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HORATIO NELSON DID not die for Ireland, yet in his own strange way he may have saved a few Irish lives.
During the course of the Easter Rising, the doorway of his imposing Doric column in the centre of Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) offered a welcome respite for rebels dashing from one side of the street to the other.
Seán MacEntee, a Volunteer in the General Post Office, remembered watching two young rebels run the gauntlet, as “on the brave fellows came, their heads bent down, sprinting along a zig-zag course to mar the enemy’s aim. Into the cover of the Nelson Pillar they ran, and out of it again, upon the second half of their journey”.
Still, Nelson’s service during Easter Week counted for little on 8 March 1966, when a republican bomb brought the Admiral crashing down into the street he had overlooked with his one good eye since 1809.
Air of inevitability
There was an air of inevitability about Horatio Nelson’s eventual demise; King William of Orange, King George II and Viscount Gough in the Phoenix Park had all fallen victim to republican bombings, while Queen Victoria had been rather unceremoniously dumped from her vantage point in Leinster House, removed on her back through the front gates.
There appeared to be no place in the new Dublin for imperial relics, though Nelson lasted longer than most. Given that Irish republicans had spent the late eighteenth century looking to Napoleon and not Nelson, the hostility towards the pillar from certain quarters was not surprising.
The Irish Monthly, a contemporary nationalist newspaper, joked at the time the statue of Horatio Nelson on top of the Pillar was unveiled that “we never remember an exhibition that has excited less notice, or was marked with more indifference on the part of the Irish public, or at least that part that pay the taxes and enjoy none of the plunder”.
To Unionists however, it was a rallying point for commemoration. On Trafalgar Day, marking the victory of Horatio Nelson over the French and Spanish fleet, it was frequently illuminated and decorated. In 1863, to celebrate a Royal wedding, fireworks were set off from its viewing platform, a sight that was to be replicated during several Royal visits to the city.
Nationalists took any opportunity possible to interfere with the monument, and the first anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1917 witnessed the raising of what newspapers described as a “Sinn Féin flag” from its viewing platform.
Sheer scale
The key to Nelson’s survival (and no doubt the longevity of the Duke of Wellington’s testimonial in the Phoenix Park) was the sheer scale of the monument.
Constructed of Wicklow granite and back limestone, it was sturdier and more resilient than the equestrian statues destroyed with relative ease in the decades that followed independence.
Still, there were attempts on Nelson. In the 1930s, IRA man Peadar O’Flaherty had toyed with the idea of utilising gelignite to collapse the pillar, while maverick republicans in the 1950s occupied the viewing platform of the monument with flame guns and other tools they believed could be used to destroy the statue of Nelson. Under the guise of protesting students, a banner of Kevin Barry was hung from the viewing platform on that occasion, as a crowd of thousands cheered from below.
Nelson withstood all planned attacks, and even withstood the bureaucracy of Dublin Corporation, who entertained ludicrous ideas and proposals that included removing the Pillar and re-erecting it elsewhere. In 1925 Howth Urban District Council expressed an interest in acquiring the Pillar, should it be dismantled, and re-erecting it on the Hill of Howth.
Others proposed leaving the Doric column but replacing the man on top, with the Virgin Mary, Jim Larkin, Robert Emmet and even John F. Kennedy proposed at different times.
The bombing
A strong folklore and mythology has grown up around the bombing of the monument, one which mis-attributes the blame and which also pokes fun at the expense of the Irish Army, claiming that the controlled demolition that occurred a week after the first blast was responsible for significantly more damage to the streetscape than the republican bomb of 8 March.
While song and story tells us the pillar was bombed by the IRA, the action was the work of a small left-wing republican faction which had emerged from the IRA, but which operated separately from it and was not under its control. The IRA moved to distance itself from the bombing, with a statement from the ‘Republican Movement’ claiming that their movement was concerned not with the destruction of the symbols of imperialism, but imperialism itself.
In reality, the bombing of the controversial Pillar was planned and carried out by a network of young republican activists built around the charismatic republican Joseph Christle. Described by one historian of the 1960s republican movement as a “maverick”, Christle lived a colourful life in many fields, and as a keen cyclist was a central force behind the Rás Tailteann competition, a racing fixture once dedicated to the memory of James Connolly and Vladimir Lenin.
