Fear and loathing in the birthplace of the Troubles

The television pictures give the impression that the trouble in north Belfast is all about two warring tribes, brimming over with bitterness and hatred, and whose mission in life is to triumph over the other side.

The television pictures give the impression that the trouble in north Belfast is all about two warring tribes, brimming over with bitterness and hatred, and whose mission in life is to triumph over the other side.

Certainly, there are people around who revel in rioting and confrontation: the unemployed youths who could be seen enthusiastically getting stuck in during the night, chucking stones and petrol bombs for hours on end. Their aggression stems both from an appetite for aggro and from copious amounts of cheap vodka and lager.

Then there are the paramilitary groups who, for their own sinister purposes, quietly approve of such bother on the streets, knowing as they do that it tends to swell their ranks and enhance their importance.

But, in the daylight, it was clear in Ardoyne yesterday that most of those caught up in this dispute, which centres on the Catholic Holy Cross primary school located in a Protestant area, just want to get on with their lives, in peace.

You could see it in their eyes. Nearly all the Catholic parents just want to get their kids to school and home again safely; nearly all the Protestant residents just want things to have some semblance of peace restored.

Yesterday morning, people had to pick their way through what resembled a minor war zone littered with burnt-out cars. They scrunched through broken glass along pavements and roads scorched by the flames of petrol bombs.

Cordons of police were stretched across the road to keep the Protestants and Catholics apart, while there was bitter cat-calling from one side to the other. Some children sobbed as they and their mothers milled around in the road, unable to get to school.

Later in the day, the blast from a pipe bomb, tossed over a peace-line wall from a Protestant area, threw a Catholic child against a wall, but almost miraculously caused no injury.

In the darkness earlier, both sides had fired shots and, although no one was hit, almost 40 police officers were injured by other missiles. The local RUC commander complained that an ambulance carrying one of his wounded officers was attacked by loyalists with petrol bombs. The local security minister, Jane Kennedy, called it "mob violence at its most primitive."

And yet the prevailing mood was best summed up by a Presbyterian minister, the Rev Norman Hamilton: "There is bitterness yes, but there is an underlying fear. The area is full of good people who want to live and let live. Most people on both sides are full of apprehension and distress."

Most tellingly, he reported the comment of a woman who had said to him, "You know, if the peace process breaks down it's going to be like this all the time."

The trouble is that the forces of history and sectarianism, of religious competition and territorial contest, have conspired to turn the district into a battle zone of sorts. Although this outbreak of violence has been the worst for some time, there is trouble here almost every summer.

Even when no rioting is going on there are unmistakable pointers that this is one of Belfast's sectarian faultlines. The signs are everywhere, from the kerbstones assertively painted either red, white and blue or green, white and gold, to the abandoned and vandalised houses, to the still-occupied houses with metal grilles over the windows.

Yesterday, a number of families were preparing to move out. A certain type of person clings on to their homes in these contested districts: ask them why they don't move to less fraught surroundings and they almost invariably give the defiant retort: "Why should I?" It is often only when things get really bad, as they are at the moment, that their will power breaks and they go.

The immediate problem for Holy Cross school is that it is a Catholic building on the wrong side of Ardoyne Road. That is to say, the Protestant side, so that Catholic parents must journey there each morning and afternoon.

The wider context is that north Belfast has been steadily becoming more and more Catholic, and the Protestant community fears that Ardoyne Catholics will eventually take over the whole district. At a deeper level, however, this is probably a problem without a solution.

Violence recurs regularly here, in what has been one of Northern Ireland's most violent spots. Ardoyne is one of the flashpoints which in 1969 detonated the Troubles.

An official report described the scene with stark eloquence: "The streets were plunged in darkness, relieved only by fires burning in houses and other adjacent premises. In the side streets were all the clutter of urban rioting – barricades, debris, flame. The noise of hostile, jeering crowds, the crackle and explosions of burning buildings, and the shattering of glass enveloped the area."

The report added: "The cycle led to death, injury, fire and destruction, with their accompaniment of communal relations inevitably embittered, personal hatreds engendered and human misery intensified."

Most of those involved in this specific dispute fervently hope that it will calm down so they can get back to what passes for normality. Sadly, however, precedent appears to dictate more trouble in the future for these people, trapped as they are in the unrelenting coils of history.