UNIONIST VIEW: The little red, white and blue buntings were there but otherwise Cluan Place resembled a battlefield rather than the setting for a Golden Jubilee street party.
Protestant politicians and clergy descended on the little east Belfast back street yesterday lunchtime to inspect the latest damage caused by three nights of continuous rioting.
It was a grim scene indeed. While broken glass, bricks and other debris littered the street in front of the neat red-brick terraced houses, their backs, built up right against a 30-foot "peace-wall", had suffered the brunt of the violence. Every single back window of the 10 or so houses was boarded up.
Mr David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), the Ulster Volunteer Force's political wing, said he was struggling to keep a very tense community calm.
"I wanted to see Sinn Féin in government, I have been quite strident in my support for equality and all that, but what is happening to me in the face of this kind of behaviour is people on my own side pulling the rug from underneath my feet. I have no magic wand to keep people calm.
"We have no doubt the violence is orchestrated by the Provos. The question is not: 'Why do people throw stuff back that gets thrown at their houses?' but 'Why does it start at all?'
"The UVF, who are present in this area, are the most disciplined of all paramilitaries but you can cut the atmosphere with a knife. It's awful, people just want out."
A teenager carrying a mobile phone with a Union Jack cover came running down the street claiming a loyalist youth had just been beaten up by nationalists.
Mr Ervine sighed before ushering journalists into a tiny front-room to watch a video filmed by a local man the previous night. It showed several flashes, allegedly gunfire.
"They \ had their cars parked in a way that completely cut off access for the security forces. We know it's the Provos coming in from north Belfast because we have seen senior republican figures in this area 'directing the traffic'", one man said.
The Church of Ireland Bishop for Down and Dromore, Dr Harold Miller, said it was a question of mutual distrust.
"Talking to people on both sides you get the feeling they are trapped into a very small area. Here in Cluan Place they feel they are only a handful of people with 3,000 people across the wall in Short Strand. Over there they feel they are only a tiny nationalist enclave in the middle of Protestant east Belfast."
Local people lived in a state of constant fear, he added.
"Parents are telling me their children won't sleep at night, they are wetting their beds. On both sides of the wall you see people who have put their whole lives into building up their homes and turning them into little palaces.
"So when their houses come under attack they feel that their whole privacy and everything they have worked for is under threat."