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Nelson's Pillar - 46th anniversary

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Comments

  • #122
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Continuity Wolfe Tone wrote: »
    I quoted Connolly to demonstrate that there has always been difficulty in defining what an Irishman is, you can't put an exact definition on it, nor can you precisely define what an American person is, a French, etc etc, so it's not a unique difficulty.

    But in our world the democratic nation state is the structure.
    Continuity Wolfe Tone wrote: »
    In that case can I ask what your point was in pulling me up on what I said then?

    The opposite from me , I thought you raised a good point well referenced and worthy of discussion.


  • #123
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    Worst thing that possibly ever happened on the Island. Brought back the Ulster Volunteers which then lead to Trouble in Ulster and the rest is history. Should never have been allowed. And should have built it back up. I can't believe they allowed for it to be destroyed like that and upset the thousands of Unionists which it did.


  • #124
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Worst thing that possibly ever happened on the Island. Brought back the Ulster Volunteers which then lead to Trouble in Ulster and the rest is history. Should never have been allowed. And should have built it back up. I can't believe they allowed for it to be destroyed like that and upset the thousands of Unionists which it did.

    I have touched on that by the way.

    Here we have Lemass and O'Neill exchanging pleasantaries and cups of tea and this happens. Roger Casement has just been reintered in Glasnevin.Then this happens. It affected the realpolitik.

    It wasn't allowed to be destroyed but a pop mock heroic culture built up around it that changed the dynamic.

    Hardly the most inclusive thing ever.

    Here is a paper on the iconography and public art.

    Symbolising the State— the iconography of O’Connell Street
    and environs after Independence (1922)
    Yvonne Whelan
    Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages,
    University of Ulster, Magee Campus Derry

    http://www.ucd.ie/gsi/pdf/34-2/sack-2.pdf

    WB Yeats said of it
    In the Senate, W.B. Yeats suggested that “if
    another suitable site can be found Nelson’s Pillar should not be broken up. It represents the
    feeling of Protestant Ireland for a man who helped to break the power of Napoleon. The life
    and work of the people who erected it is a part of our tradition. I think we should accept the
    whole past of this nation and not pick and choose. However it is not a beautiful object”
    (quoted in Henchy, 1948: 62).

    A quote from Owen Sheehy-Skeffington
    He touched on a feeling shared by many
    Dubliners in his statement that:
    When in 1966 the pillar was half blown down by a person or persons unknown, I, as
    a Dubliner, felt a sense of loss, not because of Nelson - one could hardly see Nelson
    at the top - but because this pillar symbolised for many Dubliners the centre of the
    city. It had a certain rugged, elegant grace about it… The man who destroyed the
    pillar made Dublin look more like Birmingham and less like an ancient city on the
    River Liffey, because the presence of the pillar gave Dublin an internationally known
    appearance (Seanad Debates, 1969, cols. 915-916).



  • #125
    jonniebgood1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,577 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Worst thing that possibly ever happened on the Island.

    Slight hyperbole!!!
    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Brought back the Ulster Volunteers which then lead to Trouble in Ulster and the rest is history. Should never have been allowed. And should have built it back up. I can't believe they allowed for it to be destroyed like that and upset the thousands of Unionists which it did.

    As CDfm has pointed out the link has been made. I think it is a tentative link and the northern troubles were on the way regardless of what happened a statue in Dublin.


  • #126
    Continuity Wolfe Tone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 47 ✭Continuity Wolfe Tone


    To label the blowing up of Nelson as the cause, indirectly or otherwise, of the troubles is simply fantasy, it has no basis in fact.

    One would question the motivations and agenda of anyone who would make that argument.


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  • #127
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    jonniebgood1 wrote: »
    Slight hyperbole!!!



    As CDfm has pointed out the link has been made. I think it is a tentative link and the northern troubles were on the way regardless of what happened a statue in Dublin.

    I think it is a bit more than tentative than that and DeValera & Lemass were able to live with it.

    It was part of Yeats' protestant heritage and he expressed it in the Seanad.

    Other iconic pieces had been taken down or relocated and that was the only one of prominence left.


  • #128
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Continuity Wolfe Tone wrote: »
    To label the blowing up of Nelson as the cause, indirectly or otherwise, of the troubles is simply fantasy, it has no basis in fact.

    One would question the motivations and agenda of anyone who would make that argument.

    If it was a powerful symbol for nationalists to remove then the converse is also true in that it may have been a powerful symbol of identity for protestants or unionists to want to keep.

    I don't have an agenda here.


  • #129
    Jorah
    Registered Users Posts: 127 ✭✭Jorah


    Poor old Nelson :(


  • #130
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    jonniebgood1 wrote: »
    Slight hyperbole!!!