Many of those who followed Christle from the IRA were veterans of the Border Campaign of the 1950s, and one such activist was Liam Sutcliffe, who told the story of planting the explosive device that brought down Nelson for the first time in 2000.
Sutcliffe, who is still with us in this Golden Jubilee year, recalled that the operation to bring down Nelson was codenamed Operation Humpty Dumpty, and that the first planted device had failed to explode, leading to him carefully removing it from the Pillar before returning on the night of 7 March 1966.
Sutcliffe insists that a combination of gelignite and ammonal was used to destroy the Pillar, though not a man to watch his own work unfold, he returned home and was asleep at the time of the successful explosion, hearing of its success in the pages of the national media.
Nelson dominated the headlines in Ireland for the next few weeks, in a way he hadn’t since his death at Trafalgar.
When students from the National College of Art and Design liberated Horatio’s head from a Corporation lock-up, they forced the authorities on a wild-goose chase. Nelson’s head appeared in the window of a London antique shop, on stage with The Dubliners and even on Killiney Beach during a photo-shoot for women’s clothing. Later recovered, it sits in the Gilbert Library on Pearse Street today.
Maybe the greatest of the stories to grow out of the bombing of the Pillar though concerns the controlled demolition of a week later, an event that led some to joke that explosives should be left in the hands of the professionals.
On 15 March 1966, huge crowds gathered in Dublin city centre for this event, with a carnival atmosphere as thousands were kept behind Garda cordons.
Promised a “dull thud”, Dubliners responded with a resounding cheer to the second explosion, the sound of which surpassed all expectations. While the army didn’t quite succeed in breaking every window on O’Connell Street, a few were broken, though the damage claims from the second explosion were ultimately less than a quarter of those from the initial blast.
Perhaps, to their own misfortune, the jokes around that event were written before the army set foot on the street.
This article was originally published on 8 March 2016.
Donal Fallon is the author of ‘The Pillar: The Life and Afterlife of the Nelson Pillar’ and one of the writers behind the ‘Come Here To Me’ blog. He will be speaking at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the pillar’s destruction at the Dublin City Library & Archive on Pearse Street at 11am this morning.
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We have duel climate control in the car and my wife still isn’t happy because apparently the cold air from my side keeps seeping over to her side. Bloody air doing what it wants.
Tell her that violates thermodynamics.
“Lisa, get in here! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”
So in terms of air-conditioning it’s better for the environment to set it by female standards. Wouldn’t that mean in Winter it’s worse for the environment when more heating would be required? 6 of 1 etc.
Shush with your logic. Logic has no place in these arguments.
Air-conditioning is a social construct anyway. Men and women are equal.
Air conditioner? Pff, ’twas far from air conditioners I was raised! Never had air conditioners in any office I ever worked in :(
My office is currently a converted shipping container with a desk and a wobbly chair. Does a draft count as air conditioning?
Ha, gkrell, poor auld Caitlin Jenner is in for a quare hop so. Or does the perceived colder temperature only kick in after the removal of the pump and toolbag?
Journal are you deliberately trying to sabotage yourself ? All these ridiculous nonsense stories and no real news and the number of views are hugely down ? It seems people actually do want to kniow whats going on in the world and don’t want to be drip fed utter nonsense like morons. You’re definitely not a newspaper just another peddler of useless bullshit for the dumb plebs like an online Sun, but you seem to be making a concerted effort to push more in that direction. Guess I should delete the app.
Look at the regular commentors to see who you’re dealing with. The Sun is superior which is some feat.
Sexist air conditioning? Jesus christ will you f*ck off
Fascinating. However running your air con at a higher temperature is not very energy efficient. The solution to feeling cold is to wear more clothes. An office temperature of 25C seems very high and would make most males very uncomfortable. Drop the temperature and dress more warmly. 19C seems about right!
Really…. Fu€k off with this nonsense sexist bull sh!t. So we’ve to redesign air conditioning now because it’s sexist and not equal.
the only problem with ac is most women don’t know how to use the controls
Like I wrote on the story about middle-eastern female body builders; there is literally nothing feminists won’t whinge about.
Put a top on if you’re cold. People who are too hot can’t strip off in the office.
Women are always cold, nothing to do with the air conditioning.
First world problem non story
Jesus Aoife, you’re really scraping the bottom of the “feminist outrage” barrel with this one.
