Earlier this week, RTE broadcast a very well made documentary on the history of Nelson’s Pillar. The programme contains amazing archive footage along with contributions from Des Geraghty, Jimmy Magee and David Norris. If you missed it, viewers in Ireland can watch it on RTE Player until Monday, 15 February.
Though it focuses on the bombing of 1966, the documentary tells also tells the fascinating story of how in 1955 a group of UCD students, involved with the Irish National Student Council (INSC), occupied the pillar. Dropping a banner of Kevin Barry over the edge, they tried to melt Nelson’s statue with homemade “flame throwers”. Gardai used hammers to break into the pillar and tried to arrest the students but they had to be released after the gardai were attacked by sympathetic members of the public.
After the statue was blown up in May 1966, Nelson’s head was stolen by NCAD students from a storage shed in Clanbrassil Street as a fund-raising prank to help clear their debts. Wearing sinister black masks, they held a very civil press conference explaining their motives. The head made several secret appearances over the next six months including making its way onto the stage of a Dubliners concert in The Olympia Theatre!
Nelson’s head now rests peacefully in the Gilbert Library in Pearse Street.
“Not us says I.R.A.” Dublin, 1966.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
I remember the morning of 08 March 1966 shortly after it was blown up (at 02:00am) as I was on my way to work at 06:30am in Jervis Street where I worked on the early shift as Trainee Compositor for Graphic Film Ltd. That was my first job after leaving school and I alternate weeks we worked early shift 06:30-14:30 or late 14:30-22:30. Normally I walked past the Pillar on my way to and from work but on that morning we were diverted around the blast site. It was rumoured at the time that it was an “inside job” undertaken by Dublin IRA volunteers with the connivance of tUachtaran (President) Eamonn de Valera (IRB Member) and the secret services. This was ostensibly to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Uprising but also to boost Dev’s Republican credentials and his chances of remaining President in June 1966 when he was re-elected by a narrow margin of 10,000 over his Free Stater rival Tom O’Higgins in an electorate of 1m. voters. Conspiracy theory or what?
Dev had morals, though he was loath to share them.
[…] October of the previous year, members of the INSC had occupied Nelson’s Pillar. Dropping a banner of Kevin Barry over the edge, they tried to melt Nelson’s statue with homemade […]