A new book by Kildare historian James Durney is shedding light on one of the darkest and least remembered chapters of Ireland’s Civil War — the internment of over 5,500 republican prisoners at Newbridge Barracks and the Curragh’s Tintown camps between 1922 and 1924.
In Special Powers: Civil War Internment at Newbridge Barracks and Tintown Camp, 1922–24, Durney explores how men who once fought together against British rule became bitter enemies.
Captured republicans found themselves imprisoned by former comrades under the new Free State regime — a government that proved, in Durney’s words, “more ruthless in victory than the empire it replaced.”
While no Irish prisoners died in British custody during the War of Independence, over two dozen internees perished behind the wire of the Free State camps. Torture, execution, and hunger defined their daily lives.
Yet the spirit of resistance endured. Two daring mass escapes followed — 112 men tunnelling out of Newbridge Barracks and 71 more from Tintown Camp — along with the largest hunger strike in Irish history.
Among the prisoners were some of Ireland’s most notable figures: writers Ernie O’Malley and Peadar O’Donnell, future Taoiseach Seán Lemass, and John Higgins, father of President Michael D. Higgins.
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Using newly uncovered documents and firsthand accounts, Durney paints a vivid portrait of courage and conviction amid betrayal.
He argues that “the final battles of the Civil War were not fought in the hills or towns of Ireland, but behind barbed wire — where ideals and loyalties were tested to destruction.”
