It lists the events that led up to the writing of this feature article.
Background: The events that led up to the writing and publishing of the June 27 half-page newspaper feature in the Wolverhampton Express and Star (shown right), are explained below.
This newspaper feature was written by Mervyn Hagger using the pen name of John LeRoy. Although he was an accredited writer by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), and other journalistic bodies, this article was written as a freelancer while he was working full time for a major car company in their research department. It was therefore necessary to maintain a wall of separation between his full-time employment and his freelance work, hence the necessity for a pen name.
The timeline below is in skeleton format and will be expanded upon in due course. It lists the events that led up to the writing of this feature article.
- May 3 - SRE begins test broadcasts on 355 metres.
- May 18 - Birch-Calvert meeting.
- June 1 - Birch-Calvert UKGM - contract.
- June 16 - Ted Allbuery - warning.
- June 17 - Paul Elvey - back from shore leave.
- June 19 - Boarding of Shivering Sands Fort set in motion by Oliver Smedley and Dorothy 'Kitty' Black.
- June 20 - Horrace Leggett (Trinity House pilot and PAL shareholder) - meeting.
- June 21 - Oliver Smedley shoots and kills Reginald Calvert
- June 22 - A major feature story about the killing of Reg Calvert and the boarding of Radio City appears in The Daily Telegraph. It is full of inaccurate information. Mervyn Hagger called the primary reporter whose byline appeared in the paper and asked him where his information came from. He said it came from an employee of 'Granada TV' that he met in a Fleet Street pub at lunchtime. This promped Mervyn Hagger to write his own background story to offshore broadcasting.
- June 27 - The article titled 'Birth or Death of a Broadcasting Era' was sold to the Express and Star and published on this date.
1967
- August 16 - At the time, Mervyn Hagger was a copywriter, technical writer and accredited freelance journalist in both the UK and USA. He was working full time for a group of British companies when he wrote to Don Pierson in Eastland, Texas requesting information about his involvement in Radio London, Radio England and Britain Radio to use in a book about offshore radio. See '1979' follow-up.
1970 - EPISODE TWO
1970
- With a recession shutting down the entire publicity arm of a group of companies that employed Mervyn Hagger, he left England to tour both Canada and the USA. He was hired to run a weekly newspaper. Its big daily competitor put the weekly paper out of business. Ten years after leaving the UK, Mervyn Hagger contacted Don Pierson.
1979
- Mervyn Hagger meets Don Pierson.
- [See '1983' for the continuation of this story relating to the original letter of '1967' sent to Don Pierson.
- Mervyn Hagger, Don Pierson and Herb Jepko meet at Reunion Tower to discuss moving his studio to Dallas, Texas. That was following events tha resulted in pushing Herb Jepko off network affiliates to be replaced in many instances by the aggressive Larry King - before he hit the big time on the CNN cable channel. This recording was made off-air from about ten years earlier, on or about January 11, 1971. Mervyn Hagger used to listen to the Nitecap all-nighter while at work putting a weekly newspaper together for a print run at the start of the business day. So this show is from those days when it originated from KSL in Salt Lake City, Utah and then provided to a network feed. [CLICK PICTURE TO PLAY AUDIO]
1980
- June - Mervyn Hagger and Don Pierson create City Digest franchise. Genie Baskir was hired as its Group Editor.
- Don Pierson obtained an FCC licence for KVMX-FM in Eastland and asked Mervyn Hagger to make radio programs for him . They were based upon Don Pierso's British offshore stations and led to Don Pierson attempting to franchise them at the NAB Show in Las Vegas with Genie Baskir presenting the show with the name 'Lady Di'. At the time Diana was gracing the covers of many American magazines.
1983
- In 1983, the WRLI proposal went through many stages of development and settled upon recording a show in England featuring hits that were showing up in the USA due to the start of MTV in New York and a lack of video material, which the British record companies were already producing for showing in pubs. The WRLI idea became two projects. One was to produce a 15 minute daily show for the powerful transmitter of XERF in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, and the other version would be an hour long and offered for U.S. syndication. The second part of he project was to start a new version of the original Radio London on board ship and broadcasting to the UK, coupled with a second radio station that would broadcast both evangelical music and sermons under the station name of 'Voice of the Free Gospel' (VFG).
- The manager of the WRLI venture was Ben Toney, the original Program Director of the 1964-1967 offshore station.
- The XERF program and the weekly syndicated version both made it to air, but the ship project did not.
