Last week marked the anniversary of the release of hundreds of Irish prisoners from Frongoch internment camp in Bala, Merionethshire, North Wales, having been incarcerated there following the Easter Rising the previous April. Few people are aware of the significance of the Frongoch Irish Prisoners, and their place in the future politics of Ireland and Great Britain.
Before the First World War, the Irish were promised Home Rule after many decades of determined campaigning. ‘Home Rule’ was a form of devolution and fell far short of independence but mainstream Irish nationalists accepted it. Under Home Rule Ireland would have its own parliament but remain a part of the United Kingdom. Mainstream nationalists backed the war effort after 1914 to demonstrate that they could behave responsibly when eventually they were given self-government. Hundreds of thousands of Irishmen volunteered to fight in the British army and many died.
But the events of Easter week in 1916 changed the relationship between the majority of the Irish and Britain. An armed rebellion was organised by a small revolutionary organisation called the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood.
The Easter Rising was launched in Dublin on Easter Monday April 24 1916 https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/04/easter-rising-chronology-of-rebellion.html that ultimately sought the freedom of the Irish republic ( though minus the six counties.) when revolutionary socialists and nationalists attempted to to spark a general uprising across Ireland against British imperialism , beginning a process that would eventually lead to the Proclamation on behalf of the Provisional Government, proclaiming the whole of Ireland as a Sovereign Independent Republic.
The background to the rebellion was the centuries of national oppression suffered and felt by Irish people by under British.domination and rule, and the intensification of the national question around the issue of home rule ( limited self-governmet for Ireland within the United Kingdom )
In the lead-up to the Rising, the different groups involved in the nationalist cause were highly disparate both in their social make-up and political perspectives. However, the shared experience of internment forged a strong sense of collective identity and radicalised even those who had been only peripherally involved in the conflict.
The superior British forces in Ireland crushed the rebellion after six days of fighting and in the aftermath of the Easter Rising. the British authorities rounded up anyone suspected of taking part in the insurrection and executed 15 of the leaders of the rising, including Patrick Pearse and James Connolly. https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-connolly-working-class-hero.html
In the aftermath of the 1916 rising, roughly 2,000 Irish prisoners had been imprisoned in various Gaols and internment camps in Britain. Frongoch internment camp was originally used during the early stages of the First World War to house German prisoners in this abandoned whiskey distillery and the prisoners were contained in makeshift huts.
In the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, the German prisoners were moved and it was used for the internment of 1,800 untried Irishmen suspected of taking part in the Easter Rising.The Irish prisoners arrived in Frongoch on June 9th, 1916. Initially 1,836 Irishmen were sent to the camp at Frongoch, but some were released because they had been wrongly arrested and the number of detainees fell to five or six hundred. It was chosen because escape was all but impossible, with the nearest large town 20 miles away.
Frongoch has a unique place in the history of these islands but was largely overlooked until recently. Names such as Long Kesh, Magilligan, Maghaberry, Portlaoise, The Curragh and many others possess a resonance that has inspired many in the courage, determination and the triumphant human spirit shown by generations of prisoners during years of struggle. The very first such location was Frongoch.
Famously dubbed the ollscoil na réabhlóide, the University of Revolution, the internment camp at Frongoch was the location where the IRA was formed and where significant figures in the subsequent War of Independence, notably Michael Collins,trained internees in the tactics of guerrilla warfare and.became a fertile training ground for organising against the British rule of Ireland.
Alongside Michael Collins,among the prisoners were key figures in the Irish revolutionary period, including Richard Mulcahy, WT Cosgrave, Arthur Griffith who founded and later led the political party Sinn Féin, Sean T O'Kelly, Dick Mulcahy, Terence McSwiney and Tomas Mccurtain. as well as Volunteers from all over Ireland who had been party to the rebellion or preparations for revolt in their own counties. They were accorded the status of prisoners of war.
The internees were not supposed to have prisoner of war status but they were very much organised on military lines. Discipline was strict and loyalty almost absolute. This was very much brought out when their captors were trying to isolate those internees who had previously lived in England with a view to conscripting them into the British Army. The internees refused absolutely to cooperate, to the point of refusing to identify themselves to their captors.
There were two camps, the South Camp and the North Camp. The South Camp was based in the old buildings of the former whisky distillery while the North Camp was higher up in the direction of Capel Celyn. Conditions at Frongoch were appalling, even by the standards of the day. The editor of the Cork Free Press, Frank Gallagher, was one of the first journalists to accuse the authorities of lying about the conditions in the camp buildings were bitterly cold and infestated with rats.Some of the Irish prisoners named the two camps “Purgatory” and “Siberia”.
Wire fences enclosed the two, and up to 400 guards were stationed there at any one time to prevent escape, which was very unlikely. Conditions were basic. Roll-call was at 5.30 am, lights out at 9.30 pm. Men lived, ate and slept in huts, always in close proximity to one another. There was space to walk and take exercise, but little to no privacy, and the weather was usually cold.
It is difficult to read about the misery endured by the Irish prisoners in Frongoch, despite the abundance of water, conditions were unsanitary. Food quality was very poor, mainly frugal meals of bully beef, black bread and potatoes. The severe conditions were reflected in cases of scurvy, Sciatica, tuberculosis, a flu outbreak, and severe mental illness. To stave off ‘barbed-wire disease’, many turned to art.
