Reid talks to republican and loyalist leaders in bid to stop Belfast rioting

The Northern Ireland Secretary, John Reid, has held talks with loyalist and republican political leaders in an attempt to end four consecutive nights of sectarian feuding in east Belfast.

Five people were shot on Monday night, and every available officer has been drafted in to quell the disorder. Dr Reid spoke separately with the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, and David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which has close links with the Ulster Volunteer Force.

A source close to Dr Reid said: "It is clear there is paramilitary involvement in these shootings. The Secretary of State wanted to talk to parties associated with the various groups."

Heavy rain ensured a quiet day on the Short Strand in east Belfast yesterday, the historical faultline and the point where two opposing cultures collide, often violently, although Catholic children peering through the big metal barrier into Protestant territory would not have known it. A great many missiles have flown over that barrier in recent weeks.

A few yards away in Bryson Street was a scene that captured how life often goes on in Belfast's more troubled areas. Outside the houses that line one side of the street sat ordinary things such as a child's bicycle and a pram. Next to them sat sheets of hardboard, ready to be nailed up to protect the houses from missiles coming over the wall that makes up the other side of the street.

The houses already have metal grilles over the windows, but things have now reached such a pitch that these are no longer adequate. The wall is high, and topped with even higher railings, but clearly these do not prevent regular exchanges of missiles.

The Catholics live in a nationalist context, with street names in Irish and many large republican murals bedecking the district's walls.

Over the wall, they can see a Union Flag and loyalist flags, declarations of assertive east Belfast Protestantism. Men and youths from the two sides have been clashing violently for some weeks, with insults giving way to bricks, bottles and petrol bombs. More recently, weapons have come out and shots have been fired.

There have been dozens of injuries – to Catholics, Protestants and police – as the past year of rioting in the north of the city has spread to this district.

Short Strand is small, with a few thousand residents, and it sees itself as surrounded by Protestant east Belfast.

Loyalists tend to view the district as militantly republican and, even though it is tiny, see it as a menace and a thorn in the side of loyalism. It was not always like this, for when Short Strand's first Roman Catholic church opened, 170 years ago, Protestants would go to Mass there. But as the Catholic population grew, so too did the sense of political and economic competition.

The first sectarian fatality came in 1886, when a local Catholic worker was attacked in the docks by Protestants, showered with the rivets that are ironically known as Belfast confetti, and drowned. The troubles of the 1920s brought many more deaths on both sides.

The pattern repeated itself in the early 1970s. In one act, a few outnumbered IRA men held off loyalists during fierce gunfights in the grounds of the Catholic church that sits at one end of Bryson Street.

This episode, known as the battle of St Matthew's, is held to have redeemed the IRA in the eyes of those in Catholic ghettos. It was seen as having failed in its role of defending the Falls in earlier disturbances.

In republican circles it is regarded as a key event in the growth of the modern IRA.

During the Troubles, loyalist assassins picked off many local Catholics, inside and outside the district, on one occasion killing five people by bombing a local bar.

The IRA was also highly active, losing many members in premature explosions. Republicans indulged in some fierce retaliation against Protestants and loyalists, driving home the message that the district would not be attacked with impunity.

The early emergence of the gun in the present disturbances may represent the continuation of this policy, with the IRA making clear that the Short Strand, though outnumbered, is not defenceless. The hope is that things can be calmed down before they develop, as in north Belfast, into months of rioting.

In the meantime, the arguments continue about how it all started. The most immediate causes are unclear, but what is certain is that the real roots lie in history, and that the Short Strand is fated to go through bursts of communal violence.