As of August 30, 2026, the authors have uncovered enough documentation to present the real story of Radio Caroline. They will present the facts in evidence using a chronological format identifying persons, places and events. It will both expand and revise text used to present the lecture material of October 25, 2014, during the analysis of the book called 'Radio Man'.  The following text will be gradually revised as part of this comprehensive expanded presentation.

THE NAME GAME

​by Genie Baskir

​Beatrix Miller was playing her own version of the 'Name Game', years before Shirley Ellis wrote her lyrics. Beatrix was not a song writer, she was the editor of a high society fashion magazine called 'The Queen', and coined the name 'Caroline' to describe magazine readers.

Beatrix had a habit of naming everything, and readers of the magazine were no exception. Not only did her editorial Style Sheet  name them, it also defined them by using a universal description. But when her definition was hijacked and repurposed as the name for a pirate radio station, Beatrix resigned on the spot.

Pedigree of 'The Queen'

This story did not begin with Beatrix Miller, it began in September 1861 during the reign of Queen Victoria whose staff vetted everything before publication. Its publisher was Samuel Beeton, and with his wife Isabella, since 1852, they been targeting middle-class readers with Britain's first low cost monthly mass circulation journal called 'The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine'.

But his new publication called 'The Queen' carried the strapline which proclaimed it to be'The Ladies' Newspaper'. It was not a 'woman's paper', it was a ladies' paper, and in those days everyone knew class distinction. Ladies were defined as members of the aristocratic female high society. Due to its title, Queen Victoria's staff were assigned to vet every edition of 'The Queen' before publication, because in addition to showcasing expensive fashion, it was also the place to read news about society events.

Over the years 'The Queen' was added to a stable of magazines such as 'The Field' and 'The Law Times' published by a succession of owners, but staying within the same definitive class boundaries. Everyone was expected to 'know their place' because this was not America with talk of 'We The People'.

In 1928, all three of these publications ended up in the lap of a Harmsworth family member, which meant that their publishing interests were following that of Samuel Beeton who aimed for both the middle and high class reader. It kept everyone in their place, and that is how the Crown Establishment liked to run its show. From their perspective, American talk about equality was considered to be both crass and rude.

But by 1937, Sir Harold Harmsworth who had inherited the magazines acquired by his father Sir Leicester, decided to unload 'The Queen' due to its unprofitable nature at that time. In fact, that sale was more or less a flipped marketing ploy because it ended up, via an intermediary, with Hector Caird. He is the son of Sir Andrew Caird, the powerful financial wizard and advisor to Lord Northcliffe, who was previously known as Sir Alfred Harmsworth. It was Hector who nursed it from 1938 to 1953 and fate smiled upon him when coverage of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II gave 'The Queen' a big boost in sales.

When 1957 rolled around, Hector decided that it was high time for him to unload 'The Queen'. However, Hector considered himself to be a part of high society and he was raising his daughter named Carolyn by sending her to an exclusive school for girls and making sure that she was connecting with approved girls of her own age. Finding a publisher who met the strict qualifications of someone catering to the upper class and high society, was not and easy matter, and it was his duty to prevent riff-raff from gate-crashing into a class to which they did not belong.

It wasn't just the amount of money that had to be considered, but the origin of that money. By skin tone and family origin, qualifying English people were acceptable, but anyone from outside the borders of England was viewed with suspicion, and even if skin complexion did not exclude them, not everyone residing within the British Isles was acceptable.

Jocelyn Stevens

On February 14, 1953, Jocelyn Stevens turned twenty-one and he inherited £750,000 (which, using the spending equivalent today would be over £27,000,000.00). The money came from his deceased mother who was the daughter of Sir Edward Hulton. This fortune turned him into an instant playboy who joined Princess Margaret's elite social circle, but wisely he enrolled at the London School of Printing as his first step to building his own media career. Three years later Stevens married Jane Sheffield, a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret which pulled him ever closer into the elite proximity of the royal family and high society.

To celebrate his approaching 25th birthday on February 14, 1957, Stevens entered into discussions with Hector Caird in order to buy his publishing company Cromwell Publishing, and its flagship high fashion magazine 'The Queen'. Hector Caird initially dismissed Stevens' offer because Stevens had gained the reputation of a fun-loving wealthy playboy. But because Caird was offered a substantial amount for his company and another large payment for his magazine, Hector Caird agreed to a deal on Stevens' birthday. However, there was no respect lost by either man.