Watercolour by Cathal MacDowell of a Frongoch South Camp dormitory
The camp medical doctors, local Welshmen Dr. David Peters and his nephew, Dr. R.J. Roberts, were caught between following camp rules and restrictions, and their duty to care for their patients. Dr. David Peters broke under the strain and drowned himself in a nearby river, leading to questions in the House of Commons
Aside from the roll-call’s, meals and a morning mass, the prisoners were largely left to their own devices by the guards for the remaining time, and it is in this that the legend of Frongoch was born. It took only a few days for the prisoners to elect a committee whose task it was to “run” the camp internally; very quickly, such government became dominated by militant nationalists, who would turn Frongoch into a “university of revolution”.
It must be remembered that only a certain proportion of the Frongoch internees were committed nationalists, but the opportunity for what we would describe today as “radicalisation” was obvious, given the perceived injustice of their incarceration. Those members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers who were in Frongoch leapt at the opportunity to use the place as a recruiting ground for the cause. And the camp proved an excellent opportunity for networking and training for the republicans. Up until then they had been in small clandestine groups across Ireland.
By concentrating the cream of the Irish Volunteers in Fron-goch the British had inadvertently advanced the cause of Irish republicanism. Men from Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht, who under normal circumstances would never have met in Ireland, were gathered in Wales, where they exchanged ideas and worked out the blueprint for revolution. The camp provided an ideal opportunity for them men to discuss their plans and hopes for a united Ireland in the future.
Irish National Party M.P. Tim Healy rued the establishment of the concentration camp at Fron-goch, saying the Home Secretary had created a "Sinn Fein University" for the inmates, with their education paid for by the British.
The village of Frongoch and surrounding area were strongly Welsh speaking, the equivalent of an Irish Gaeltacht. Many locals worked within the camp and came into frequent contact with the Irishmen. They soon learned that they had much in common with the inmates, such as their love for the countryside and their native languages.And it is said that some of the prisioners, including Michael Collins, made attempts to learn Welsh whilst at Frongoch.
The prisoners were drawn from across the class divisions and included labourers, teachers, poets, artists and writers. Effectively, they ran the prison themselves, and in informal efforts to share and improve their education they quickly established Irish classes, organised classes in reading, writing, languages, crafts – and sports events and were permitted to exercise with route marches across the Welsh countryside, organise fancy dress competitions, seasonal games at Halloween and sporting challenge matches.A typical example was the athletics day, in which Collins won the 100 yard race in 10.8 seconds.
The region of Wales in which the Irish prisoners found themselves ironically bore many similarities to Ireland. The local population had also suffered from evictions and enforced emigration, and soon after, established a Land Commission modelled on the Land League which was instigated by Michael Davitt in Ireland, even inviting Davitt to address a meeting at Blaenau Ffestiniog.
One of the biggest mistakes the British government made was to bring them all together in Frongoch. Michael Collins said Frongoch was where the tactics which would lead to the War of Independence were first discussed “at English expense”. Collins wrote that at least a quarter of the men at Frongoch were completely ignorant of the Easter Rising. They simply got caught up in the British authority’s national sweep. Aged just 26 when he was held at Frongoch, Collins was better able to handle the conditions than older men who had families at home. Collins wrote in correspondence: “There is only one thing to do while the situation is what it is, (and that is to) make what I can of it.” And there's no doubt that he did.
In December 1916, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George ordered the release of all remaining republican prisoners from Frongoch.The prisoners were released gradually, with those deemed less culpable being released first. On 23rd December 1916 the camp was shut down for good.
These untried prisoners returned to Ireland, following their internment and were greeted with huge crowds welcoming their return to Dublin as heroes,who had so many reasons to look forwards to a merry Christmas.
On December 26th, The Irish Times recorded: “Most, if not all of the young men who were arrested early last summer for having some connection, more or less, with the disastrous rebellion which has made last Easter week a landmark in the history of Ireland, have been released from the internment camps in which they were detained in England and Wales . . . they have been coming home in small parties, and it is hardly necessary to say that they are glad to be at liberty to return to their homes and friends for Christmas.”
In the space of six months, they went from being spat upon and attacked as they were frog marched through Dublin on their way to Gaol to being welcomed home as heroes. On release, many of the men returned home determined to end British rule in Ireland,and many also went on to form the Irish Republican Army (the IRA) giving Fron-goch an unusual but critical role in Irish, Welsh and British history. In 1918, Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in the General Election in Ireland and in January 1919 formed a breakaway government.That in turn sparked the Irish War of Independence, the guerrilla conflict that eventually led to the treaty establishing the Irish Free State, and later what is today's independent Republic of Ireland.In total, at least 30 men held at the Frongoch went on to become MPs in the new Irish parliament in Dublin.
Today none of the prison camp remains,Ysgol Bro Tryweryn junior school now stands on the site of the former camp, but a local man and former local councillor, Alwyn Jones, a history enthusiast with a passion for preserving the memory of the story of Fron-goch, lovingly maintains a small museum in the corner of a field adjacent to ‘Croke Park’ and a .commemorative plaque stands nearby, with inscriptions in Irish, Welsh and English. It was unveiled in Frongoch in the summer of 2002. The project was undertaken by the Liverpool branch of Conradh na Gaeilge / The Gaelic League with the support of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg / The Welsh language Society. Each year on Easter Monday, a small ceremony is held at the plaque.
For further reading Lyn Ebenezer has written a great book on Frongoch called Fron-Goch Camp 1916 - and the Birth of the IRA. Lyn gives credit to Seán O'Mahony who had written an earlier book on the Camp and without which Lyn says his own book would not have been written. The book is a fascinating read and I strongly recommend it, as it offers a unique Welsh perspective on this "university of revolution" where future leaders were forged.The book gives a previously untold insight of both in and outside the camp. He also very much empathises with the Irish republican tradition.
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