I’d be more concerned that there are loser out there researching this. Maybe they could do something more productive – like scooping up leaves from people’s driveways for free.
Come on now. How else are feminists going to be outraged? They need to be coddled.
Fake tan is racist!
Jesus Aoife do you ever do any real journalism.. your two efforts at it this morning are miserable gutter trash attempts at feminism… surely when your promoting the feminist agenda you should attempt to find actual cases where there is a problem, not where some clown doesn’t like a photo, and telling us air con( which helps you breath in an office ), is sexist
Suggestions for your next few articles aoife….such sexist things as- ice cubes, snow, winter, cold wind. you can even start your own cute hash tag. #coldisbold
I prefer room temperature to be 18°c to 20°c- anything above this I find uncomfortable and get headaches!
Men need to keep their balls cool for health reasons.
So stick a jumper on or deal with a new trend of men going commando in a kilt and knee high desk fans humming under desks everywhere.
Nobody likes sitting in ball soup.
Huh. There’s a lady I work with who gets sick every time the aircon comes on. I wonder if that’s related. I think everyone fights over the room temperature though. Too hot for some, too cold for others. Can’t keep anyone happy.
It recirculates viruses and bacteria. it’s like being in a plane.
That generally has to do with dirty filters in the air con. They need to be serviced once per year usually but no one really does anything about them until they break.
And it’s a power hungry monster. Go to the back of any modern office block. They are huge and getting bigger.
It’s with noting that a female colleague can put on a jumper while us males cannot strip off our shirts. The that SHOULD be on the cooler side. This is not even taking in to account that in general the business dress code allows females to wear clothes that keep them much cooler.
So in the office environment there will be either hot males and cool women or cool males and hot women.
Air conditioning is the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard of!
C.N.S …… Possibly…
( Cold nipple syndrome )
Nothing wrong with being sexy
for f*** sake the politicly correct thought police must be running out of things to complain about if this is what they are dragging up.
do writers on this site work on a view quota / comments quota? seems like pushing some sort of anti-male angle will smash that.
Here they turn it down by an extra 5-7 degrees so women can make a statement about how much money their husbands make with expensive fur coats and Moncler ski jackets that it’s too warm to even consider wearing outside…
It’s pretty sexist… Not to mention environmentally devastating
I can’t agree with the assertion that offices in the 1960s would have been male dominated, the opposite would have been the case.
Get an outdoor job!
if it’s too cold put more clothes on. simples.
Expect a campaign to bring an end to this outrage to start shortly
It will be called “turn the headlights off”
amirite?
Put on some clothes girls.
Simple.
jesus christ what next?
Actually picking a temperature and sticking with it as a norm makes sense. Women’s bodies change temperature wise during their monthly cycle and also during menopause. Both of these times women can usually prefer cooler temperatures. This is a biological fact. Most air conditioning is adjustable anyway. I worked in a predominately all female section a
Sorry phone went ape for a second and posted comment before I finished. Anyway in a mostly female section there was always open warfare about the temperature of the office. Older women wanted cool younger women wanted heat. I wanted peace but it never happened.
so they could come with a “hot-flush” setting?
Not true according to Frozen.
But on a more serious note, what a stupid article, designed solely for the purpose of clickbait, so we can all have a good laugh at feminists(not that the article even has anything to do with feminism, but that’s where certain people are always going to go for a b*tch). It’s articles like this, and then the comments from the eejits who get predictably outraged about how awful feminism is that make any kind of progress in terms of gender equality(whether for women or men) next to impossible to achieve. And all for the sake of a few extra clicks into an article. I’ve stopped reading other websites for this type of crap, I actually expected a bit more from the Journal. Maybe that makes me the dope. =\
” I actually expected a bit more from the Journal. Maybe that makes me the dope. =\ ”
Yup. Especially when they run this article and then a few scrolls up the front page, there is one about ISIS setting market prices for sex slaves.
God Almighty this article is only telling us the results of this guys research and is clearly done in a tongue in cheek manner.
Not every article about women has a feminist agenda yet inevitably these women centred articles attract guys who rant and rave to their hearts content about said women and feminism. Grow up fellas.
Boil your head
Some offices have placebo thermostats that lets people adjust temp to keep them satisfied but actually changes nothing. Fools
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