’Tis the season for pulling down the statues of historical figures. The destruction of the statue of Confederate leader Robert E Lee sparked off the troubles in Charlottesville, Virginia, and other Confederate figures are being similarly dethroned from their public position.
It might be argued that the current fashion for such iconoclasm began when the IRA blew up the statue of Lord Nelson, atop Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin in 1966. Technically, dynamite experts said it was a superb job: done clandestinely, in the middle of the night, the 134-foot pillar was left as half a stump. And no lives lost or people wounded.
My recollection is that this was considered, at the time, “hilarious”. It was as if it had been a brilliantly executed student rag week stunt. I knew Londoners who flew to Dublin to acquire bits of the wreckage as trophies.
Actually, many older Dubliners regretted the passing of “the Pillar”, which had marked the centre of the city, in O’Connell Street, and features as a hub in Joyce’s Ulysses. You could mount the pillar from the inside (price: sixpence) and see, from the top, the whole panorama of the city.
And the “Pillar” might have been saved had wiser counsels prevailed. The removal of Nelson as a symbol of the ancien régime had been advocated since the 1920s and in the 1930s there were various suggestions for his replacement. The trouble was, there was little agreement as to who should be placed on the plinth instead. Catholic voices suggested Our Lady. Nationalists wanted Patrick Pearse, the 1916 leader. And those embracing “inclusivity” advocated St Patrick, the national saint honoured by all Christians and recognised throughout the world.
What a pity that these ideas fell apart for want of consensus. Because had St Patrick been atop the “Pillar”, it would surely not have been dynamited. The monument itself was a splendid piece of architecture.
Sometimes it is appropriate to remove a historical character from a place of honour; but there can be alternatives to destruction. Statues can be consigned to museums or placed in less prominent locations. Horatio Nelson could have been shipped off to an English coastal port which appreciated what he did in their defence (and the defence of free trade), rather than blown to smithereens.
Though I suspect for true iconoclasts – as for the Cromwellites – it’s the destruction of the artefact itself that is part of the pleasure.
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Are many of the terror suspects who have been carrying out atrocities in London, Manchester, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Nice and now Barcelona propelled into their terrible acts by the use of drugs and opiates? The commentator Peter Hitchens has been continually writing in the Mail on Sunday that the link between terrorist atrocities and drugs needs to be investigated – but it is widely ignored because our culture regards drugs and opiates as “cool”.
In Charlottesville, the suspect who caused the death of Heather Heyer – and injured 19 others – in the car attack was “a troubled army reject who was (and probably still is) on potent antipsychotic drugs”. Opioid addiction is a widespread problem in modern America.
The role of marijuana might also be questioned. The word “assassin” derives from the Arabic word for “hashish eater”, according to the Oxford dictionary of etymology – because it was observed hashish (marijuana/cannabis) could turn a person into an assassin.
But I suspect that the role of cannabis is also too “cool” to investigate in relation to these terrible events.
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Glen Campbell’s version of the ballad “Rhinestone Cowboy” is one of the eight discs I would take to a desert island. Campbell – who died recently, aged 81 – brought great warmth and feeling to this Country and Western song.
I love this song about a guy who is down on his luck. There’s a great line of ruefulness: “There’s been a load of compromisin’ / On the road to my horizons”. It’s a difficult song to sing (I’ve tried) because it ranges over several octaves, but it’s full of heart.
Country and Western music is often about the mistakes we make, our fallen condition, and yet, how we still strive for redemption and maintain hope. Quite spiritual, really.
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