Yes, the policy of detaining civilians en masse without trial - although understandable in the circumstances of the time - nevertheless represents a dark chapter in Britain's war. It grew out of the genuine fear, albeit greatly stoked by the press, that fifth columnists had been sent to infiltrate the country and undermine British defences against the coming German invasion. Churchill, initially a strong supporter of internment and who on becoming PM (May 1940) immediately agreed to the internment of all male 'enemy aliens' between the ages of 16 and 60 currently living in Britain, realised as early as August 1940 that the real threat was mostly exaggerated, however by this time the arrests had been made. Many of the internees, who now included women and children, would not be released for years.

Perhaps the most shameful aspect of internment was that it predominantly picked up Jewish refugees who had fled to Britain to escape the terror visited on them by the Nazis. Speaking in 1940 about Britain's internment of 'enemy aliens' Hitler gloated that, "the British have detained in concentration camps the very people we found it necessary to detain." Nevertheless, at least at Hutchinson camp on the Isle of Man, while many of the internees had arrived upset, insulted, stressed, despairing and sometimes suicidal, and the experience was a grim one for most, in that camp’s rarefied environment and with their basic needs catered for, many of the artists, musicians and academics interned there began to thrive. Overall however the policy of internment was a shameful misstep which Britain came to view as an embarrassment but for which the government has never formally apologised.

There's a recently published book about the Hutchinson internment camp on the Isle of Man, 'The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A True Story of an Artist, a Spy and a Wartime Scandal', by Simon Parkin (Hodder & Stoughton, 2022).

Meles meles wrote:

It grew out of the genuine fear, albeit greatly stoked by the press, that fifth columnists had been sent to infiltrate the country and undermine British defences against the coming German invasion.

On the night of 10 May 1940 - the day that the Netherlands was invaded - the British Home Office had issued a statement warning of enemy paratroops "wearing uniforms calculated to deceive observers", while on the same day the Air Ministry advised that German paratroopers might "descend with their arms raised above their heads, as if to surrender, but in fact holding primed grenades". There were also official warnings for the population to be particularly alert to the presence of Fifth Columnists already in the country, possibly masquerading as refugees or as trusted figures in the community such as clergymen or policemen, but armed and ready to support the German invasion, provide the enemy with information, sabotage defenses and generally sow confusion.

But for all these official fears, it took the popular press to take matters to levels of almost comic absurdity.

Under the headline "Germans dropped women parachutists as decoys", on 13 May 1940 the Daily Express reported eye-witness accounts of the invasion of the Netherlands, with German paratroopers dressed, not in Nazi uniforms, but in skirts and blouses. When the disguised paratroopers landed, another witness claimed that men and women who'd been working as cleaners and servants, emerged from basements and back doors wearing German uniforms. These traitorous individuals, so the witness said, had come to Holland claiming to be refugees from Nazi oppression but were really sleeper agents only posing as asylum seekers and that they had been deliberately infiltrated into Holland in advance of the German invasion.

Germans dropped women parachutists as decoys.
On the first day of the invasion parachutists dropped out of the sky like a vast flock of vultures. Most of them were disguised in Allied or Dutch uniforms, others came down in the uniform of Dutch policemen and began to direct the population in the streets and mislead the army. One 'policeman' told a group of isolated Dutch troops that their friends were round the corner. When the Dutch troops turned the corner, German troops, barricaded across the road, slaughtered them …
But, most fantastic of all, the steward of an English ship said that he and the crew had watched parachutists descend in women’s clothing. They wore blouses and skirts and each carried a sub-machine-gun. The steward could not tell if they were women or men disguised as women. Several eye-witnesses in the boat confirmed it, and said that others had come down disguised as priests, peasants and civilians …
As machine-guns came out of the sky like unnatural lighting peppering the streets below, the Fifth Column crept out of their homes in German uniforms, heavily armed. Holland had combed out the Fifth Column for weeks before, but as the doors opened at 3am the men who had been proclaimed anti-Nazis and refugees from Germany, held rifles.


(Fact Wizard, I don't know where you live and whether you are familiar with the Daily Express newspaper, but while such exaggerated and alarmist reporting is still very much their style, I am pretty sure that they weren't always so bad and that in May 1940 they were just swept up in the national mood.)

Either way the hysteria spread.  On 24 May, in an opinion piece written by George Ward Price the Daily Mail's veteran foreign correspondent (and incidentally a former great enthusiast for Hitler and for fascism generally), the Daily Mail, the Express's main rival paper, blared "Act! Act! Act! Do It Now!". Price continued, "All refugees … should be drafted without delay to a remote part of the country and kept under strict supervision ... You fail to realise that every German is an enemy agent."  

