As golfing hero Rory Mclroy brought pride and joy to Northern Ireland this week, the rioters were on the streets of Belfast, dragging the city back to the darkest days of the Troubles. While armed and masked men took to the streets of East Belfast, just down the road, Rory McIlroy's family and friends were celebrating his outstanding success.
Indeed, when the new US Open champion returned home on Tuesday night, stepping on to the tarmac at Belfast City airport, one of the city's most potent landmarks loomed behind him for the cameras – the giant Harland and Wolff shipyard cranes, symbols of the city's mighty industrial past. The same cranes that overshadow East Belfast, scene of this week's wreckage and rioting. And, as the houses in the Short Strand were under attack from loyalist thugs, a few miles away in the homes of Holywood – where Rory grew up – his delighted supporters partied into the night.
Nothing could show the two faces of Northern Ireland better. One which is positive and forward-looking; the other which is locked into the past and where good, decent people struggle to live normal lives.
A sign of the 'new' Northern Ireland is that many of those who watched him achieve golfing glory at the weekend are unsure if Rory Mclroy is a Catholic or a Protestant – and they don't care. But in the riot-plagued streets of the Short Strand and Lower Newtownards Road, ancient enmities and sectarianism are still very much alive. The sad truth is that, in working-class communities, they never went away.
It was 10 years ago this month that Catholic children as young as five years of age were forced to walk a gauntlet of abuse from loyalist protestors outside Ardoyne's Holy Cross school. Bricks and bottles, as well as petrol, acid and blast bombs, rained down on young schoolgirls and their parents.
This week, three-year-old Jodie Cunningham – a cushion over her head to protect her from flying bricks – was smuggled to safety through the back gate of her grandparents' Short Strand home as loyalists pelted the house with missiles.
There has undoubtedly been progress in Northern Ireland in recent imes – but not nearly as much as the propagandists for the political progress would have you believe. In what other 'normal' Western European country do children still live in fear and old people remain terrified they'll be murdered in their beds as a mob go on the rampage outside?
The trouble this week started when dozens of masked UVF men from the Lower Newtownards Road entered the nationalist Short Strand. Wearing camouflage clothing and surgical gloves, they attacked houses, cars, and any Catholic they came across.
How did this come about? The incursion was organised by the UVF's East Belfast commander. A former prisoner from a well-known loyalist family, his nickname following this week's orgy of violence is 'the Beast of the East'. But it's a tag many are uncomfortable with because they fear that, in the sick world of loyalist paramilitaries, it will win him a new following, just as the late UDA commander Johnny Adair attracted more groupies once he was branded 'Mad Dog'.
The UVF commander and his apologists say that their violence is motivated by the fact that no-one is listening to the loyalist community and that both the Irish and British governments and the Stormont politicians ignore working-class Protestants.
The reality is different. This UVF commander's main driving force is money. Across the city, the Shankill UVF's members and supporters have benefited hugely from official funding – in terms of community sector projects. They are now therefore 'bought off' and content to let the peace process continue. But no such largesse has yet found its way into the East Belfast UVF's coffers. The commander also sees UDA leader Jackie McDonald and his men profit financially and politically. McDonald, for example, is a regular visitor to the Aras and was an official guest at one Dublin event to honour the Queen last month.
'"S", [the UVF commander] is probably thinking that if he keeps up another few nights of violence, Martin McAleese might have a word in the right person's ear and secure him 50 grand or more,' a loyalist source told me yesterday.
The current violence is also motivated by the fact that the authorities have been clamping down on loyalist crime in this area of Belfast. The Serious Organised Crime Agency seized a pub in East Belfast two months ago. 'Property of the UVF' has since been painted on its walls.
While 'S' himself doesn't take drugs, most of his men do and they're also heavily involved in the trade. The UVF commander has been visibly upping the ante in East Belfast for weeks. Paramilitary murals, for example, have recently replaced community ones. One wall, which previously honoured Glentoran football club, now pays homage to the UVF. The death in 2007 of David Ervine – leader of the UVF's political wing, the Progressive Unionist Party – weakened political control over the paramilitary group. In a highly sexist society and without a paramilitary CV, Ervine's successor Dawn Purvis lacked the gravitas to influence the hardmen.
And so, on Monday night, when the UVF initiated the violence, republicans in the Short Strand retaliated. It was they who fired the first shots. Loyalists then opened fire across the peaceline. This wasn't meant to happen. We were all assured that the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitaries had decommissioned. If so, where did these weapons on both sides come from?
Sources say the guns used in the Short Strand were from IRA arms dumps not decommissioned, and taken by disgruntled members of the organisation. On the ground, Sinn Féin has tried hard to stop republicans responding to loyalist violence and has given the names of 'riotous elements' to the PSNI. But many people – the younger generation and old hands alike – won't listen. Ex-IRA leader Billy McKee, aged 89, sent solidarity greetings yesterday to republican rioters and told them that if he was a few years younger, he'd join them.
Depressingly, it's 41 years ago this week since McKee and other IRA gunmen defended the Short Strand from within the grounds of a local Catholic church, in what was the Provos' first major action of the Troubles – the 'Battle of St Matthews'. Nothing so significant is happening this week, but it's still dangerous, and the fear, of course, is that, as the Twelfth of July approaches, the situation could deteriorate further.
The PSNI's 'softly, softly' approach has puzzled some observers who wonder why they don't restore public order sharply and swiftly. But political considerations are at work. Police chiefs and their government bosses don't want dozens injured or killed by plastic bullets. It wouldn't fit the image of the shiny, new Northern Ireland and it could dramatically worsen the security situation, creating anger in other loyalist and republican communities.
What is clear is that despite the ceasefires, raw sectarianism and political division remain rife. Apart from in middle-class areas, Catholics and Protestants still live in different housing estates, their children go to different schools, and people generally still marry someone from within their own community.
Northern Ireland is back on the map this week for all the wrong reasons. Japanese, German and US television crews over to cover Rory Mclroy's homecoming found themselves filming the Short Strand riots as well.
This week, hundreds of families in Belfast are living in fear of more attacks. The gunmen and the rioters are back on the streets. Away from the city's designer shops and trendy bars, beyond the middle-class co-operation and the happy smiley Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness two-hander, life in the North is far from normal. Sadly, the 'new' Northern Ireland isn't quite as 'new' as we like to believe.
