Interned

The Curragh Internment Camps in the War of Independence

James Durney

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781781175897
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

During the War of Independence, faced with an armed insurrection it couldn't stop, the British government introduced increasingly harsh penalties for suspected republicans, including internment without trial. This led to the incarceration of thousands of men in camps around the country, including the Rath and Hare Park Camps at the Curragh in County Kildare. Interned is the first book to tell the story of the men who were held in the Curragh internment camps, which housed republicans from all over Ireland. Faced with harsh conditions, unforgiving guards and inadequate and often inedible food, the prisoners maintained their defiance of the British regime and took whatever chances they could to defy their gaolers, including a number of escapes. The most audacious of these was in September 1921, during the Truce period, when sixty men escaped through a tunnel.
This unique book is the first to investigate the Curragh Internment Camps, which housed thousands of republicans from all over Ireland. It contains a list of names and addresses of some 1, 500 internees, which will be fascinating to their descendants and those interested in local history, as well as an exploration and details of the 1921 escape, which was one of the largest and most successful IRA escape in history.

1

Internment

The outbreak of war between Britain and Germany in August 1914 led to the enactment of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, for the purposes of securing public safety in Britain and Ireland. The act, usually referred to as DORA, governed all citizens in Britain and Ireland during the years 1914–18. The legislation gave the government executive powers to sup­press published criticism, control civilian behaviour, imprison without trial, and to commandeer economic resources for the war effort. DORA was amended and extended six times as the First World War progressed, and when war broke out in Ire­land, with subsequent amendments, became the most relevant enactment for the suppression of political violence there.1

On the outbreak of the European war, the leaderships of the Irish Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteer Force pledged their support for the British war effort, mainly to strengthen their respective hands at the post-war bargaining table. The Irish Volunteers, however, split on this issue, and a minority group, heavily influenced by the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), began planning an insurrection to exploit Britain’s wartime difficulties.

At Easter 1916 this IRB-influenced group, together with the Irish Citizen Army, occupied positions in the centre of Dublin and declared an Irish Republic. The immediate British response was to issue two proclamations. One announced the imposition of martial law; the other, under Section 1 of the Defence of the Realm (Amendment) Act 1915, suspended the right to jury trial for breaches of the regulations, and thus created in Ireland an extensive court-martial jurisdiction.2

Militarily, the Rising was a failure. In the aftermath, a total of 3,340 men and seventy-nine women were taken prisoner or rounded up in countrywide raids. A lack of evidence against those arrested, however, meant that most of them were interned rather than prosecuted. But British intelligence had left much to be desired, as many of the prisoners were innocent, and 1,424 were released within a fortnight without charge.3 Fifteen of the prisoners were court-martialled and executed by firing squad during 3–12 May 1916. The rest were held under the Defence of the Realm Act 14B (internment without trial) and transferred to prisons in Britain.4

Twenty-five men arrested in Co. Kildare were initially held at Hare Park Camp, first built in 1915 to billet large numbers of troops training on the Curragh. The camp took its name from its location on the edge of the former Kildare Hunt Club Hare Park site. The Kildare prisoners were held at Hare Park until 8 May, when they were conveyed from the Curragh to Richmond Military Barracks in Dublin; from there they were subsequently deported to prisons in England.5 Their internment was short-lived, as most of the prisoners were released unconditionally in December 1916.

The Curragh Camp continued to be a place of detention for republicans as Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers re­organised in early 1917 and began to confront Britain’s Irish policy. When Thomas Ashe, the Easter Week hero of the Battle of Ashbourne, was arrested in Dublin in August 1917, having made what was termed a seditious speech in Ballinalee, Co. Longford, he was conveyed to the Curragh Camp and detained in the cells adjoining the guardroom at Keane Barracks. James Grehan, from Co. Laois, was arrested for illegal drilling and housed in a neighbouring cell. Michael Collins, then of the Irish National Aid Association, travelled from Dublin to the Curragh to visit both men – Collins was at that time a largely unknown entity to the British autho­rities. How it must have rankled with Dublin Castle some years later, when Collins had become such a thorn in their side, to know that he had visited the centre of the British military in Ireland.6

In the general election of December 1918, Sinn Féin successfully supplanted the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), winning seventy-three seats from a total of 105 and receiving 46.9 per cent of the vote island-wide. They quickly moved to set up an alternative parliament on 21 January 1919, known as Dáil Éireann – ‘National Assembly’ – and declare an Irish Republic.7 On the same day the Volunteers, now increasingly known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), began their military campaign against the crown forces with an attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary, which left two policemen dead. Though it was not sanctioned by general headquarters (GHQ), this was the first deliberate killing of state security forces by the IRA.8

The escalation of the war from 1919 led to the strengthening of the Defence of the Realm Act, but the use of DORA legislation in response to the Irish conflict was nearing the end of its life, as the power to issue regulations was only exercisable ‘during the continuance of the present war’, meaning the First World War. It was a war emergency law that was meant to lapse at the end of hostilities in Europe. The old Crimes Act was used to create Special Military Areas, which allowed the authorities to control movement and ban public events, but without DORA it was impossible to continue interning republicans.9

In January 1920 a new internment policy was implemen­ted, involving co-operation between the military and police. The British government put into effect a policy of moving prisoners to English jails to diminish any threat or influence they would have on the campaign in Ireland. On 5 April prisoners in Dublin’s Mountjoy Gaol began a mass hunger strike, demanding that DORA internees should be treated as political prisoners. Viscount French, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, said there would be no concessions to the prisoners, but the situation reached a crisis point with the resignation of the prison’s chief medical officer. The strikers turned down an offer of ‘ameliorative’ treatment; more men joined the strike bringing the number to ninety. A one-day labour strike added to the tension and distressing scenes were witnessed outside the prison as relatives and supporters awaited news. Dublin Castle then conceded the hunger strikers’ demand for political status, only to be presented promptly with a demand for their release; when liberation on parole was offered, the internees demanded unconditional release. On advice from the British government, the authorities in Mountjoy relented and transferred the hunger strikers en masse to hospitals for convalescence as a precursor to immediate release. The military programme of arrests since January, the impact of which had been growing steadily, was thrown into turmoil.10

New legislation was needed, and the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (ROIA) was introduced on 9 August 1920 to deal with the rising republican violence and the collapse of the British civilian administration. (The army would pronounce ROIA procedures ‘too slow and cumbrous to be really effective against a whole population in rebellion’.) The act permitted the government to continue, under a ne...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Internment
• 2 The Rath Camp
• 3 The Men Behind the Wire
• 4 ‘No Place Like Home’
• 5 Sport and Pastimes
• 6 Truce Outside, Dissent Inside
• 7 A Tunnel to freedom
• 8 The Foggy Dew
• 9 Prison breaks
• 10 Fé Ghlas ag Gallaibh – Locked up by Foreigners
• 11 And the Gates Flew Open
• Appendix I
• Appendix II
• Appendix III
• Appendix IV
• Endnotes
• Bibliography