There was also widespread ignorance of the true numbers of foreigners to whom Britain had offered asylum. A poll had asked British citizens to estimate the number of refugees who had come to Britain from Nazi Germany in the previous six years. Respondents typically put the number at anywhere between 2 and 4 million (when the population of the whole UK including Northern Ireland was about 49 million). The true figure was just 73,500. Moreover most refugees spoke thickly accented English and were unaccustomed to British social norms; accordingly they would make rather ineffectual spies. Fifth columnists, if they existed, were far likelier to come from the ranks of British fascists (and on 23 May the police had arrested Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists and about 35 of his followers, individuals who would have likely supported Hitler's invasion of Britain from within). But hysteria had overcome logic and so Britain did indeed "Act!" and all "enemy aliens" were indeed promptly locked up.

At least WWII hysteria stopped short of stoning dachshunds. I always thought that was an urban myth, but ...
 https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWantigerman.htm

I live close to the Cannock Chase German Cemetery where most of the dead died in prison camps in the UK including internees. Odd to find among the German names such English names as Brown, presumably they were German sympathizers who died whilst interned.

There was some mention of the Cannock Chase War Cemetery in autumn 2021 Currently Reading - Page 2 (forumotion.com) - Sincerely Thine having read a library book that mentioned the destruction of a German airship during World War I.

I'm from mid-Staffordshire - when I adopted my present cat a couple of years ago, a lady from Cats Protection drove me over to Hednesford where the lady who was fostering the kitty lived and we passed quite close to the Cemetery.

Five airships were shot down over British soil in WW I, the crew of one, the L33, survived but the other four were all (bar three lucky individuals) killed, all of them are buried in a special plot at the Cannock Chase Cemetery.  
One of the three survivors of the L48 died in the POW camp on Cannock Chase in 1918 and is buried in the Commonwealth Cemetery nearby. So there are more than 80 Zeppelin crewmen buried there.

Whilst I'm pleased to see members - both new and old - rambling outside the box (and it is very much an accepted and valued speciality of this site) I did however think this thread was about British internment of "enemy aliens" during WW2. So why are you all wittering on about Zeppelin bombing raids during WW1?

For your convenience I've opened a new thread Zeppelin attacks on Britain in WW1 about German airship raids over Britain.

Okay MM, as you are heading us back on track here is a link to a database from circa 2010 from The Guardian listing prisoner-of-war camps in Britain.  https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/nov/08/prisoner-of-war-camps-uk

I looked for entries for Staffordshire and I think the nearest one to my neck of the wood is one which is stated to have been a hospital facility at Great Haywood.  Of course in those days Great Haywood, Little Haywood and Colwich were distinct from each other but with expansion since the war they run into each other somewhat.

Edit: correction 'each other' not 'each others'.

Meles meles wrote:

Whilst I'm pleased to see members - both new and old - rambling outside the box (and it is very much an accepted and valued speciality of this site) I did however think this thread was about British internment of "enemy aliens" during WW2. So why are you all wittering on about Zeppelin bombing raids during WW1?

For your convenience I've opened a new thread Zeppelin attacks on Britain in WW1 about German airship raids over Britain.

I don't "witter" or try not to anyway. My reply contained reference to the POW camps, so it wasn't entirely off thread.
Part of the fun on sites like this is going off at a tangent, if a thread sticks too rigidly to the initial post and a new one is thought necessary you'll end up with hundreds of very narrow threads, most with one or two comments that lie stagnant and unloved. Navigating such a maze becomes a chore. 
If comments are broadly within topic there's no harm in deviating a little. If I'd gone off about Britney Spears v Christina Aguilera there would be something to complain about.

P.S. Britney of course!

Going back to LiR's post about the hospital. It was built at Brindley Heath in 1916, by then the two camps housed hundreds of soldiers, part of one had been fenced off to create a POW camp for captured Germans, so a hospital was necessary.  
It all closed in 1919, but the hospital site became housing run by the Ministry of Pensions until the 1930s. Today only the foundations can be traced in the undergrowth.

I suppose I may be marginally off track if the camp was built in 1916 as that was World War I rather than World War II.

Edit 'off track' not 'of'.

MarkUK wrote:

Part of the fun on sites like this is going off at a tangent, if a thread sticks too rigidly to the initial post and a new one is thought necessary you'll end up with hundreds of very narrow threads, most with one or two comments that lie stagnant and unloved. Navigating such a maze becomes a chore. 

Fair point. I didn't mean to criticise and actually I'll freely admit to often wandering off topic myself. So please continue to ramble and deviate.