History
Long Kesh was a target in Operation Green (Ireland), a second front to Operation Sea Lion which was the planned Nazi invasion of the UK. Long Kesh was to be destroyed by German paratroopers while Aldergrove, Nutts Corner and Langford Lodge were to be captured.
From 1971 the then disused base became the Long Kesh Detention Centre. It was here that republicans were interned after August 9, 1971, when security forces launched dawn raids to arrest 452 known or suspected members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). From 1976 these makeshift structures were abandoned in favour of the newly built H-Blocks in what became HM Prison Maze.
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“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)