An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir July/August 2019 www.dfmagazine.ie 36 | Interned: The Curragh internment camps in the War of Independence BY JAMES DURNEY I nternment, or imprisonment without trial, was an impor- tant weapon of the British government in its fight against Irish republican violence. The purpose of internment in Ireland was to contain people the British authorities felt were a threat, without charges or intent to file charges. Faced with armed insurrection and revolutionary claims to democratic le- gitimacy, the British government responded with increasingly harsh emergency powers against Irish republicans. The immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday on 21st Novem- ber 1920 marked a turning point in the War of Independence when the British authorities decided to open internment camps, facilitating a record use of imprisonment without trial. The internment camps, rather than established prisons, quickly became the largest holding centres of political prisoners. By late June 1921, 3,311 men were interned in these camps, constitut- ing just over half of all those then incarcerated because of the independence war. In the first three months of 1921, crown forces arrested a con- siderable number of republicans. Numbers interned rose from 1,478 for the week ending 17th January, to 2,569 for the week ending 21st March 1921. The internment camp at Ballykinlar had reached its capacity and instructions were received from British general headquarters to prepare a further internment camp at the Curragh military base, in Co. Kildare, for the reception of internees from the Army 5th Division and Dublin District Divi- sion areas. The Rath Internment Camp was laid out on the south fringe of the Curragh Camp directly opposite the grandstand of the racecourse. It consisted of about ten acres of the Curragh plain enclosed in a rectangle of barbed wire entanglements. There were two fences ten-feet high and four-feet wide. Between the fences was a twenty-foot wide corridor, which was pa- trolled by sentries, and which the prisoners called 'No man's land'. At each corner of the compound stood high block- houses from which powerful searchlights lit up the centre passage and played on the huts. Sentries armed with rifles and machine guns manned these watchtowers day and night. Sentries posted on the watch- towers called out 'All's well', on the stroke of the hour throughout the night. No. 1 post would start off, 'No. 1 post, and all is well.' No. 2 would repeat and Nos 3 and 4 would do likewise. This 'All is well' continued through the night, every night. Inside the rectangular enclosure there were some fifty to sixty wooden huts (twenty-feet by sixty-feet), which served as sleeping quarters for up to 1,000 men, and housed huts used for a hospital, a canteen (dining hall), a cook-house, a chapel and a library. There was also a hut used for British military stores and a sports ground large enough to provide a football pitch Vital reading for anyone interested in the Irish Revolution – Liz Gillis, author and historian Outline of Rath Camp huts, December 2009 (Author's collection).

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