Wringing-out the truth from Wroughton ...

Today, you will need to go back in my blog to pick-up the beginning of this thread, since this one is all about our discovery at Wroughton, near Reading, England.

I keep getting silly comments (which I delete) from people who are obviously on the receiving-end of this 'expose by review', and one of them today asked about "the many incarnations of Radio Caroline". Of course there have been NO "incarnations of Radio Caroline" and that is one of the main premises of my blog! This seems to point to the fact that those who are hostile to the true story about Radio Caroline being revealed for the very first time, appear to follow their 'leader' Paul Rusling who admits that he does not read history books or perform his own original research. This results in silly questions being raised by people don't read the blog. Those comments are deleted before being posted in the Comments section.

I mention this because I am now asking readers of this blog to go back and pick-up the thread that began with the lecture at Burntisland in 2014, and that is not the easiest thing to do with a blog. However, the references are still available if you care to go back and look for them. I suppose that if I numbered each of the near-daily entries this would be a much easier task for readers to accomplish, and I may go back and perform that task. However, I am working on a book version of this blog and that will also help to provide easier referencing, but finishing that book is a task running parallel to this blog, albeit on a different and delayed time frame.

Meanwhile, we once more turn our attention to this lone paragraph on page 276 of the book 'Radio Man'. I ask you to take note of the references to the planned start of Radio Caroline in 1964, by Charles Orr Stanley and his son John Stanley.

This was not so much a plan set in motion by the Pye Group of companies, as you will soon discover, but a devious operation that was created by Charles Orr Stanley and John Stanley using facilities of the Pye Group of companies. There is a big difference, because the actual board of directors of the Pye Group of companies were not aware of what Charles Orr Stanley and John Stanley were planning. I have already confirmed this by reproducing the words of Harry McGee from a BBC Radio 3 broadcast script that was written some years ago.

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If you will recall, it is this one section within that single paragraph that caused all of the problems. More than this, it was the use of specific words within this section which contradicted known facts about the equipment on board the mv Caroline (ex-Fredericia).

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So once more, let us take a closer look at those words: "a fictitious radio manufacturing company", and "everything Pye made for  Caroline was stamped with the logo of the nonexistent manufacturer." The key words under scrutiny are: "fictitious"; "​​manufacturing"; "made" and "nonexistent manufacturer." Keep them in mind as we recreate some of the steps (there were a lot more than these), that 'The Trio' with the help and assistance of one very important person. He undertook the physical legwork at Wroughton, as well as the physical search for an explanation.

The Museum at Bradford, which is tied to the Science Museum in London, was given custody of the new Stanley Foundation collection. If you will recall it was assembled by Nicholas Stanley in memory of his father and grandfather. This new collection of original documents was gathered from copies held outside the main collection which had allegedly been destroyed by the Philips company, when that company absorbed Pye and destroyed its head office archives held in Cambridge, England.

Nicholas Stanley also commissioned the 2002 book 'Radio Man' upon which his new Stanley Foundation spent £92,355 on research. The Stanley Foundation also employed journalist Mark Frankland as its author; Gordon Bussey to assist with technical guidance, and engaged with the prestigious IEE as publisher.

[Caveat: What you are about to read are the email exchanges relating to information known or believed to be true at the time that they were written, and which subsequently became modified by additions, deletions and amendments. The 'bullets' are additions to indicate the various paragraphs in the emails, although they did not appear in the original emails.]
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On August 5, 2015 at 2:32 PM, the following email was sent on behalf of 'The Trio' to Rebecca Smith at the National Media Museum in Bradford, England.

