It
was a cold and fairly somber Sunday when I got out of bed on March
3rd
1968. As always the first thing I did was switch on the radio. But
all remained silent. Caroline was not there! It was only when I
got downstairs and tried Caroline North on the big Saba receiver and
found that her frequency too remained completely quiet, that a
feeling of forboding set in. The next day my fearful apprehension was
confirmed by the newspapers. In the early hours of Sunday both the
Caroline and the Mi Amigo had been boarded by Dutch seamen in the pay
of the suppliers Wijsmuller and towed to the Netherlands because of
outstanding debts.
As
a matter of principle I did not turn to Radio 1 for my music fix. In
the months to come it was Radio Veronica that brought some solace,
and sometimes also Radio Kuwait on shortwave. Few people remember
this, but for a time Kuwait, with a stable and strong signal, was one
of the best pop stations around. Truth be told, I had less time for
music in those days, because my exams were drawing near...
In
the wider world too it was a troublesome period. It began in May
1968 with a student revolt in Paris which turned into a general
strike involving millions of workers and the worst rioting for
decades. President Charles de Gaulle resorted to brutal police force
to counter this attempt at revolution which immobilised most of
France.
Subsequently
also students in Belgium, especially in university cities like Ghent
and Louvain, took to the streets. Suddenly that brought two plain
clothes members of the secret police to my house. I was upstairs
studying and unaware of the fact that these men threatened my mother
not to let me join the protests, or “worse would follow”. The
then Belgian prime minister Gaston Eyskens had just formed a
coalition government with the help of the Christian Democrats (CVP)
and the Socialists (BSP), two parties that had lost seats during the
elections in March '68. Eyskens feared that if the protests continued
they would bring down the government and revolution would ensue...
With hindsight, it wàs the year that the Beatles brought out their
hit “Revolution”, not that the Belgian prime minister would have
been aware of that.
In
the Netherlands all remained calm during the disruptive May days of
1968. It has been said that this was partly due to the existence of
Radio Veronica. The station went some way in making the country a
happier place and functioned as a valve to diffuse any pent up
tension among students and workers alike.