As part of the company purchase, Stevens acquired Caird's sales director Frederick Pemberton as well as some of its editorial staff. He hired fellow alumnus and friend Mark Boxer to take charge of magazine artwork, and later in 1957 he hired the services of Antony Armstrong-Jones to take charge of photography. In 1960, Armstrong-Jones married Princess Margaret, bringing Jocelyn Stevens even closer into her 'set' of friends.

He did not gain the services of Beatrix Miller who left to join the staff of 'Vogue' magazine in New York. Based upon recommendations, one year later in 1958, Stevens enticed Beatrix Miller to leave 'Vogue' and return to London as his editor of 'The Queen'. From the sidelines Hector Caird watched Stevens gradual expansion of the magazine advertising base, but he was not impressed with the direction in which Stevens was taking the magazine.

Beatrix Miller

According to fashion editor Liz Tilberis in her book, 'No Time To Die', Beatrix Miller arrived at her new job as editor of 'The Queen', and began naming things. Her country cottage she called 'Pig', her white Jaguar she called 'Arctic', and the readership of the magazine she called 'Caroline'. She defined these subscribers within her editorial Style Sheet for contributing writers. 'Caroline' readers were defined as "an ambitious, intelligent bachelor girl - or the same girl married to a young executive on his way up - who wants all the material things in life".

This word picture of Caroline as a stereotypical reader of 'The Queen' is a redefinition of the readership that Jocelyn Stevens purchased from Hector Caird, and it would soon change yet again to the dismay of Beatrix Miller who abruptly resigned as editor in protest of the way that Jocelyn Stevens was publishing the magazine. This is the process that Hector Caird wanted to prevent from taking place, and it one of the main reasons why these two men did not like or respect each other.

When Hector Caird was publishing the magazine, he was following a path that began with 'The Ladies' Newspaper' dating back to the time of Queen Victoria. It was a time of class consciousness in which everyone knew their place in society and they also knew not to get above their station in life. That is how Hector had brought up his daughter Carolyn to circulate within her own upper class of people. That was the society that respected the laws and customs of the Crown and gave way to the upper-class. They had been schooled in the shadows of the vanishing British Empire and the emerging Commonwealth that bowed before the might and majesty of the British Crown. But what Jocelyn Stevens was attempting to do was take the capitalist drive to create new wealth, while disowning the influence of America's Madison Avenue that was promoting it as a new culture.

This idea found its footing with the Princess Margaret Set. While she was a great believer in the British class system, she had a problem with the fact that her sister was Queen and sat on top of high society, while she existed in her shadow. It was this personal problem that found favour with people like Jocelyn Stevens who had control of one of the most important means of communication among the upper class.

The Paternal Society

Both the upper and middle classes were intentionally influenced by Britain's paternalistic mass media. A female might be sitting on the royal throne, but it only represented the power of the Crown corporation sole which was based upon a series of hoaxes that no one dare question. This manipulation of both print and broadcast communications was in the hands of a few men who skilfully told readers, listeners and viewers not only what to think, but how to think.

On the airwaves the British Broadcasting Corporation prevented crass commercialism from being aired, by sanitizing light entertainment for the masses, while providing highbrow enlightenment for the upper class. Safety valves permitted sensationalism to be printed by newspapers targeting the lower class, while Radio Luxembourg's limited English airtime spotty coverage provided an audio outlet for troublesome teens to listen to.

But this was still England's United Kingdom where 'Brit' became synonymous with England, and Scotland was viewed as an annoying appendage of England whenever whispers of "independence" were heard. As for the Irish they were and always had been a source of trouble which had to be restrained by force when necessary, even though most of the island of Ireland had been set free from the British Crown. When all was said and done, the power still resided in London, and the wealth was primarily positioned in the south of England. It was an Orwellian situation that George knew well when he penned his book on the island of Jura. He could see where it was all headed and true to form, his prescience of a 'Big Brother' woke dictionary due for final publication in 2050 appears to be still on track.

Still to come ...

As of the date above, the following text is in the process of being revised to follow this new format above.

The remainder of this story is in the process of being written, and it will reveal who Ronan O'Rahilly was and both how and why he became a 'useful fool' for Jocelyn Stevens.

Ronan's father did his best to coexist with the Irish, even though he was born at Hove in England and he married an American citizen who became Ronan's birth mother. Forget what you thought you knew or what others have told you about Ronan because his story is that of a young man who set foot in London during 1961 looking for investors on behalf his father and the family export business.

In his own words he arrived broke, admitting to being a Roman Catholic by belief and an anarchist by political application. He got a job as a 'bagman' for slum landlord Peter Rachman and his teen and twenty club owning gangster colleague, Raymond Nash. Soon Ronan was rubbing shoulders with likes of Mandy Rice-Davies and the Kray Twins.