•  "I have just got off the phone with you, and I decided that I had better do this now rather than wait until later in the day, when I might forget to do it. I did make a call some months ago and was told that the person who has full knowledge of the Pye archived collection was on holiday at that time.
• I have been speaking with Nicholas Stanley, son of John and grandson of Charles Orr Stanley who built and ran the Pye group of companies (Cambridge and Ireland), before they were sold off to Phillips. Nicholas tells me that there were three old houses which served as the Pye archives, but when Phillips took over, their contents were destroyed.
• So Nicholas recreated as best he could with the help of two co-authors and researchers, the history of Pye.
• With colleagues in Texas, we have been researching the history of British commercial radio broadcasting since the advent of offshore ('pirate') radio which had a large part of its roots in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Galveston areas. We had been assisted in this by the cooperation of the now departed Don Pierson who created Radio London; Radio England and Britain Radio.
• However, the roots of Radio Caroline are also found in Texas with Gordon McLendon and his Radio Nord off Sweden, which became Radio Caroline South. In between times it was Radio Atlanta, and then it merged with the original Radio Caroline which then became Radio Caroline North.
• It is the origin of Radio Caroline North - the original Radio Caroline station that I am researching via the Pye archives.
• The transmitters on both Radio Caroline ships came from Continental Electronics in Dallas, Texas, and the South station transmitters were shipped via a company called Visual Electronics in New York City. I am trying to determine whether the North station transmitters came by this same or a similar route, a few years later, and were then then installed in Rotterdam?
• In very late 1963 (December), what would become the North ship - the original Caroline ship, had been retired in August 1963 as a Danish ferry called Fredericia. In December it was towed to Rotterdam, Holland where it stayed for some considerable time, possibly under the new name of Iseult. It was then renamed Caroline, the same name as the station that was built on board. (The South station was on a ship called Mi Amigo, but I am only interested in the North ship.)
• While the North ship was in Rotterdam, a claim was later made in the book 'Radio Man' (about Pye and C.O. Stanley), that because Pye had the contract to outfit the Manx Radio on the Isle of Man under license from the then GPO, Pye wanted to keep quiet about outfitting the Caroline ship to serve as a pressure point in the lobby for licensed, land-based commercial radio stations in the UK. At that time (early 1964), there were somewhere approaching 200 UK companies waiting for commercial radio broadcasting licenses.​
• On page 276 of the book 'Radio Man' published by the now defunct Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE), there is a two-paragraph notation about the involvement of Pye in the outfitting of mv Caroline . It says that bogus names were used for the installers, including names stamped on parts and even 'front' names used on bank accounts.
• This is the information I am trying to track down. Nicholas says that the two co-authors interviewed then-living engineers for their source material, and that their notes will now be with your Archives.
• Due to limitation of space in the book and the vast time-frame it covers, it was not possible to spend a lot of the space on this particular phase of Pye history (December 1963 to February-March, 1964.) However, that is the very specific time-frame and area of interest that I am researching for an academic work with my co-author Professor Eric Gilder.
• I will be extremely grateful for any help you can provide."

On August 6, 2015 at 10:48 AM, this reply was received from [name redacted] on behalf of the National Media Museum at Bradford, England.

• "Much of Britain’s technical history is waiting to be told.  Mythology remains – such as the ‘official’ story of the 1936 television trials at Alexandra Palace. I will ask around to see if anyone is going down to Wroughton.  If so, we could access the pallet with the boxes on it and have a look-through, but it won’t be for a couple of months at least I suspect.
• What we have here in Bradford is the Pye-TVT archive, which is relating predominantly to Pye-TVT outside broadcast vans and equipment for television – in Britain and abroad.
• The National Media Museum is yet to seriously address radio as part of its remit, (although we have the BBC Collection of equipment), so I have copied in the Science Museum’s Curator of Communications, John Liffen, who may also be able to help you as regards objects we have relating to British pirate radio.
• I suspect the materials we have that you would be most interested are those ‘deep stored’ in high-level racking down in Wroughton, Wiltshire.  Several bankers boxes of papers are down there - collected to support the book 'Radio Man' which you referred to in your previous email.  Whether there is further material that supports the information on page 276, such as transcriptions of interviews, is anyone’s guess.
• I have not been at Wroughton for several months, and our staff only go down to Wroughton very occasionally, as it is a 4-5 hour train journey from Bradford ...."

