Irish, or English?

Here's a question for anoraks:

Why do your writers spend so much of their time and energy writing about Ireland (the Republic of), and linking Radio Caroline to the original and failed uprising in Dublin? What is the connection?

The answer is: none. There is no connection!

This is where the mythology of Ronan O'Rahilly comes into play.

But to get to the Dublin Post Office story, anorak writers have to leap over Ronan's father to his grandfather and a murky incident in which that man died. Murky because the anorak writers have a hard time in pinning down actual details, and they end up by misquoting even the misinformation that is in circulation. Paul Rusling is a classic example of this, but then Paul Rusling has boasted that he does no research into past events.

But to the issue itself, Why did the mv Fredericia go to Greenore?

Why did the mv Mi Amigo go to Greenore?

We have, in editions past, previously explained the answers in great detail, and that information is still on line if you know where to look. By the way, it is on this Blog and our companion Blog, in case you are wondering where to look. These blogs are really a book in progress, and it has been in publication since last year, but a combined and comprehensive, revised single edition, will also be appearing in print.

So, do you know the story behind the story involving Ronan's Dad who was born in England (not in Ireland), and why the Fredericia and Mi Amigo sailed for Ireland, and not the Isle of Wight which was their original destination?

Ronan's father was no revolutionary. He was struggling to build a family business, and his son (Ronan), was employed to play a part - even though Ronan pretended that he was not. Of course Ronan went off the rails and began to believe his own blarney, and that got him and a lot of his friends into serious legal trouble. Ask George Drummond (who had to change his name and disappear.) You can also ask George Lazenby, and then there is Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd who was encouraged to steal from his employer on behalf of Ronan's fake acting school. (The details are in Cyril's, that is Simon Dee's, published biography.)

Ronan's Dad wasn't at war with the British government, he was kissing up to the UK Board of Trade, and if you know where to look you will find a press photo of him doing just that. In fact, the guys in Ireland who were paid to work on the two ships got very angry when they discovered that the Fredericia was not going into service as the mv Iseult (O'Rahilly), but was intending to become a 'pirate radio ship' off Essex, England. Those guys were waving the nationalist flag, but not Ronan's Dad. He was smart, and just like Charles Orr Stanley who built up the Pye Group of companies in both the Republic of Ireland and the UK, and whose home was also in the Republic of Ireland, Ronan's Dad walked the line between Irish and English interests to further the interests of his family business.

Ronan's Dad was not trying to upset anyone with differing religious or political views.

Guess what?

Unlike his looney son who had delusions of being a film maker (never a broadcaster), his Dad succeeded and his son failed. It is the wild and wooly anorak press that has created a reverse picture of reality and it has placed Ronan O'Rahilly on a plinth built in the middle of their minds.

Take another look at our archived editions, you might be surprised by what you find - which is not to say that we never made mistakes, because we did. Like Ronan O'Rahilly, the anoraks never wanted this story to be published and so details were deliberately hidden under a mountain of misinformation. But where we have uncovered mistakes, or where they are pointed out to us, we then correct them.

For the sum total of our revisions you will have to wait for the printed version of this story. It has the working title of 'The Girl Who Never Was' (in case you had forgotten.)