How Radio Caroline enters this picture is by subterfuge, and it was not via Ronan O'Rahilly, but another Irishman who Tony Benn would make derogatory sneering remarks about. This Irishman called himself a 'Proddy-Woddy', a Protestant. He lived in the Republic of Ireland and not only did he survive but he also built an enormous cartel. He succeeded because he created a employment for some, who under other circumstances, might have shot him. His name is Charles Orr Stanley and he straddled the worlds of both religion and politics by creating a huge cartel of companies that were colloquially known as the Pye Group.

To be continued ...

Addendum

The floodgate of totally false published newspaper articles, features, books and even a ridiculous motion picture, all began when Ian Cowper Ross started to ingratiate himself with his wealthy mother-in-law.

From this beginning in the year 1990, sprang a novel couched in names that were mostly false. It was a concocted story about how his own activities chasing the aristocratic girl he eventually married, then led to the 1964 creation of Radio Caroline.

This book was published by a reputable company and launched by his mother-in-law, but the inheritance that Ian was seeking, evaporated when his mother-in-law married a much younger man.

In the IEE book 'Radio Man' (cited above - left), it cites text from page 276 about Pye: ".... they set up a fictitious radio manufacturing company complete with its own stationery, invoices and bank accounts. Everything Pye made for Caroline was stamped with the logo of the nonexistent manufacturer."

But that is not what the original text that came from an interview said, and that is why the text in the book does not make sense. It was deliberately changed to intentionally obscure the true story! 

The original text quoted Alan Bednall, chief designer under contract to Charles Orr Stanley of Pye, who told his son John Stanley: ".... binding me to complete secrecy, your Father came to me one day and asked me to create from scratch an entire new corporate entity for a company manufacturing radio equipment."

Notice what Alan Bednall did not say!

Bednall did not say that the new corporate entity was "a company manufacturing radio equipment", because it was not! It was a new corporate entity for a company manufacturing radio equipment.

The company manufacturing radio equipment was LTV Continental Electronics of Dallas, Texas!

LTV are the cartel initials of Ling-Temco-Vought, ".... a large American conglomerate which existed from 1961 to 2001. At its peak, it was involved in aerospace, airlines, electronics, steel manufacturing, sporting goods, meat packing, car rentals, and pharmaceuticals, among other businesses."

---

The reason why the Pye Group of Companies entered into a partnership with the LTV Group of Companies, is because the M.V. Bon Jour (later called Magda Maria, and then Mi Amigo), was outfitted with LTV Continental Electronics transmitters which had been shipped from Dallas to New York where they were disassembled, and then shipped to Europe.

The motor vessel Fredericia (later renamed Caroline), was also outfitted with LTV Continental Transmitters in total secrecy. The UK government were taken by surprise when it dropped anchor off Essex and began test transmissions on Friday, March 27, 1964. The UK government had been misdirected towards the Mi Amigo (Radio Atlanta), which arrived at Greenore after the Fredericia. But the method used to export the Bon Jour (Mi Amigo) transmitters via New York which resulted in a lot of press publicity, triggered U.S. government attention due to export restrictions.

To overcome the export problem, LTV-Ling, Inc., merely transferred its own LTV Continental Transmitters via its own British  co-partner company called PYE-Ling, Ltd, and all shipments were marked, according to Alan Bednall, with the logo of LTV-LING! This veil of total secrecy was unknown to Beatrix Miller, the editor of Jocelyn Stevens' 'Queen' magazine. She quit the day that the Radio Caroline transmitters were turned on for a company registered as 'Radio Caroline Limited' at 54-62 Regent Street in London. But, guess what? We revealed some of this back on 8/31/2021 and again on 9/2/2021 and it all appeared on this very same web site!

​​As noted above, the current phase of this investigation began with a book called 'Radio Man' about the life of Charles Orr Stanley, his son John and the cartel known as the Pye Group of Companies. See page 16: 'The Day I Read page 276 My Knowledge of Radio History Imploded!' - https://museumofcommunication.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/News-94-Spring-2021-page-order.pdf

The Investigation

On March 17, 2017, in an email from Mervyn Hagger to co-investigator Chris Edwards, the following statement appears:
                              "I can't help wonder how to explain the obvious US CE equipment on the Fredericia ...."

As a part of our investigation, Chris Edwards reported in an email to Mervyn Hagger:
                               "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."
Chris had found the "smoking gun"! The text in the IEE book 'Radio Man' had been deliberately scrambled to contradict itself.

