De Radio Omroep-Vereeniging voor Arbeiders (ROVA)

Revolutionary Socialists of the National Workers (Labour) Secretariat (NAS) as well as the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and after 1935 the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (RSAP) were - just like other organizations - eager to use the media (in this case the radio) for propaganda. In 1929 the NAS founded the rova the Revolutionary (later Radio) Broadcasting Company for Workers. However the ROVA was blocked by the confessional political elite that governed the country in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. The public authorities went on the defensive by using authoritarian repression and by deliberately strengthening their own power. After suppressing a mutiny on the iron clad De Zeven Provinciën by bombing it in 1933 they banished all extremist sounds on the air because of a fear of fascism and communism. In that political climate the RSAP felt compelled to set up a pirate radio transmitter De Rode Omroep [The Red Broadcasting Corporation]. Dick de Winter reconstructs the history of the ROVA. He investigates among other things the archives of the Postal Telegraph and Telephone Company (ptt) - a state company - of the NAS, RSP and RSAP and journals of the NAS, RSP and RSAP.

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