A History of Ireland in Song

Internment

The dictionary defines internment as: indefinite detention without charge or trial.

"In the early hours of Monday 9th August 1971, I was kidnapped from my bed by armed men, taken away and held as a hostage for five and a half weeks. I was not in Uruguay, Brazil, Greece or Russia. I was in the United Kingdom, an hour's flight from London. I was in Belfast." (John McGuffin, Internment, Anvil Books, 1973)

What happened to John McGuffin that morning was nothing new in Ireland; but the scale of the detentions was. 342 men were picked up in the initial sweep, of whom 226 were detained. By the end of the year, 1,576 people had been seized, of whom less than 1,000 had been released. The remainder were held in Magilligan prison, on the prison ship "Maidstone", and in Long Kesh concentration camp. Internees were routinely maltreated and tortured as part of British Army intelligence-gathering, a fact later acknowledged by the European Commission on Human Rights. The internees were soon known in song as "The Men Behind the Wire".

With the coming of direct rule from Westminster in 1972, internment was recognised as a failure, and phased out. It should be noted that the acts commited by the British army during internment operations were in fact illegal under British law, and were only legalised post facto by a bill rushed through the Commons.

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