[CLICK] Here is a off-air recording made of the first two 15 minutes programs transmitted over XERF. The weekly show was 60 minutes in length. Both were presented by Radio London America and managed by Ben Toney, an American citizen who was the original (1964) Program Director of the offshore station. Mervyn Hagger who is a UK citizen, used the broadcast air name of John England after switching from John LeRoy. The logo of WRLI is shown on the right. The offshore version planned for 1983 was to be financially supported in part by a paid religious broadcasts transmitted by a sister offshore station called 'Voice of the Free Gospel'. Although jingles were recorded, neither offshore station made it to the airwaves, but the weekly show was broadcast by Don Pierson's KVMX and the Fort Worth station KXOL.
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1983
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1988
- December 2 - Deputy Leader of the UK Labour Party appeared on C-SPAN cable TV in the USA. The host invited call-in questions. Mervyn Hagger asked Hattersley why his Party in government closed down the offshore radio stations. He also asked why the UK did not have a written constitution, and why his Party did not embrace the legacy of Thomas Jefferson's ancestor, 'Freeborn' John Lilburne. Hattersley said that the stations were breaking the law; written constitutions only favored the wealthy and took decisions about political matters into courts of law. Roy Hattersley added that politicians are better than judges, but he did not answer the question about John Lilburne. CLICK IMAGE TO SEE VIDEO
- When Don Pierson gave Mervyn Hagger his financial and legal files relating to his ventures in the 1960s, they began to tell a totally different story to the one which circulated in newspapers, magazines and book format. From this awakening came a lot of questions which soon developed into two different streams of inquiry.
One involved the activities of people tied to both offshore broadcasting in Europe and the ill-fated Bay of Pigs CIA invasion of Cuba, which included the later 'episode' in which President John F. Kennedy was murdered in plain site on a beautiful day in Dallas in front of crowds waving on his limousine.
A few hours later that was followed by the equally bizarre murder of the man accused of killing the President, and that took place on live television surrounded by both reporters and members of the Dallas Police Department in their own underground car park.
The second awakening became a study of American and British broadcasting history and laws. From this came knowledge of John Lilburne (1614-1657), who was related by ancestry to Thomas Jefferson. This gave rise to the establishment of a project known as the John Lilburne Research Institute (for Constitutional Studies).
2000 - EPISODE THREE
2000
- Dr Gilder publishes 'London: My Hometown' which becomes the first in a series of themed academic monographs, and they can be accessed by clicking the banner above these words.
- Dr. Gilder's work was incorporated into book format with the title 'Mass Media Moments'.
2013 - EPISODE FOUR
2013
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- The publsher of this book was the Institution of Electrical Engineers and it contradicted all known and claimed information about the start of Radio Caroline in 1964.
2014
- January 1 - Beginning of the Caroline Investigation Newsletter which was then sent free of charge to all interested persons who might be able to assist in clearing up this mystery. But in the meantime, the 'YesterAir' book publishing project had to be put on hold.
- October 25 - Communications Museum, Burntisland, Fife, Scotland, lecture.
- November 13 - Dave Cash interviews Tony Benn and cites Dr Gilder article published in 2007 about 'The World Tomorrow'.
- But there is much more when we get into one of the main reasons why Tony Benn was part of the team that had to shut these stations down. Dave Cash started to get into this with Tony Benn just as 'The Trio' were running into the mystery contained in the book 'Radio Man'.
- Listen [CLICK HERE] as Dave Cash discusses Garner Ted Armstrong and then begins to cite Dr Eric Gilder.
- It was not until 2014 that a book originally published in 2002, came to the attention of the three people who are now identified as 'The Trio' for purposes of this recital. The book is called 'Radio Man' and one paragraph on one page in this prestigious publication by the Institute of Electrical Engineers contradicted all known and recently uncovered history about the start of Radio Caroline in 1964.
- This event coincided with a scheduled lecture about Radio Caroline at the Communications Museum in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland on Saturday, October 25, 2014. The lecture went ahead by explaining to the assembled audience what had just taken place. The result was the creation of a newsletter which was then sent free of charge to all interested persons who might be able to assist in clearing up this mystery. But in the meantime, the 'YesterAir' book publishing project had to be put on hold.
- December 1 - 'YesterAir - the origins of American and British Broadcasting' announced on 'Pirate Radio Hall of Fame' web site. Work progressed on compiling a new history of American and British broadcasting which was to be known as 'YesterAir' with a planned publication date during 2015.
