A Palestinian flag is currently fluttering from the top of the Spire, Dublin’s tallest landmark, looking down on the Irish flag which flies from the historic General Post Office a few metres away. Pro-Palestinian fanatics dropped the flag – emblazoned with the words ‘Stop Genocide in Gaza’ – onto the Spire from a drone hovering 120 metres above ground, in defiance of aviation laws, in September. More than three months on, the authorities seem powerless to remove it.

The Spire, newly adorned with the now familiar green, red, and black Palestinian colours, stands on the same site in O’Connell Street where before Admiral Horatio Nelson had overlooked the street with his one good eye since 1809. As historians tell it, Nelson’s Pillar – similar to the one which still stands in London’s Trafalgar Square – may have saved the lives of a few Irish rebels during the course of the 1916 rising. The statue stood atop an imposing granite column with a doorway that provided cover for protestors under fire from the British army.  

The column stood until 8 March 1966 when a republican bomb brought Lord Nelson crashing to the ground. What was left of the pillar was demolished by the Irish army a week later. The controlled demolition succeeded in breaking quite a few windows in........

© The Spectator