With the release of the film The Boat That Rocked, Nottingham DJ Howard Jacks looks at the glory days of pirate radio.

60s pirate radio was terminated with extreme prejudice, in September 1967, by a government scared of massive public demand that was outside of their control.

Before the pirates the BBC had restricted needle time to cover up the fact that they did not want to pay musicians' fees. So a lot of airtime was taken up with talking. Queen's English in them days, inane chat nowadays, but not much difference otherwise. On top of that, there was strict censorship of the music played, so what you mostly got was trad jazz and middle of the road, which kept the pre-1964 UK charts nice and bland despite lots of new bands.

Until pirate radio sailed up, bringing us the Stones, The Animals, The Who, Beatles, Kinks, Small Faces, Jim Hendrix Experience (Hendrix was signed up by Chas Chandler of The Animals and he put Hendrix together with Noel Redding and Mitch Miller from the UK as the Jim Hendrix Experience). Then from the US, the Byrds, Beach Boys, The Young Rascals, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and the Motown, Atlantic, Stax labels etc.

The first UK pirate radio was Radio Caroline, which started broadcasting on Good Friday 1964 off Frinton on the Essex coast. It got its name from a 1964 song by The Fortunes. The second was Radio London, swiftly followed by Radio Caroline North broadcasting off the Isle of Man and beamed towards the north of England. Then there was Radio Scotland, Radio 390 (off the Scarborough coast), Radio England, Britain Radio (which played only M-O-R) and Radio City that broadcast from the old concrete forts stuck out in the North Sea to protect us against the Nazi Invaders. They broadcast at least three miles away from the coastline, out of the reach of the authorities - 24 hours a day.

Pirate radio was maintained by commercials and, unfortunately, the government of the time (Labour) saw this as a threat. The lovable Anthony Wedgewood Benn, aka Tony Benn the people's representative, was Minister for Telecommunications. Now a national treasure, his sole mission at the time was to silence these upstarts, as a bad influence on the youth of the day, already fired up by post-war films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Not for Tony the support of the masses, not this time. He drove the Marine Offences Bill through Parliament. This was then enacted by stopping the supply ships from setting off with food, equipment and more vinyl, and also jamming the pirates' signals.

This was a serious business for the government - estimates of the time found that 35 million (more than half the UK population) listened to pirate radio broadcasts. Demonstrations against the Marine Offences Bill were made across the UK. All of this created an atmosphere of a public, particularly a young public, with ideas of their own that none of the major political parties knew what to do with. The government put out statements that the pirates were harming musicians by not paying royalties, and their use of air waves was a risk to shipping. But record companies were not complaining – they fought to get their tunes on pirate radio as the exposure meant more sales. The risk to shipping was a joke. All the pirate radio captains frequently came on the air to say the idea of their broadcasts threatening the safety of other shipping was rubbish, and that they would stop immediately if this were the case. It was to no avail.

If the pirates had not been there, the UK 60s scene would probably still have happened, but not so quickly, or with the international dimension that led to economic benefits such as Hollywood money for filming in the UK. (To the extent that MGM made an internationally-released film about a whippet owned by 60s band 'Hermans Hermits', living in Manchester!) People were furious at the Marine Offences Bill, but could see no-one in power was listening. If the public had succeeded in preventing the government from sinking the pirates, their legacy might have been a real sense of personal responsibility, one that comes from faith that governments and public bodies will actually listen to public demand. Instead, we got used to pap.

By September 1967 they were all silenced. The Radio Caroline boat sailed to the Dutch coast for repairs. September 1967 brought about the start of Radio One and a controlled chart still with a restricted 'needle time' policy ... M-O-R, orchestras playing cover versions of 60s pop so you could not hear those nasty lyrics, and Housewives Choice (which offered no choice at all to the housewife looking for some good tunes).

The next government was no better (Conservative). It brought about the Free Radio Bill in 1970. This was controlled by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and meant each area then had a 'Radio London' or 'Capital Radio', but all they offered was controlled chart and playlist tunes with lots more adverts and inane chat to pad it out, pretty much the same as pre-pirate radio.

Radio Caroline arrived back from Holland in spring 1969 and broadcast for a few months from its original moorings in Frinton. In spring 1970, Radio Northsea International (RNI) broadcast for a while from the Dutch coast, but the government jammed the signal making it virtually impossible to listen to.

By 1970, the music scene had deteriorated to such an extent that session musicians appeared on Top Of The Pops three times masquerading as three different groups (White Plains, Eddison Lighthouse and The Brotherhood of Man). The London scene dried up, and the music scene moved back to the US. Then came the Winters of Discontent...... and disco.

S.P.A.M! salutes the pirate radio stations, and the tunes that made them so FAB, with DJ residencies at the Rescue Rooms and The Ropewalk.

The next, at the Rescue Rooms tomorrow, will celebrate 60 years of the seven inch single -- and six years of S.P.A.M. at the venue.

More information can be found on www.vinyljacks.com.

There's also talk about the relaunch of Radio Caroline. The beat goes on!

HOWARD JACKS