“In my sack I carry three burdens” claimed Margaretta D’Arcy in her 2005 memoir, as she reflected on the strands of identity that have shaped her intertwined creative and political existence.
As an artist raised first in London and then Dublin, of mixed Jewish and Irish heritage, her experiences were shaped by encountering “racism, anti-Semitic and anti-Irish”, but also by the “nationalism and religious intolerance reflected in extreme Zionism and strands of Irish republicanism.” The third burden she identified, of course, is that of being a woman.
So much could be written about Margaretta’s work, from The Nonstop Connolly Show to her various stints as a political prisoner. I want to take some time today, though, to focus on Margaretta’s work as a radical broadcaster, especially with what became known as Radio Pirate Woman.
In 1981 she became one of the original members of Aosdána. That funding enabled D’Arcy to establish Galway Women in Entertainment, in 1982, “to celebrate and promote women’s culture and to make links and build solidarity networks with women in struggle everywhere against the patriarchal military/industrial complex.”
In early 1983, she first visited the women’s peace camps at Greenham Common, intending “to find out for myself and eventually to broadcast what I found.” The tapes from that time now form part of an extensive audio archive of the last 40 years of political activism in Ireland and worldwide.
That early audio work led in turn to the first broadcasts of “Women’s Scéal Radio” in early 1987. Margaretta’s approach to radio was to “start small and experiment”, treating radio much as one would “a fringe theatre or film project.” The station operated on a festival basis (ie for short scheduled periods of time ) over several years.
Radio Pirate Woman, as it eventually became known, purposefully broke many of our expectations of broadcast radio. As Caroline Mitchell noted: “it does not care whether anyone listens, it does not have a “proper” studio; it ignores censorship rules (including giving out information about abortion ), and anyone who wants to, can have a say on air without training or experience.”
The intimate situation of the station inside the home was deliberate. Margaretta argued for “radio-as-kitchen” as a metaphor for the Radio Pirate Woman project, emphasising the goal of “getting women on the air in informal groups, just as they came, and not being frightened of making fools of ourselves.”
I remember, as a teen growing up in Galway, the fly-posted announcements, inviting participation, and promising updates on the Wages for Housework campaign, or reports from the Beijing World Conference on Women.
That radical, participatory approach, undoubtedly influenced us in the university in the early years of Flirt FM. It exemplified, too, an important precept drilled into me from my early days in the community radio sector: that we start with community, with radio (merely ) a useful tool among many, rather than some fetishised technology.
Margaretta, it should be noted, featured politically conservative women in the programming and debates on Radio Pirate Woman. Similarly, despite its name, Radio Pirate Woman occasionally included men.
In one case, Margaretta recounted being persuaded by a local homeless man, Mark Kennedy, that “men on the street, homeless, addicted to alcohol, are the most marginalised and outcast members of our society” and in consequence, “a half-hour men’s programme once a week” was established as part of the station, with Kennedy having “total responsibility for the half-hour” and D’Arcy “simply … their technician.”
After legislation was put in place to license local radio in 1988, most pirate operators went off air, many as part of plans to bid for licences. D’Arcy, however, continued to broadcast, stressing her opposition to Ireland’s censorship laws, and the lack of licensing opportunities for neighbourhood and community stations.
In 1997, a documentary on the official taking-down of the Greenham base perimeter fence produced with women of the Greenham camps, was named “International Story of the Year” by the Women’s International News Gathering Service (WINGS ). Radio Pirate Woman itself was the subject of a documentary by New York’s Paper Tiger TV.
Her passing will be mourned by the international community of radical media activists of which she was an important member.
Margaretta D’Arcy (14 June 1934 – 23 November 2025 )
Dr Andrew Ó Baoill is a lecturer at the School of English, Media and Creative Arts at University of Galway.