On August 6, 2015 at 11:56 AM, this email was sent in response:

• "Thanks so much for such a comprehensive reply.
• You are correct, it is page 276 of 'Radio Man' that I wish to explore further. In fact that was my only reason for contacting Nicholas in the first place. However, my line of research is unknown to any in the BBC documentary realm, or for that matter academia as well, if the published results of their collective works are any judge of performance.
• ​ With a colleague I have already researched and published one part of the Caroline story, enough to totally debunk the mythology that is out there, because I have tied it back to the Establishment of Princess Margaret and publisher Jocelyn Stevens, whose fashion editor came up with the name years before the radio version saw light of day. However, due to a change from Tory to Labour, the Stevens' faction ran for the cover of a myth spun by an Irishman named Ronan O'Rahilly, and therefore the part that Nicholas uncovered via his authors, is in support of my own somewhat proven hypothesis that the Caroline operation was in support of a political movement to overturn the Pilkington Committee. Although denied at the time, I already have enough evidence to prove otherwise, and hopefully, if I can locate the notes to 'Radio Man', I will have the 'smoking gun'.
• Please treat this correspondence as confidential because for obvious reasons it could have commercial value.
• If you can give me more information as to how I can further this research I would be very appreciative.
• I will copy in my academic partner, business partner and research associate who performs investigative work at Kew on a semi-regular basis."​

Then, when nothing more was heard from the National Media Museum for months, 'The Trio' resumed contact with the Museum, and that resulted in this email from Michael Terwey who represented senior management at the Museum. It is dated November 18, 2015 at 8:20 AM:

• "Thanks for getting in touch, and for forwarding me the record of your previous contacts with the museum.  I do apologize for the fact that this seems to have taken us far too long to work out how to enable your access to these archives, and my colleague Claire Hampton, Curator of Film and Broadcast, will give you a call tomorrow to work out how we best proceed from here."

'The Trio' responded on November 18, 2015 at 12:26 PM:

• "My academic partner in this research is Dr. Eric Gilder, and our previous work on this subject about the origins of Radio Caroline is available at academia.com, but there is also another direct link at: http://foundthreads.com/8.html At that time we did not know about the Pye link. That information came from the IEE book 'Radio Man', page 276 and commissioned by Nicholas Stanley.​
• I see from a note that I sent to Nicholas Stanley that my first contact with the museum resulted in this comment that I sent to him:
  • '​​I called Bradford and unfortunately Paul Goodman left the museum just before Christmas. The person who has access to the Pye documents now is Ian Logie-Baird (!) - but he is in Canada on holiday and should return on Monday.'
• Thank you for your help."

 
Unfortunately nothing more transpired until 2017. On February 22, 2017, 'The Trio' received this notification from their associate:

• "Have just had a call from Elinor at Bradford, and am provisionally booked at Wroughton on 17 & 24 March to go through the 3 "Frankland" boxes. The other boxes need someone from Bradford to go down and sort out / oversee, which should be in April, or just after Easter.  Hopefully we're getting somewhere at last."

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 1:21 PM, 'The Trio' received this follow-up message from their associate:

•  "Wrougthon have now combined the gatehouse and security post, but still difficult to get from one side of the site to other, as gatehouse gave vague directions, around the old runways and taxing areas - no signposts to archive and due to the solar panels you can't see across site. Eventually got there after cab driver got a bit lost, did have minicab this time. Same driver picked me up in afternoon. I was expected and the boxes were ready and waiting for me on arrival.
• Not long been back from Wroughton, managed to get through the 3 "Frankland" boxes, and beginning to despair of finding anything, and then in almost last box looked in found the attached. Nothing else of any real note.​"

Well, that's where I am ending today's blog, so if you want to know what was discovered, you need to come back tomorrow when I will show you and answer a lot of questions relating to it.

See you tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, like everyone else who has had their life uprooted, upended and sent into a time warp, I obviously had to leave DC and move back to Texas. My uncle in Scotland (Texas) has (had?) a large antiques business with an apartment attached in a small town southeast of Dallas. He loaded me up with books and movies and of course my computer which he piled into the extended cab of my pick up. Now I am waiting to see when this Crisis ends, but in the meantime I am watching out for my uncle's business. I can't wait until we can all socially mix again, but thankfully where I am is big enough for access to major stores and I also have access to a lot of open spaces. In the meantime I have opened a Facebook page, so I might see you there as well.