By Tommy McKearney

There is a real fear in the north that the current outbreak of rioting in Belfast might lead to an even greater round of trouble. Unlike occasions over the past four or five years when it was possible to say that a small group of UDA/LVF hardliners were attempting to gain organisational advantage over their loyalist rivals, it appears that the latest outbreak involves those ostensibly supporting the Good Friday Agreement. People have been shot and wounded in exchanges of gunfire and little secret is being made of the fact that both the Provisional IRA and the UVF have been involved in the shootings.

Very often there is a tendency to declare that all parties to the conflict are culpable and that so called ‘sensible’ people should declare a plague on both their houses and loudly demand that calm be restored. If only it were that simple!

The latest round of trouble began at a time when Sinn Fein was striving with all its power to have Alex Maskey elected Lord Mayor of Belfast. This was no minor perk for the party. By gaining the office, it allows party spin doctors reassure the faithful that demographics are in their favour and that the Adams prediction of an all-Ireland republic by 2016 is not only possible but looking increasingly likely. Such points are extremely important to win for a movement that is getting farther away from its old moorings with every passing day.

The major task for Sinn Fein was to convince the middle-class unionists in the Alliance Party to side with it during the vote in the City Hall.

The last time such an opportunity had presented itself, an Alliance Party councillor refused to vote for Maskey on the grounds that the Provos had not decomissioned their weapons.

At such a delicate time and with such a valuable prize at stake, it is very unlikely that the leadership of Sinn Fein would not endeavour to persuade the IRA to desist from all armed actions while simultaneously attempting to dissuade the residents of interface areas from provoking their loyalist neighbours, and certainly not in the goldfish bowl that is the Short Strand.

There is of course the possibility that simple blind bigotry ran out of control and two utterly implacable enemies just couldn’t be kept from fighting. This is the most acceptable tale for the ‘eyes to heaven’ trendies. It does though; overlook the obvious fact that no matter how tough the Short Strand residents talk, they are not daft. They would not willingly provoke a major loyalist onslaught if only for the good and sensible reason that they would lose heavily. The Short Strand is a small nationalist enclave surrounded and outnumbered by a large loyalist hinterland. Most worrying for the nationalist residents is the fact that they are ‘over the bridge’ and isolated from the rest of nationalist Belfast. In times of intense conflict in the city, there is little avenue of escape from Short Strand and very little hope of reinforcements from outside.

In reality, the outbreak of violent incidents is without much doubt, the manifestation of a gut reaction from unionist reactionaries unwilling to come to terms with the changing face of Belfast and the new outlook required by the Good Friday Agreement. As Bill Clinton indicated - old ways die hard. There is perhaps another and more chilling thinking behind the disturbances. Over the past two centuries in Belfast there has been organised and violent resistance to any form of political liberalisation. Regardless of how modest the proposals have been, there has always been a hysterical and dangerous opposition. The result has been to either prohibit or greatly modify what ever is mooted. It happened to Home Rule, to the Outdoor Relief Movement, to Civil Rights and there may be people now counting on it stalling any drift away from sectarianism. It is fascist in spirit and it is very much in the essence of Northern Ireland. Try as Sinn Fein might, Northern Ireland is a state that they won’t easily reform.