    As CDfm has pointed out the link has been made. I think it is a tentative link and the northern troubles were on the way regardless of what happened a statue in Dublin.
    I am not too sure about that. Sure things have always been hostile in Ulster but the problem was it made things worse and made people even more paranoid of each other.


  • #131
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    I am not too sure about that. Sure things have always been hostile in Ulster but the problem was it made things worse and made people even more paranoid of each other.

    And your source material for this is what?


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  • #132
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    MarchDub wrote: »
    And your source material for this is what?
    Paranoia in the Unionist community was rife after it. Which lead to the UVF under Gusty Spence. It had a huge effect on the Unionist community.


  • #133
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Paranoia in the Unionist community was rife after it. Which lead to the UVF under Gusty Spence. It had a huge effect on the Unionist community.

    Well I still am not getting any source material from you ...just comments and opinion. Mind you you're not the only one on here doing that but to answer your unsupported comment-

    There is plenty of evidence that suggests that paranoia in the Unionist community existed well before Nelson's Pillar was blown up. We can take it back hundreds of years or decades but let's just go back a few for the more recent events. For one, Ian Paisley was shouting his guts off since the early 1960s, most especially beginning in 1963 after Terence O'Neill became Prime Minster of Northern Ireland. O'Neill was known as a progressive and his invitation to Lemass in 1965 caused outrage amongst many unionists :-
    Paisley developed a skill for publicity stunts and when Northern Ireland Prime Minster Terence O’Neill invited Irish Taoiseach Sean Lemass to Stormont [in 1965] to discuss topics of mutual interest, he was again to the fore claiming a United Ireland was just around the corner owing to O’Neill’s double dealings...

    Paisley began to target O’Neill and his colleagues in mainstream unionism more frequently accusing them of ‘going soft’. He developed an ‘O’Neill Must Go’ campaign and consistently warned the loyal protestants of Ulster that their birthright was about to be sold out to an Irish Republic run by a mixture of gunmen and priests. To help him in his request to topple O’Neill Paisley formed a couple of support groups in areas that were traditionally known as ‘hardline Protestant’. He set up the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee [UCDC] and the Ulster Protestant Volunteers [UPV]. A number of those involved were also members of Paisley’s church but membership was not restricted to the members of the Free Presbyterian Church.
    Source: Milestones in Murder: Defining Moments in Ulster's Terror War. Hugh Jordan.


  • #134
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    MarchDub wrote: »
    Well I still am not getting any source material from you ...just comments and opinion.

    I have come across this before and heard it first from a Northern Irish engineer I sold something to in the mid 90's. He told me about it.

    So it was a contemporaneous event that was very significant.

    Don't forget that at that time Jim Kilfedder , who had Billy Spense as his election agent, lost his Belfast West seat because of alleged Fine Gael links. The exchange between the Spence's and Ian Paisley on the rumours is well documented. Paranoia is a good word to describe it.


  • #135
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    CDfm wrote: »
    I have come across this before and heard it first from a Northern Irish engineer I sold something to in the mid 90's. He told me about it.

    So it was a contemporaneous event that was very significant.

    Don't forget that at that time Jim Kilfedder , who had Billy Spense as his election agent, lost his Belfast West seat because of alleged Fine Gael links. The exchange between the Spence's and Ian Paisley on the rumours is well documented. Paranoia is a good word to describe it.

    There was enough tension and paranoia in NI prior to 1966 to light a war - and it eventually did. Even going up there as I often did you could taste it in the air. It was a police state. The paranoia was well developed and evident long before 1966. I can remember seeing Orange Marches in the late 1950s being full of vicious hate slogans.

    Choosing to 'blame' the Nelson Pillar bombing on UVF mass murderings, denial of civil rights which included a denial of voting rights, job discrimination, housing discrimination, sounds like just looking around for somewhere to place the blame on anyone but the Unionists.


  • #136
    Continuity Wolfe Tone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 47 ✭Continuity Wolfe Tone


    MarchDub wrote: »

    Choosing to 'blame' the Nelson Pillar bombing on UVF mass murderings, denial of civil rights which included a denial of voting rights, job discrimination, housing discrimination, sounds like just looking around for somewhere to place the blame on anyone but the Unionists.

    That was the agenda which I alluded to earlier... It's an obvious one I think, especially from certain posters.


  • #137
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    Continuity Wolfe Tone wrote: »
    That was the agenda which I alluded to earlier... It's an obvious one I think, especially from certain posters.

    Agree - the 'he made me do it' defence...yeah, right.


  • #138
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    MarchDub wrote: »
    There was enough tension and paranoia in NI prior to 1966 to light a war - and it eventually did. Even going up there as I often did you could taste it in the air. It was a police state. The paranoia was well developed and evident long before 1966. I can remember seeing Orange Marches in the late 1950s being full of vicious hate slogans.

