Someone said once that predictions are very hard to make, especially about the future. As I write, behind-the-scenes efforts to resolve the Drumcree crisis continue. At the same time, Mr Tony Blair has laid it on the line: the law will be upheld.

He must be keenly aware that if the impasse isn't broken and a face-saving climbdown strategy fails to emerge, then the stage is set for a major confrontation between the security forces and the militant elements at Drumcree.

In public relations terms, it has been a horrible week for the Orange Order. The soft-spoken pillars of Ulster society who lead that body bear not the slightest physical resemblance to subversives seeking to undermine the law and bring anarchy and chaos. Yet they have been unable to halt the attacks on mostly Protestant police officers at Drumcree and elsewhere, not to mention the violence, burning and intimidation all over Northern Ireland.

From an Orange point of view, the story which should be dominating the headlines is the suppression of their right to walk the queen's highway. But instead, the organisation finds itself riding a tiger that snarls and bites at the security forces night after night. Instead of civil and religious liberty, the issue has become the rule of law versus the law of the jungle.

The church-burnings and arson attacks have been the ugliest manifestations of sectarianism - but in a strange way it is the small, almost workaday incidents that affect one most. As the Orangemen marched to Drumcree, a young loyalist camp-follower taunted Garvaghy Road Catholics by jumping up and down, shouting "Robbie Hamill! Robbie Hamill!". He was re-enacting the horrific murder of a young Portadown Catholic whose head was stamped on by loyalists in the town centre while police were nearby.

Then there were the leaflets depicting Mr Blair visiting the burned-out ruins of St James's church at Aldergrove. Biblical quotations on the leaflet proclaimed that this was the right and proper way to deal with the infidel ("ye shall destroy their altars . . . and burn their graven images with fire"). Then there was the militant loyalist who spoke with equanimity about marching down the Garvaghy Road even if it meant walking across dead bodies.

It has been a week-long nightmare for Portadown. Normally a quiet, industrious place with some attractive features, it has become in the eyes of the world what Birmingham, Alabama was during the civil rights days in the US Deep South.

But the sorriest institution of all, as a dreadful week comes to a potentially cataclysmic close, is the Church of Ireland. Drumcree should be known only as a holy place: the church building itself is worthy of a Constable painting and the rural setting would normally be considered idyllic.

Instead of being a place of quiet prayer and contemplation, these hallowed environs are being seen in the eyes of the world as a launch-pad for the destruction of civil society in Northern Ireland. Beside one of the island's most beautiful graveyards, police officers are being subjected to horrific injuries, not to mention violent abuse and threats.

The agony in the voice of the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Eames, over what is happening in his diocese is palpable. He is no Archbishop Tutu; he is an establishment figure, but sometimes the great and the good deserve our sympathy. It will be interesting to watch over the coming days how he meets the greatest challenge of his ecclesiastical career so far.

It is a cliche to say the Garvaghy Road is a place under siege. As I write, there are reports of a "solidarity convoy" of nationalists arriving on the estate. Almost on cue, a statement is released in the name of the "Portadown Action Command" warning: "Any driver of any vehicle supplying any goods of any kind to the Garvaghy Road will be summarily executed".

The same statement informs the residents' spokesman, Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith: "You Mr McKenna have contaminated the ground upon which you walk long enough. Your day is almost over."

One notes the fussy grammar ("the ground upon which you walk") but the threats are real. All of this puts a huge burden on the Prime Minister to ensure that Cool Britannia does not become Cruel UK. So far he shows every sign of meeting the challenge.

Mr Mac Cionnaith has become the greatest hate-figure of recent times in Northern Ireland, where demons are an essential feature of political life. Much has been written about his past, especially his six-year prison sentence in 1982 for carrying a firearm with intent, false imprisonment and hijacking. However, little attention has been given to his present: what are his aspirations and, more to the point, what is his bottom line?

One of the odder features of a bizarre saga has been the apparent paucity of direct contact with Mr Mac Cionnaith himself, for all the negotiations and back-channel communications swirling around him. Perhaps if more attention had been paid at an earlier stage to Mr Mac Cionnaith's demand for an "equality agenda" for Portadown Catholics, then this crisis might never have reached the current temperature.

The RUC Chief Constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, is facing the greatest challenge so far of his policing career. If he can say he held the line, successfully upheld the law and showed the RUC could stand firm in a situation where many of its members must have privately sympathised with the Orange cause, it will considerably strengthen his position vis-a-vis the Patten Commission. Perhaps more than any other institution, the RUC has been on trial this week.

A bad week then, overall, for Protestant Ulster. A community with huge potential and much to offer the world has, through the violence of some and the obduracy of others, become almost a pariah in media terms.

Meanwhile, nationalists - more politically sophisticated, as always - have successfully maintained an image of victimhood that only the maverick actions of some republican splinter-group could damage.

With their greater media savvy and political cohesion, the nationalists are well out in front: but until a situation develops where both sides feel they are winning, then Northern Ireland will continue to be a society that lives from crisis to crisis.