On April 9, 2017, at 16:21, Mervyn Hagger wrote to the daughter of the deceased Alan Bednall:
                                 "Dear Jane, I have concluded that Nicholas Stanley misled our team as much as he seems
                                  to have used and abused your father. Why, I am not sure - at the moment - unless it is to
                                  protect someone still living who could cause the Stanley family problems. One way in which
                                  this may be possible is if there was some sort of legal settlement involving Nicholas Stanley
                                  personally, and that allowed him to set up the Stanley Foundation. A legal clause might have
                                  included a gag order forbidding him from revealing the true story. My team has spent a
                                  personal fortune and many, many years investigating all of this. We have not solicited or
                                  taken money from anyone and at the moment we have not authorized any full telling of what
                                  we have discovered. However, it seems that your statements point to confirmation of what we
                                  have experienced."

This what Jan Bednall told Mervyn Hagger:
                                  "My father had been very pleased to be interviewed by Mr Stanley but was very disappointed
                                   that he was never given any feedback after the interview and never shown any publication.
                                   He also spoke of being disappointed that Mr Stanley never gave back all the drawings and
                                   designs he gave him. So I believe that the information you want  is probably with Mr Stanley."

Mervyn replied to Jane:
                                  "When I personally asked Nicholas Stanley about the source of information for the paragraph
                                   on page 276 of 'Radio Man', he said that it was so long ago and he seemed to recall that it
                                   came from a radio engineer named Hill, but he could tell me no more. Months went by and
                                   after a lot more research, Chris Edwards discovered your father's original statement - which
                                   is totally different from the text in the book. But I also find it peculiar that after your father
                                   told Nicholas that it was one of the most exciting events in his life, and after he went into
                                   great detail about the 'mystery' company, he did not provide its name."

Or did he?

Mervyn Hagger added:

                                   "Since the information in the book is separated out from his main text, so that the paragraph
                                    on page 276 is not attributed to your father (but other information is), and because that
                                    paragraph tells a totally different story to the one your father told Nicholas, and yet it is
                                    obvious that it is the only source of the paragraph on page 276, it points to Nicholas Stanley
                                    not only misdirecting the authors he hired, but also in failing to take down your father's
                                    identification of the company name. Also, because the statement by your father must have
                                    been typed up - probably from an audio recording made by Nicholas - then Nicholas must
                                    have edited your father's statement in order to eliminate the name of the 'mystery' company."

The question then is why would he do this?

Mervyn's emails to Jane added:

                                   "Nicholas received a lot of cash to publish his book after hiring his reputable authors - who
                                    he obviously deceived! The entity which gave Nicholas the cash to set up his Stanley
                                    Foundation may have stipulated conditions. One of them may have been that no mention
                                    was to be made of the company name, and that the information must all relate to Pye and
                                    John and Charles Stanley."

It should have included these words:
                                    Possibly the U.K. Official Secrets Act since the story of Pye has Cold War military connections
                                    to sonar and the U.S. Polaris nuclear submarines based at Holy Loch in Scotland and a
                                    Continental Electronics radio station at Anthorn in Northern England.

It did include these words:

                                            "Right now we are searching back numbers of trade magazines for the period between
                                     late 1962 and early 1963 when the events relating to your father and Radio Caroline
                                     probably took place. It would be many months more before Caroline came on the air
                                     towards the end of March 1964. I will keep you posted, and please let me know if you can
​                                     think of any place where we might find the logo and letterhead spoken of by your father."

Our investigation and lines of enquiry pre-date all others!

The Pye History Trust tribute page about Pye-Ling Ltd is to be found at:
https://www.pye-story.org/companies/research-section/  It shows this dateline; October 4, 2021. It is not an original Pye companies' web page (Pye went out of business before the advent of Internet web pages) and their tribute comes with this disclaimer.

​This site is the work of several ex-Pye employees, some of whom are members of the Pye History Trust (registered charity number 1162310), the Pye Foundation (registered charity number 267851) and some are Volunteers at the Cambridge Museum of Technology.

In 1966 the original Pye cartel ran into financial trouble and began to disintegrate while becoming absorbed by Phillips. By 1957 they had acquired a majority shareholding. Over the following years, Philips gradually absorbed Pye's companies into their own group, or they sold them or closed them down. By the 1980s, many of the remaining Pye businesses were trading under the Philips brand or grouped under Cambridge Electronic Industries.

Pye-Ling Ltd disappeared into LTV-Ling Inc., and then LTV disappeared!