ON the Shankill and Falls Roads early this morning there was emotional solidarity among loyalists and nationalists. Fear and despondency were the shared reactions to the IRA ceasefire statement and the London bombing.
It was after midnight and the pubs were clearing. Feilim Mac an Iolar (21), from Shaw's Road in west Belfast, and a few of his pals had just left McEnaney's pub on the Glen Road, off the Falls. They were phoning for taxis home.
Their initial plan had been to head for Belfast's late bars but the bombing put paid to that. "Tonight I was scared, tonight I was frightened," Feilim said. "You wouldn't know when and where the loyalist paramilitaries might strike."
Over on the Shankill near a kebab take away a middle aged woman was in similar mood. "See me, I am so scared," she said. "I have a 16 year old son, and an 11 year old daughter, and I am just not going back to all that, to the barricades and the shooting, and all that shit."
Her husband wanted to dismiss her fears, but she was having none of it. "I am speaking as a mother here. If all that starts again I am getting out of this country."
"I'm telling you, the IRA'll get more than they bargained for," her husband said. "The loyalist paramilitaries will see to that." They both believed the IRA bore sole responsibility.
Back on the Falls, a 34 year old father of two, a republican, said the news of the bombing left him with a "sunken, terrible feeling". He blamed the British government and the unionists.
"I think the republican movement gave as much as they could. But the British government was just stringing them along, stringing them along the whole way, hoping people would say `we're not going back to violence'."
Standing opposite the Andersonstown RUC barracks, he said the RUC, with their overtime guaranteed again, would welcome the end of the ceasefire. "The peelers'll have no bother paying for their mortgages now."
Aisling Walls (19), a University of Ulster student from Twinbrook in West Belfast, said that, with the British government and unionists refusing to talk to Sinn Fein, the breakdown in the ceasefire was inevitable.
A male contemporary of hers asserted the IRA had no business returning to violence. "They had the advantage and could have carried on with the ceasefire," he said.
He wanted to develop his point but two women in their fifties who arrived on the scene shouted him down. "You're only a young fella. What do you know about it?" one of them demanded.
"My father was shot by the security forces..." he began to protest.
"Sure we've all had people shot by the security forces," the woman fired back. "The IRA were dead right to blow up Canary Wharf. They were right because John Major and David Trimble wouldn't sit down with Sinn Fein."
"We don't want violence, but we won't let them `uns walk on us," she added by way of further justification as she hailed a taxi home.
And as the Shankill and Falls Roads began to clear of people, armoured RUC Land Rovers patrolled up and down the wet streets.