    Choosing to 'blame' the Nelson Pillar bombing on UVF mass murderings, denial of civil rights which included a denial of voting rights, job discrimination, housing discrimination, sounds like just looking around for somewhere to place the blame on anyone but the Unionists.
    Ulster has had war and fighting for centuries. We all know that. The point is the destruction of Nelsons pillar by the Irish Republican Army did NOT help to ease any of the tensions in the province.

    That was basically my main point. It did end up forming the UVF.


  • #139
    pedroeibar1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Paranoia in the Unionist community was rife after it. Which lead to the UVF under Gusty Spence. It had a huge effect on the Unionist community.

    Paranoia was rife before it also, but less significant because the power structure was not threatened until years later.

    No reason why the Pillar should not have been used to 'prove' a point. Extremists will seize an item and manipulate it to suit their own purposes, a task best achieved when there already is a foundation. Pro-Cromwell pamphleteers did it in the 1640s to discredit the Catholics / Irish. Nobody had much respect for Saddam Hussein, yet Bush & Blair saw a need to manipulate and create the WMD story to denigrate him.

    Use of language at that time also was becoming very important - as a ‘Southerner’ I was fascinated in the early late ‘60’s & early 70’s by UTV describing ‘ a Protestant crowd’ and later in the same broadcast referring to ‘a Catholic mob’. That era was not long after the publication of Vance Packard’s ‘Hidden Persuaders’ and Burntollet happened only a couple of years after McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is the Message’ which were a ‘must read’ for every student back then.


  • #140
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Ulster has had war and fighting for centuries. We all know that. The point is the destruction of Nelsons pillar by the Irish Republican Army did NOT help to ease any of the tensions in the province.

    That was basically my main point. It did end up forming the UVF.

    The UVF had already begun to form prior to the Nelson date - a group of them threw a petrol bomb into Unionist Party Headquarters in Feb 1966 as part of their plan to topple O'Neill. O'Neill was a real target and primary concern for them. It was the fear of what O'Neill might do that was driving much of the action.

    In early May they mistakenly killed an elderly Protestant lady with a petrol bomb intended for a Catholic pub. They did finally 'come out' on 21st May and through newspapers made an official declaration of war on the IRA but they were already on their way by then.


  • #141
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    MarchDub wrote: »

    Choosing to 'blame' the Nelson Pillar bombing on UVF mass murderings, denial of civil rights which included a denial of voting rights, job discrimination, housing discrimination, sounds like just looking around for somewhere to place the blame on anyone but the Unionists.

    I don't think anyone is doing that and I am not excusing anybody.

    What people are suggesting is that it was a high profile event that "confirmed" to Northern Protestants that they had no place in the South.

    So this was "evidence".

    The Nelson's Pillar bombing was more than a merry jape.


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  • #142
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    CDfm wrote: »
    I don't think anyone is doing that and I am not excusing anybody.

    What people are suggesting is that it was a high profile event that "confirmed" to Northern Protestants that they had no place in the South.

    So this was "evidence".

    The Nelson's Pillar bombing was more than a merry jape.

    No, what was being suggested, and what I specifically answered, is that it directly resulted in the formation and murderings by the UVF - it did not. That was the 'evidence' I was asking for.


  • #143
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    The hysterics in some quarters in NI over the Lemass visit - and Paisley's well voiced opposition to any connection with the Dublin Government - were well expressed afterwards by T. K. Whitaker, who accompanied Lemass. But the meeting itself went well. Whitaker described it as:
    Our hosts thought the occasion worthy of Champagne. The atmosphere was most friendly. I imagine Dr Paisley's worse fears would be confirmed if I were to say that the red wine we drank was Chateauneuf-du-Pape!


  • #144
    thecommietommy
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 564 ✭✭✭thecommietommy


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    Worst thing that possibly ever happened on the Island. Brought back the Ulster Volunteers which then lead to Trouble in Ulster and the rest is history. Should never have been allowed. And should have built it back up. I can't believe they allowed for it to be destroyed like that and upset the thousands of Unionists which it did.
    There had been the most serious riots in Belfast since the 30's as far back as 1964 when the RUC to satisfy the demands of Paisely and co. removed a tri colour from the Sinn Fein office on Divis St. 1964: THE TRICOLOUR RIOTS - http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/docs/boyd69.htm

    According to the excellent Paisley From Demagogue to Democrat? by Ed Moloney, ex British soldier and loyalist leader Gusty Spence confirmed he was sworn into the UVF near Pomeroy Co Tyrone in 1965.

