Cryptic song content

Subject: Cryptic song content
From: Penny S.
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 11:23 AM

I thought some might like to read of one of the weirder reaches of official paranoia, involving our very field of music, some of it folk. Richard Norton Taylor of "The Guardian", on Friday 21st January, 2000, wrote a piece under the title Irish eyes sent MI5 wrong signal which some of you might find interesting and amusing. I expect the full item can be found at the Guardian website at www.newsunlimited.co.uk.

He tells how BBC monitors, one of whom was Edgar Lustgarten, alerted MI5 and MI6 to requests played on Radio Athlone, such as When Irish Eyes Are Smiling played for "grateful patients" in an Exeter hospital after So I pulled Myself Together by Arthur Askey, and with the most suspicious I Saw Three Ships A-Sailing. Moonshine was broadcast for a listener in Whitehall, and there was "an extraordinary episode" when A Wild Irish Boy was interrupted by an announcer for a short topical number, Floating Sea Mines. After 3 months, a security memo noted no significance in the titles, so asked that they not be reported any more.

So what cryptic messages could be sent now in titles?

Penny

Subject: RE: Cryptic song content
From: GUEST,_gargoyle
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 12:22 PM

THANX... for adding another newspaper site to my files. It is a very good site......and a GREAT article!!!!

When Irish eyes sent the wrong signal to MI5
Richard Norton-Taylor

Friday January 21, 2000

Songs including We'll Meet Again, Windy Night and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling played on an Irish radio station during the second world war aroused the suspicion of security services and were scanned to see if they were hidden messages to hostile agents, according to intelligence reports released yesterday.

Song requests played on a small station in Athlone, mid-Ireland, were scrutinised after the BBC monitoring service alerted the intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6.

In February 1941, the BBC reported the song When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, which was played for "grateful patients" in an Exeter hospital. The BBC left it to the security and intelligence agencies services to judge whether it was a coded message.

"Let us know if you wish to continue these," asked a puzzled BBC official who noted that the Athlone station had just played So I Pulled Myself Together, sung by Arthur Askey. More suspicious was the song, I Saw Three Ships A-Sailing.

MI5 was told there had been an SOS message for a Christy Hogan of Sparkbrook, Birmingham, who was asked to call at Richmond villas, Dublin, where his mother was ill. The implication was that it was a secret message.

"You may also be interested to hear that during a group of songs ... a tune, Moonshine, was broadcast 'for a listener in Whitehall'," added the BBC official. The suggestion was that it could be another coded message.

He carefully noted that another tune, Serenade in the Night, was described by the Athlone broadcaster as requested by "a pen pal in Roscommon to a pen pal in Nottingham, England".

The BBC monitor noted: "This is probably a perfectly innocent message but I thought you ought to know about it."

Edward Lustgarten, who became a well-known BBC announcer, told MI5 that his attention had been attracted by other songs - Stars all over the Sky, for instance - and even carols, including the First Noel.

The BBC described "an extraordinary episode" when on the same wavelength the song A Wild Irish Boy was interrupted by an announcer saying "Just a minute, here is a short number which is also topical, Floating Sea Mines". Suspicions were further aroused when the local orchestra asked to play it could not remember the tune.

There was alarm when the Irish station played what was described as a "German foxtrot" .

But by May 1941, the security services seemed to have finally lost interest. A memo notes: "There does not seem to be any significance in the titles heard so I would ask you so far as we are concerned not to continue to report song titles."

Subject: RE: Cryptic song content
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 12:56 PM

Thanks Penny. This kind of thing could never have happened in Canada. Too much time would have been spent arguing whether the cryptic messages were "traditional enough".

Rick

Subject: RE: Cryptic song content
From: paddymac
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 04:15 PM

1941, eh? Britain had great success in cracking German (and other) codes early in the war, as did the US with Japanese code systems. It shouldn't be surprising that the paranoia of the times would lead radio monitors to suspect cryptic messages almost anywhere, or everywhere. The level of suspicion was probably heightened as regarded the Republic of Ireland because of its official neutrality in the war. In such times, the notion of 'you're either with us or agin us' becomes prevalent and the very idea of principled neutrality can be seen as a guise to benefit "the other side." A good look at code-breaking in WW II can be found in Robt. Stinnett's "Day of Deceit", published late last year.

Subject: RE: Cryptic song content
From: wildlone
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 05:36 PM

The World Service of the BBC was used by the SOE to send coded messages to occupied France.
The BBC have a listening post at Caversham near Reading,or they did have.

Subject: RE: Cryptic song content
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 08:31 PM

There was a George Formby (I think) film that came out early in the war in which the key plot element was some fiendish plot to send information across the radio through a band's musical arrangements. So did MI5 get the idea from the film, or was it the other way round?