- [CLICK] This overview does not include a review of the sequence of foundational laws which today form the basis for two different systems of broadcasting in the USA and UK, but they will be covered in the new publication from which this overview is extracted, with the working title of Yesterair: The Origins of American and British Broadcasting.*
*This new title, which will be available through The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame, is scheduled for publication during 2015 and it incorporates both new sections and updated comparative monographs which have been previously published by their authors: Eric Gilder and Mervyn Hagger, who are also responsible for the content recital on this page. ]
[CLICK] So 'The Trio' looked back to where they were in 2015 when everything was put on hold, and debated how best to move ahead since it became apparent that Rusling's intention was to assist a small, licensed station calling itself 'Radio Caroline' by pretending that it is possible to draw a continuous line from 1967 when the real Radio Caroline was terminated, to this new venture, and that gave rise initially to a book review blog.
The orginal approach was to tell the story of 'The Trio' in a slide format called 'YesterGuide', and a lot of time and effort went into the idea of creating a 'YesterVersity' with local chapters to attract people who would like to join in this research venture. [CLICK]
The orginal approach was to tell the story of 'The Trio' in a slide format called 'YesterGuide', and a lot of time and effort went into the idea of creating a 'YesterVersity' with local chapters to attract people who would like to join in this research venture. [CLICK]
2015
- 'The Trio' collaborated in a joint venture they set out to discover the real story behind the book 'Radio Man'. However, cooperation was not forthcoming from several people on the newsletter mailing list, because it resulted in a few individuals taking our research, and then twisting it fit their own self-glorification in publishing material that was totally fictitious but which fit in with known fables about 'Radio Caroline'.
- April 14 - 'The Trio' registers their new company called Yesterday Never Happened (UK) Limited - currently dormant.
- January 31 - Premises secured in Falkirk for YNH (UK) Ltd repository library.
- April 23 - George Saunders relates the book 'Psy War on Cuba' to Bobby Kennedy and the mv Mi Amigo.
2016
- January 31 - Premises secured in Falkirk for YNH (UK) Ltd repository library.
2017
- March 17 - Original Radio Man interview document discovered and obtained from the Wroughton storage archive.
- August 15 - About 50 years after the Express and Star published his first feature article about Radio Caroline, Mervyn Hagger wrote another one for the same newspaper.
- September 24 - 'Triple Double Cross' by Charles Weaver begins dialogue with the Weaver family about the mv Mi Amigo.
- July 13 - Investigation begins into the 'Caroline merger' and move to 6 Chesterfield Gardens, and results in new evidence.
- January 10 - Susan Moore's 'Life and Death of a Pirate' ordered and results in new information about Oliver Smedley.
- June 12 - Second meeting with Paul Rusling - this time for lunch in Falkirk.
- July 18 - Legal issue of 'Passing Off' regarding Malcolm Smith's 'Radio Caroline' discussed by email with Paul Rusling.
- July 28 - Garry Stevens endorses Malcolm Smith's 'Radio Caroline' and blocks Mervyn Hagger.
- September 18 - Paul Rusling is exposed by Hans Knot who claimed that Mervyn Hagger endorsed 'The Radio Caroline Bible'.
2021 - EPISODE FIVE
2021
- February - First of the series of monographs published in the MoC Transmitting following the October 25, 2014 lecture.
- February - Second in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- May - Third in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- August - Fourth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- February - Fifth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- June - Sixth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- August - Seventh in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- November - Eighth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- May - Ninth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- August - Tenth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- December - Eleventh in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- June - Twelfth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- August - Thirteenth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
- December 1 - As a result of further research and the widespread use of AI as a means of research, a combined approach has now been undertaken with the creation of this omnibus compendium. Additionally, a new video and print approach has been undertaken featuring the AI creation of a 'YesterTec'. It will aim at a mass media market and appear in both a continuing video series, and an accompanying print digest.
- December 15 - Fourteenth in the MoC Transmitting series is published.
You are invited to click on the links and read about our previous plans, but all of this brings us to now. 'The Trio' decided to split the venture into two halves: academia and mass media, and that required a new approach incorporating all of the new material that now reflects so much more that the story of Radio Caroline (1964-1967). Almost by accident, 'The Trio' have unraveled an amazing story about the beginnings of international money sheltering (tax avoidance) and how it relates to the beginnings of British offshore radio. But more than this, it ties into a previously semi-hidden story involving some of the major pop groups of that era, and it had nothing to do with Ronan O'Rahilly.