    On 7 May 1966, a group of UVF men led by a drunken* Spence petrol bombed a Catholic-owned pub on Shankill Road which also engulfed the house next door, killing the elderly Protestant widow. On 27 May, Spence ordered other UVF drunks to kill an IRA man, Leo Martin, who lived on Falls Road. Unable to find their target, the men drove around in search of any Catholic and shot dead a Catholic John Scullion as he walked home. On 26 June 1966, again a drunken Spence and an ex Paratropper from Larne shot dead Catholic civilian Peter Ward (18) and wounded two others as they left a pub on Malvern Street, Belfast. Spence later wrote "At the time, the attitude was that if you couldn't get an IRA man you should shoot a Taig, he's your last resort". The ex Para called McClean who had also been invovled in attacks on homes of Catholics in Larne earlier in the year said when sobered up upon his arrest "I'm terribly sorry I ever heard of that man Paisley or decided to follow him".

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paisley-Dema.../dp/1842233246

    * Drunkeness was the general state of preparedness for most of the attacks on Catholics by the loyalists during the entire troubles


  • #145
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    MarchDub wrote: »
    The UVF had already begun to form prior to the Nelson date - a group of them threw a petrol bomb into Unionist Party Headquarters in Feb 1966 as part of their plan to topple O'Neill. O'Neill was a real target and primary concern for them. It was the fear of what O'Neill might do that was driving much of the action.

    In early May they mistakenly killed an elderly Protestant lady with a petrol bomb intended for a Catholic pub. They did finally 'come out' on 21st May and through newspapers made an official declaration of war on the IRA but they were already on their way by then.
    All I am saying is what Gusty Spence said. The coming out and declaring war on the IRA pretty much confirms that.


  • #146
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    All I am saying is what Gusty Spence said. The coming out and declaring war on the IRA pretty much confirms that.

    You are stretching things and modifying your position just to win a point. The UVF had already been established by the time you claimed. . Their point about the IRA confirms nothing more than they wanted to publicise their intentions - in case the previous atrocities didn't.


  • #147
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    MarchDub wrote: »
    You are stretching things and modifying your position just to win a point. The UVF had already been established by the time you claimed. . Their point about the IRA confirms nothing more than they wanted to publicise their intentions - in case the previous atrocities didn't.
    But like I said, you have always had violence to some degree with groups. The UVF was small at the start and then over the next 5-10 years got huge numbers for a paramilitary outfit. Like the PIRA. Incidents like this didn't stop those numbers rising.


  • #148
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    KeithAFC wrote: »
    But like I said, you have always had violence to some degree with groups. The UVF was small at the start and then over the next 5-10 years got huge numbers for a paramilitary outfit. Like the PIRA. Incidents like this didn't stop those numbers rising.


    I am certainly not saying that incident or anything similar stops numbers rising [!] - but it is a huge stretch and I have previoulsy made my point, that to claim that it was the sole and monumental event that formed the UVF, as you have claimed - is simply not the record, and that charge frankly, is a cop out. The UVF was on its way - and Pillar or no, they were not going to be anything but the murdering thugs they were.


  • #149
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    thecommietommy wrote: »
    There had been the most serious riots in Belfast since the 30's as far back as 1964 when the RUC to satisfy the demands of Paisely and co. removed a tri colour from the Sinn Fein office on Divis St. 1964: THE TRICOLOUR RIOTS - http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/docs/boyd69.htm

    A

    Good link - I like Andrew Boyd's work. One of the brave historians...


  • #150
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    I get what people are saying but look at how it was portrayed in an Poblacht in 2005.
    Fifth Column

    Nelson%27s-Pillar-no-more.jpg Photo: Nelson toppled off his pillar after explosion in 1966
    Nelson head rest

    THE HEAD of Nelson's Pillar, blown up by republicans in 1966 to make the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising go with a real bang, has been found a final resting place in the Dublin City Archive.
    The granite sculpture of the English imperialist sea lord is being put on display ahead of next year's 40th anniversary of him being brought down to earth.
    It will be on display in the Reading Room of the Dublin City Archive at 138 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, if you want to go along and enjoy the fallen hero.



    http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/11216


    As I see it is that Nelson was a figure who had nothing to do with Ireland or its occupation. The proximity to the GPO may have upset some.

    Blowing up the monument was like trying to airbrush away Protestant Heritage in Ireland. It was like saying there is no room for it.

    I wasn't brought up to believe that but that we needed to be tolerant of the other traditions we shared the island with as well as proud of our own.


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  • #151
    KeithAFC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,239 ✭✭✭✭KeithAFC


    CDfm wrote: »
    I get what people are saying but look at how it was portrayed in an Poblacht in 2005.



    As I see it is that Nelson was a figure who had nothing to do with Ireland or its occupation. The proximity to the GPO may have upset some.

    Blowing up the monument was like trying to airbrush away Protestant Heritage in Ireland. It was like saying there is no room for it.

    I wasn't brought up to believe that but that we needed to be tolerant of the other traditions we shared the island with as well as proud of our own.
    Yes. That is basically my point. It was a big moment which lead to the war.


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