Virgil, quick! There goes Admiral Nelson Mandela

THE American Left hasn’t always had such a violent aversion to all things Confederate.

One of the great anthems of the Woodstock Generation was The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. It was written by The Band’s Robbie Robertson, and was a hit for Leftie folk singer Joan Baez, darling of the labour movement, who sang We Shall Overcome for President Obama at the White House.

Rolling Stone magazine, the hippies’ bible, praised Dixie’s ‘overwhelming human sense of history’. The song contained the line: ‘Virgil, quick! Come see! There goes Robert E Lee’ — a a reference to the famous Southern civil war general. Still, now statues of Lee and others are being pulled down in the States, it was inevitable that the British Left would want a piece of the action.

Some dopey bird in the Guardian even wants Nelson’s statue removed from Trafalgar Square. I’m reminded of when Looney Tunes Labour councils were naming every street and building after Nelson Mandela. Haringey, which flew the ANC flag above the Town Hall, happily gave planning permission to a pub in Wood Green, North London, to be called The Nelson — they presumed in honour of the South African civil rights leader.

Imagine their surprise when the pub opened with a picture of Admiral Horatio over the door; scenes from the Battle of Trafalgar; and red, white and blue bunting everywhere.

It was a time, I remember, oh so well . . .