How the Irish Dealt With Offensive Monuments

By Jack R. Johnson 07.2020

Apparently, being rid of unwanted monuments is not as easy as it sounds. As Richmond, Virginia suffers legal wrangling to be rid of the Robert E. Lee monument, we might take note of how the Irish handled a similar situation. On the 50th anniversary of Irish independence, a gentleman named Liam Sutcliffe, took it upon himself to relieve the Dublin skyline of an extraordinarily high monument to the British Admiral Lord Nelson—for whom the Irish had no overwhelming affection.

It was not an easy task. A group of students tried and failed to burn Nelson down in 1955, but by the time 1966 rolled around, Liam Sutcliffe thought he was ready. According to Diarmaid Fleming of the BBC, “the idea was to place a bomb made from gelignite and ammonal on the viewing platform at the top of the pillar, with a timer set to go off in the early hours of the morning when the street would be empty.”

Sutcliffe says he took his three-year-old son with him to avoid raising suspicions.

"If the Special Branch had their eye on the Pillar and seen me going in on my own with a bag under my arm they might have become suspicious - but with the young lad with me, they wouldn't pay any attention."

They planted the bomb and left – but by 2 a.m. nothing had happened.

Apparently, the infamously damp Irish weather fouled the timer. So Sutcliffe realized he had a problem. There was a bomb in the center of busy Dublin that might go off at any time.

Sutcliffe had to retrieve the unexploded ordinance.

So, according to the BBC, “The next morning, as soon as the pillar opened again for tourists, Sutcliffe went back to collect it. He redesigned the timer, he says, and planted the bomb again a week later, on 7 March, this time without his son. Again it was just before closing time, and he was the last to leave.

“At 1:30 am, a huge blast sent Nelson and tons of rubble on to the quiet street below, damaging a taxi - the only casualty of the night apart from Lord Nelson. The driver escaped injury.

“The government officially denounced the attack, though it's said that President Eamon De Valera called the Irish Press newspaper, owned by his family, to suggest the light-hearted headline: "British Admiral Leaves Dublin By Air."

But that’s not all.

In the explosion, Nelson’s granite head was separated from his body and that morning it was picked up off the street and taken to a municipal storage yard. Ten days later students from the National College of Art and Design stole it, looking for a way of paying off a Student Union debt.

Nelson’s head turned out to be just what they needed. The granite head appeared on stage with the Irish band, The Dubliners, and in TV and magazine ads - including one for women's tights - and people paid for it to be displayed at parties.

According to the BBC, the police finally tracked Nelson down and today, the Admiral’s head “sits in the corner of a library in Dublin, largely ignored.”

Someday soon, perhaps, Lee’s statue will be suitably re-contextualized, sitting in a corner of the American Civil War Museum where onlookers may pass by mostly ignoring the old Confederate general’s intrepid gaze.