The fall of Nelson’s Column recalled ... 50 years on

Fifty years ago, an IRA bomb belatedly decapitated one of the most iconic monuments to British rule in Ireland, writes Billy O’Riordan.

THE song, ‘Up Went Nelson’, by The Go Lucky Four, remained top of the Irish charts for eight weeks in 1966. It celebrated the destruction of Nelson’s Pillar, on March 8 of that year. That was 50 years ago this week.

Lord Horatio Nelson had watched over the citizens of Dublin for 157 years, until an unauthorised IRA operation, named ‘Operation Humpty Dumpty’, had dispatched Nelson from atop his 121ft Doric column, down onto the capital’s main street.