Let’s start with a dictionary’s definition of a moral dilemma: noun. A situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two courses of action, either of which entails transgressing a moral principle.

Don Blaney has many characteristics but naivety is not one of them. In his role as a youth worker in Wolverhampton he had accompanied young men to court and for more serious cases had referred them to a Labour Party colleague who worked for the radical lawyer Ivan Geffen – who once represented two of the Birmingham Six and had a long record of challenging the corrupt practices of the West Midlands Police. Don had witnessed police officers who had changed witness statements enter the witness box and commit perjury and yet when it was found that they had lied under oath – and the defendant was acquitted – not one of them faced any sanction. Yet despite his experience in English courts, he was still surprised by the guards’ doctoring of his daughter’s statement. To his disappointment he discovered that the culture of ‘breaking the law to keep the law’ within police ranks was obviously an international one. 

The prosecution were now alleging that Don’s daughter had given a sworn statement that the leading IRA man Freddie Black was a regular visitor to his house and once home in Passage West, and after listening to his daughter’s outrage about how her statement had been altered, Don retired to his bedroom to contemplate his next course of action. He had thought his mind had been made up some nine months before but this development changed everything and he now considered using what he called the ‘nuclear option’ and possibly bringing the trial to a crashing halt, with all the deadly consequences that may follow his decision.

The source of his dilemma went back to February 2008, a week or so after, his third arrest. He had a call from an acquaintance to offer belated condolences regarding his mother’s passing and ask if Don would pay a visit to his office the next time it was convenient. Something about the content and the tone told Don that it was in his best interests if he paid that visit sooner rather than later. During the following week Don took an office chair and waited in expectation for the man to finish off some paperwork. Finally, his pen came to rest and he looked across his desk as if he were still deliberating about what to say. ‘And how are you doing?’ he asked. Don answered as well as could be expected, given that he was still coming to terms with his mother’s death, that his face had appeared on various newspaper front pages and in national news bulletins, and that his fledging publishing business was about to go under because of it.  The man replied he had seen the coverage and that’s why he made up his mind to call as he had hoped that after three years that the whole affair had faded away. ‘But it looks like that’s not going to happen now,’ he said, before he added that he was about to do something he had never done before and would never do again: he was going to break a professional code of confidentiality. But before he did, he wanted to know if Don had ever spoken with Freddie Black and Don said he had been asked to do so but refused. The man nodded in approval and then said, ‘Then make sure you never do. Freddie Black has been working for the guards for many years.’ The man went on to explain that Black had only been a young man and in the IRA for a short time when Special Branch detectives had ‘turned’ him. A short time after that, as pressure mounted, he confessed to his mother what had happened. She had a reputation for being a very staunch republican but it turned out that her maternal instinct and determination to protect her son’s life, whatever the cost, (as to be caught as an informer by the IRA meant almost certain death) was much stronger than her political convictions and she then began to assist him in his dual role as he worked his way up to become a major figure in the IRA.

 The man then returned to his paperwork without looking up at Don. The meeting was at an end.