There is a sense of loyalist fatalism and defeatism behind the latest street violence, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
As parts of Belfast were burning on Saturday night, a large audience was listening to the Belfast element of the BBC Prom concert outside City Hall. The conflict has often thrown up such odd juxtapositions.
In the main event in London's Royal Albert Hall, the orchestra played Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory - but not in Belfast. Thank goodness for that. The irony would have been too much to bear.
Driving around Belfast yesterday was like driving around the city 15 or 20 years ago at times of particular crisis: smouldering buildings, buses and cars; roads pock-marked from blast-bombs; bricks, stones, bottles and all the general detritus of the rioting strewn on the streets; council workers engaged in a massive clean-up.
Police officers as well as paramilitaries and their supporters were being treated for weekend injuries.
A senior UDA member was said to be in a serious condition after being caught in a blast-bomb explosion, the device having apparently been inadvertently thrown in his direction by a UVF paramilitary. A police officer was critically ill and believed to have been blinded after a blast-bomb blew up in his face.
About 25 loyalists, most of them young, were being questioned by police after the weekend rioting. Some of the "foot-soldiers" involved in the trouble-making were as young as five or six.
These are the new generation of rioters who are carrying on an old tradition fuelled by the grievances, fears, insecurities and hatred passed down to them by their older siblings, parents and grandparents.
The younger ones were entrusted with throwing the bricks and the bottles. It is unclear whether their parents cannot control them, are unaware of their whereabouts, or whether they tolerate or even encourage such activity. Older loyalists would have handled the petrol-bombs; more senior loyalists the blast-bombs; the established players would have fired the guns.
Some workers went home early yesterday as the bush telegraph warned of more trouble to come. Teatime traffic was at a standstill in many parts of the city due to loyalist protests.
What is happening in loyalism is a combination of orchestration - mostly by the UVF, which has been smarting at pressure put on it by the PSNI - and alienation.
The trouble which flared in and around the re-routed Orange Order Whiterock parade on Saturday triggered violence in the west, north, east and south of the city and in many areas outside Belfast.
It was clearly designed to cause damage and injury, if not death, and to stretch police and British army resources.
Guns, blast-bombs, pipe-bombs and petrol-bombs do not appear by accident, as the PSNI chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde, pointed out yesterday. Provisional republicans worked generally successfully to ensure that nationalists were not dragged into the violence, just as loyalists did when nationalists rioted in Ardoyne on July 12th - another day of nihilistic conflagration.
The atmosphere before Saturday's parade was laced with tension. There was an ominous sense of deja-vu when, on Thursday, the DUP leader Ian Paisley warned that re-routing the parade "could be the spark that would kindle a fire that there'll be no putting out".
Dr Paisley down the years has been heard and seen in similar contexts. He made his remarks after he and the Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey had discussions about the parade with Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary. The question must be asked: was Sir Reg wise to be so close to the DUP leader at such an incendiary time?
The Orange Order, at best, appears clueless, although the name Pontius Pilate comes to mind.
The chief constable said he had evidence that its members were involved in the violence. Yet all the order's Belfast chief, Dawson Bailie, could say on the BBC was that it was the fault of the "secretary of state, the chief constable and the parades commission", and he was not "condemning anything at all at this moment in time".
Orange Order members complain that republicans have exploited the parades issue, and there is a certain truth there, but the order's leadership seems to have no strategic sense whatsoever. In Derry, simply by talking, the Orange Order and the Apprentice Boys could come to creative accommodations with nationalists without any loss of face. But in Belfast the Orangemen seem to lack the tactical wit to talk directly to nationalists or to take them on in the propaganda stakes, whatever about their civic responsibility to try to ensure a stable and peaceful society.
So what can be done? The orchestration of the trouble is an operational matter for the PSNI. That is difficult enough, but even more challenging is how to deal with the deeply-felt working-class loyalist sense of alienation. We hear about a one-way raft of concessions to republicans: the re-arrest and re-release of Shankill bomber Seán Kelly; the planned disbandment of the home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment; demilitarisation; an upcoming amnesty for those "on the run".
On the big stage, what have unionism and loyalism lost? More than 30 years after the SDLP endorsed the principle, Sinn Féin and the IRA now accept that the North stays in the Union until a majority decides otherwise. Non-violent dissident republicans frequently tell unionists that that means the "Provos lost", but this does not seem to penetrate.
Loyalist fatalism and defeatism is a dangerous reality. Loyalists lack the cohesion and focus which Sinn Féin and, to a significantly lesser extent, the SDLP provide in working-class nationalist areas.
Loyalists need strong, positive political leadership to drag them out of the mire. The only party which could do that is the DUP, and while the party is certainly strong, it prefers to accentuate the negative rather than the positive.
As well as the DUP getting down and dirty at the loyalist coalface, what the IRA does next could have a bearing on whether there is any prospect of unionists and nationalists having some form of shared future. If the IRA delivers convincingly on decommissioning and if, in turn, the DUP indicates a willingness to test the IRA over a reasonable period of time, there would be some hope that the space Northern Ireland desperately needs for political and social progress just might be provided.