EVERYONE who was there will have at least one abiding memory from the events on the Garvaghy Road. For this reporter it was the young men in their late teens and early 20s who shouted again and again, when the whole thing was over and the police had withdrawn, "No ceasefire! No ceasefire!"

At time of writing there were no reports of fatalities from the dawn raid. But there was little doubt there would be deaths in other places, further down the line. The argument that loyalists would have gone on a shooting spree against Catholics if the march were banned must be balanced against the fatalities which the IRA or INLA will presumably inflict, not to mention the enormous damage caused to the peace process.

Colleagues who had covered wars and strife in Vietnam and Algeria said that, of course, the Garvaghy Road wasn't nearly as bad, but in the context of a supposedly-placid United Kingdom, a member of the European Union, it was bad enough.

The immediate judgment suggesting itself is that Mo Mowlam is irreparably damaged in the eyes of Northern nationalists. Her hugs and embraces, her whistle-stop tours, her no-nonsense "one of the guys" approach appear to be set at naught.

Moderate nationalists commented bitterly that she would not be welcome in any of the Catholic areas in the North, from now on. Only weeks into the job she had reached for, or at least acquiesced in the use of, the repression option.

Was there ever a honeymoon so intense and so short-lived? Nationalists tried to cast their minds back: was Roy Mason this bad?

Garvaghy Road is an underprivileged community, which is not to say that all the Protestant areas of Portadown are awash with riches either. Indeed very few participants in the Orange march looked as if they were born with silver spoons in their mouths.

A ghetto is never a heartwarming sight, but there is a special poignancy and pathos when one sees it overwhelmed at four o'clock in the morning by a police-cum-military juggernaut.

The lights shine, Land-Rovers and personnel carriers rev and roar, soldiers and police brandish their guns and batons. Men, women and children stand at their doorsteps, some of them mute with shock and surprise, others venting their fury on the squaddies' heads.

IT MAY be true that Mo Mowlam has wiped out her credit with nationalists at a stroke, but she has greatly contributed to raising the pro-file of Breandan Mac Cionnaith, who has gone from being a local activist to something of a household name.

Mr Mac Cionnaith confronted the police several times yesterday morning and got pushed, pulled and kicked for his pains. The sight of the SDLP's Brid Rodgers caught in the melee made one wonder if anything had really changed since the civil rights days.

No doubt the proponents of the Garvaghy Road operation are arguing that it was a success in security terms. If the world was no wider than the Garvaghy Road there might be some substance in that argument.

But even before the operation had concluded many observers, were predicting it would set off a chain of violent incidents across the North.

More seriously perhaps, Drumcree Three had cut still more ground from under the constitutional nationalists. The SDLP was going to find it harder than ever to argue for the non-violent approach.

After Dr Mowlam's appeal to the Portadown Orangemen to listen to "voices of reason" few observers doubted that the march would be banned. Otherwise the authorities would be giving into people they had implicitly categorised as unreasonable.

The background "spin" lent credence to that view, and when the security forces seemed to be sealing off the road past Drumcree parish church the case appeared closed.

ALL this now looks like an elaborate bluff. It is said even prominent Orangemen were persuaded the parade would be stopped or re-routed.

When the siren went off on the Garvaghy Road in the early hours it blew the whistle on an elaborate contrick. If it was intended to minimise the nationalist presence on the Garvaghy Road it didn't really work because two groups of about 100 still had to be removed by the police.

IRA recruiting sergeants will have a busy time after yesterday's events. The notion that at the end of the day Catholics can only expect the mailed fist from the Northern state has been given renewed credence.

It may be argued that at least the Orangemen have been placated - for the time being anyway. They got their Drumcree march; the "queen's highway" was not cloned to them; their rights and cultural identity have been acknowledged.

The episode may bring an improvement in relations between the Orangemen and the RUC, but there will be a concomitant decline in goodwill between police and nationalists. The sheer hatred expressed by the Garvaghy Road protesters towards the police and the intensity and obscenity of the abuse showed what a mountain there is to climb in that regard.

Mo Mowlam's honeymoon with the media is probably over as well. Her statement on Friday where she criticised the Portadown Orangemen and found no fault with the Garvaghy residents was anything but a helpful hint as to the likely outcome of events.

Even unionists observing the progress of the Orangemen down the Garvaghy Road admitted feeling sad. A victory had been gained but at a terrible cost. A demoralising blow had been struck at the declining number of people in Northern Ireland prepared to argue against Chairman Mao's dictum: "All power grows out of the barrel of a gun."