Efforts to secure an end to the deadly feud between the rival loyalist paramilitary factions, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, will continue over the coming days. They must succeed if further deaths within the loyalist community are to be avoided and, worse, a spread of violence into the wider community across Northern Ireland. Yesterday, the Northern Secretary, Mr Mandelson, held security talks with the British Army GOC, Sir Hew Pike, and the RUC Deputy Chief Constable, Mr Colin Cramphorn. As a result, one of the chief protagonists, UDA leader Johnny Adair, is back behind bars for breaching the terms of his early release from jail under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
His way is not the way forward envisaged by the Belfast Agreement. Those orchestrating this feud - whether expressed in terms of intimidating political opponents in their homes, sacking the offices of an opposing political party or, in the extreme, murdering their opponents - are offering the people they purport to represent a grim vision of the future. Do these gunmen want any sort of peaceful tomorrow - for themselves, their families and their community? How does their conduct of recent days advance either the cause of Protestant Ulster or the union with Britain, the two things loyalist paramilitaries claim to cherish most? The answer, of course, is that it does not. There may be elements of so-called turf war in what is going on but the bedrock of this dispute is a difference of attitude within the loyalist community to the Agreement, with the anti-Agreement group apparently bolstered by recent prison releases.
Mr Mandelson is correct when he describes what is going on as "squalid, murderous gang warfare". Even if, in the final analysis, the motivation of those behind the feud is opposition to the (democratically-based) Agreement, there can never be any justification for their actions. Their conduct reached a peak of terror on Monday when Mr Jackie Coulter and Mr Bobby Mahood were shot eight times as they sat in a car outside a betting shop. Almost immediately after the killings, the UVF was blamed - by security and loyalist sources - and a mob attacked the Shankill Road offices of its political wing, the Progressive Unionist Party.
Automatic weapon "hits" on people sitting in parked cars and random, drive-by shootings owe more to Chicago of the 1920s than to defending any just cause or to the emerging political sophistication in Northern Ireland. It is ironic that that sophistication should be represented amply by several of the leading figures connected to the political wings of the warring factions - the likes of Billy Hutchinson and David Irvine of the Progressive Unionist Party (linked to the UVF), and Gary McMichael and Frank McCoubrey, deputy Mayor of Belfast, of the Ulster Democratic Party (linked to the UDA). Mr Hutchinson, Mr Irvine and Mr McMichael have shown themselves to be among the most articulate and able spokesman produced by the loyalist community in the past three decades. That others in their community cling to the belief that internecine warfare is the way to advance their cause is depressing but must serve only as a challenge to Mr Hutchenson et al to produce a durable end to the spate of killing before more lives are lost. Mr Mandleson called it right last night when he said: "it is up to everyone to turn their backs forever on individuals who are interested only in their own power and greed".