ABSTRACT
Busy as Margaretta D’Arcy was in the 1980s with international and Ireland-wide campaigns, arts festivals, writing projects and her local community, her most significant achievement in that decade was almost certainly the creation of Radio Pirate Woman, which remains a model of genuinely radical cultural practice. The idea of creating some sort of radio station probably first came to D’Arcy when she was a prisoner in Armagh Gaol. D’Arcy had founded ‘Galway Women’s Entertainment’, which was low-key, informal and had no regular structure or organization. In March 1987, D’Arcy was sent to gaol in England for her activities at Greenham Common. It seemed that Radio Sceal might be finished. The first season of Radio Pirate-Woman took place in March 1990 during the campaign for the election of a new President of the Republic, when Mary Robinson opposed Fianna Fail’s Brian Lenahan.
