On Wednesday, the Union Jack flew limply over Belfast City Hall for the first time since the flag protests begun. It was one of the eighteen days that the city council designated for flag flying and it was to honour the birthday of the Duchess of Cambridge, better known as Kate Middleton.

Belfast and other parts of the North have been gripped by an explosion of protests, riots and roadblocks at the hand of Loyalists paramilitaries.

What initially began with 1000 Loyalist protesters gathering outside Belfast City hall singing 'God Save the Queen" and shouting 'No surrender", to voice opposition at the reduction of days the Union flag is to be flown over the building ,was quickly followed by escalated action which saw riots and protests across the city with at least 20 police left injured.

Over the past few weeks sectarianism has once again been thrown onto the political agenda with the parading outside St. Patrick's church, the riots in North Belfast and the Ulster Covenant centenary march.

County Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order Mervyn Gibson has declared that "No one will have a Veto over the Ulster Covenant parade", in response to residents from Carrick Hill who had issues with the march passing the church again, after the anti-Catholic 'Famine Song' was played outside the venue when loyalists provocatively marched outside the church previously.

Sectarian tensions have been heightened in Belfast after a provocative Orange Order march forced its way up Donegal Street past the St.Patricks Catholic Church, just on the outskirts of the city centre.

The protest was deemed illegal by the parades commission however this didn’t deter a Loyalist band on July 12th to march past the church whilst playing the racist “Famine song”. As a result of these actions a Royal Black Preceptory march was subsequently banned from marching past the same church on Saturday August 25th.

Ten years ago, before the events of September 11th had happened, the world's eyes where firmly fixed on a very different place, far from the skyscrapers of New York City. Holy Cross, a small Catholic girl’s primary school in North Belfast was to become infamous for scenes of sectarianism so disturbing, that even the most hardened observers of the North where left shocked.

‘Mindless Thugs’ was the term used by Assistant chief Constable Alastair Finlay in describing why there was riots on the twelth night in the Ardoyne area.

The return to the streets of organised loyalist gangs in paramilitary regalia, as seen during the UVF attacks on the Short Strand in June, is a sinister development. One that raises fears of paramilitary-organised sectarian violence over the summer months.

There have been warnings for some time now from people in loyalist working-class areas that the UVF were recruiting, organising and training young people for a summer of discontent. There is no doubt, (see page 5 inside), that working-class Protestants have much to be discontented about.

East Belfast has been left behind in the ‘new Northern Ireland’. It is an area with large pockets of deprivation and visible poverty. Whilst this deprivation cannot be used as a rationale for sectarianism, there is no doubt that poverty and inequality are the underlying causes. The riots over the last few days were at one and the same time an incidence of orchestrated sectarian violence and an outcry of confused but very real anger against the economic deprivation faced by many in East Belfast. Any effective challenge to sectarianism has to begin by recognizing this.

The Socialist Workers Party in Belfast condemns the recent and ongoing attacks on the Short Strand in the east of the city orchestrated by the UVF. The return to the streets of organized loyalist gangs in paramilitary regalia is an especially sinister development, and one that risks opening the gates to renewed large-scale sectarian violence. We support the right of the people of the Short Strand to defend themselves, but believe that both Protestant and Catholic workers have a stake in seeing off the scourge of loyalist paramilitarism.

A team of canvassers for the People Before Profit Alliance endured a vicious and disgraceful attack in the Nelson Drive area of the Waterside. The group that included Assembly candidate Eamonn McCann and Waterside Council candidates Davy McAuley and Diane Greer came under a sustained attack from a gang of men hurling broken up paving stones and shouting sectarian abuse. One of their canvassing team sustained a facial injury when he was punched by one of the group. This canvasser is now receiving hospital treatment.