Dubliners Sing As Monument Falls

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31009, 15 March 1966, Page 17

Dubliners Sing As Monument Falls

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) DUBLIN, March 14. An Irish Army demolition squad blasted the remains of the Nelson Monument into dust today.

Thousands of Dubliners roared out their approval by singing their independence

song, “A Nation Once Again " A huge pall of smoke covered the centre of the city > as the pillar crumbled and I broke into large chunks of granite on to a bed of sand . bags spread up O’Connel I street “It was a neat smooth job,” said Colonel R. G. Mew. officer in charge of "Operation Nelson,” the name given to the task of removing the battered 80ft stump of the famous Dublin landmark. The pillar had been blown in half by an extremist’s bomb last Tuesday. Police would guard Nelson’s column in London’s Trafalgar square on St Patrick’s Day and at Easter, the “Daily Sketch” reported. This followed rumours that the outlawed Irish Republican Army would try to blow it up. The newspaper quoted a special branch detective at Scotland Yard as saying: “Precautions are already in hand to ensure that there are no incidents on St. Patrick's night Thursday or at Easter.” This Easter marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 “Easter uprising” against British rule in Ireland.