SWINDON had an early taste of electronic surveillance exactly 60 years ago.

“Television Pirates Fear This Van,” said the headline of a story with a picture of two men, one of them wearing primitive headphones.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and assorted online warriors, it’s widely known today that not a single case of TV licence evasion has been brought to court purely on the strength of detector van data.

For years now, there has been widespread speculation that the vans themselves are for show, and that enforcement is based simply on targeting addresses whose names do not appear on a database of licence holders.

Indeed, there is an entire YouTube subculture consisting of aggrieved householders bandying words with unfortunate TV Licensing contractors from Capita.

In 1957 things were rather different. With science already capable of obliterating humanity and racing to conquer space, the notion of science being able to see into people’s homes and tell what they were doing was plausible and intimidating.

The tone of our report was sinister.

“Blazered schoolchildren hurrying home to Children’s Television last night were not to know that a small green van which they passed parked outside Swindon Old Town Post Office would soon be patrolling Swindon streets to catch that modern entertainment pirate – the householder with a television but no licence.

“The van, in Swindon for a fortnight, is manned by two men who have been hunting down these pirates all over South-West England. They spent last night in Marlborough.”

If a house with a TV set was passed, we said, the van’s aerial transmitted a loud signal to the operator, and the address was then checked against a list of licence holders.

We added: “The van manoeuvred slowly by the rows of houses; newspaper boys glanced and took another look; housewives scurried home, perhaps to warn their husbands.”

At the time the licence cost £3 and there were 16,200 licence holders in the Swindon postcode area.