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(narrator) Independent Radio News / London Broadcasting Company.
From Callaghan to Thatcher in a contemporary audio archive.
The Independent Radio News / London Broadcasting Company radio archive
consists of thousands of reel-to-reel tapes
in a collection that runs from 1973 to the mid 1990s.
It's the most important commercial radio archive in the UK
and provides a unique audio history of the period.
It forms an important part of the history of radio broadcasting,
since it provides an alternative source of radio journalism
and news and current affairs broadcasts
to the BBC's own collection.
But as reel-to-reel audio tapes
the archive is inaccessible for research.
Now 4,000 hours of the most noteworthy recordings
relating to news and current affairs
are available online for use in teaching, learning and research.
The digital archive includes invaluable recordings
of a wide range of broadcasts,
including coverage of the Falklands War,
the miners' strike, Northern Ireland,
and the whole of the Thatcher period of government.
It includes the first hours of UK commercial radio
and the first commercial radio news.
The Channel 4 broadcaster Jon Snow
started his media career at LBC,
and has fond memories of his time there
and strong views on the value of radio.
Although I work for television, I think radio is the ultimate medium,
and I think any student studying the media, studying history,
will get a more vivid account of life through radio
than any other medium.
The pictures are so much better.
The use of the human imagination when viewing an event
is so acute, the words are so fine, the observation so keen.
The trouble with television is that you've got to have the pictures,
and if you don't have the pictures,
you can't quite give the same account.
You've got to give the account
the television pictures will enable you to give.
In radio, you don't have any pictures, so you're all right,
you just make up your own.
(Snow on radio) It's over. The four gunmen have come out.
The siege here has just ended one minute ago.
There is still a great deal of activity here,
but a flashing-blue-lighted van has just swept off into the distance
with its siren wailing.
(narrator) That was Jon Snow reporting from the scene
of the 1975 IRA siege in London.
For him, radio could not be beaten in that situation.
Well, my strongest memory is the end of what was a notorious IRA siege
in Balcombe Street in London.
Indeed, the accused have only recently left jail.
And this was a siege right in the middle of London.
Mr and Mrs Matthews, a harmless sort of, you know, city couple,
were taken hostage in their flat
by two IRA suspects who were being chased by police.
And we were there for, I don't know, days and days and days.
And then it suddenly ended in pitch darkness,
and there were big tarpaulins across the street and things
and they made it very difficult for television.
But for radio, it was an absolute joy.
The sound was fantastic. Shouts, cries.
"Oi!" "Hey!" "Get him!" "Run!" "Quick!" et cetera.
You know? And... (mimics police siren)
And you could even hear the Doppler effect going across Dorset Square.
It actually changed tone on the radio.
And you really felt you were there.
And I was broadcasting live for 20 minutes
on a Motorola walkie-talkie system.
There was no mobile phones, no outside broadcast.
But the quality was actually amazingly good,
and you'll hear it in this sound archive.
And the real issue was, could I keep my frozen thumb
on the button of the Motorola to ensure my transmission continued?
And, actually, there was a sweet ITN floor manager,
who was there for television, who saw my predicament
and took over the button with her gloved hand
and held the thing there for me to continue.
And I sort of shook the frostbite out of my hand
and carried on with the broadcast.
And it was one of the most spellbinding occasions,
cos you knew you were just watching history in motion.
It was the absolute high point of the urban conflict
between the state and the IRA here in London.
(narrator) The archive is freely available
to UK further education and higher education institutions,
and users can listen to the recordings via a website
which combines access to the archive catalogue
and digital audio files.
It is brought to you by JISC,
the Joint Information Systems Committee,
with the University of Bournemouth.
Captions by internetsubtitling.com