Days 9, 10: Classes and a visit from a (former) IRA commander

Hero? Terrorist? Or something different?

Tommy McKearney, a former IRA commander, discusses Irish history and his perspective on it with Kate Zibluk, Jonathan King and Sara E. McNeil.

McKearney and Ieimedia instructor Joan Weber.

When I looked at Tommy McKearney's website http://www.tommymckearney.com/  I expected a wild man. At 18, he joined the Irish Republican Army provisionals or "provos," the Catholic paramilitary/guerilla organization. They called themselves freedom-fighters; others called them terrorists. He was arrested for killing a member of a protestant paramilitary group and he spent seven years on the run, and 13 years in prison, where he became one of the "blanket men" who refused to wear the jailhouse uniform of a common prisoner. The British who imprisoned him at first allowed him and his compatriots to wear the street clothes of a political prisoner. But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher changed their status and called them common criminals. To an Irishman, Catholic or Protestant, it's one thing to be a criminal, but it's far worse to be pushed back in status, even in prison.

So they refused to wear the uniforms, and they went on a hunger strike. Their leader, Bobby Sands, died, but McKearney gave up the strike when some privileges were restored. He was eventually freed, and he married. He worked a variety of jobs, and he is currently a conflict-resolution consultant, of all things, hired by the European Union as an arbitrator to help resolved disputes between factions in a still-tense country.

McKearney is also a proud socialist who aims to to try to fight the evils, as he perceives them, of capitalism.

But he wasn't what I expected. He is soft-spoken and thoughtful. He doesn't hate the English or the protestants, though his two brothers died amid the "Troubles."

At 61, he sees that the fighters, such as himself, are aging, and he has hopes for the next generations. While there don't seem to be any chips on his small shoulders, he doesn't make any apologies. "We were at war and in war you do things you wouldn't otherwise do," he said.

But he doesn't admit to any crimes either. He carefully says he was arrested "for" a murder, or "in connection" with one.

Maybe he's trying to justify his own deeds or those of the organization in which he participated that killed innocent people in bombings and shootings for 30 years.

All I know is that one person's war may be another person's crime spree. He freely discusses comparisons with the IRA, Hamas, the Black Panthers and others.

Though Northern Ireland is officially at peace, the men and women of McKierney's generation are still active. Some hold grudges, some have moved on.

Tommy McKearney and many like him, scarred by war, crime or whatever you want to call it, walk among us.

Noble freedom-fighter who sacrificed his youth for principal? Violent, angry terrorist? Sociopath?

I honestly don't know. But I do know that meeting him is part of the experience of the Armagh Project, and it's an education you can't get in books.

See him and listen to him yourself, and see what you think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KMDSqr9fZ0&feature=youtu.be