Reid hit by hail of anger at blighted Belfast 'peaceline'

John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary, received an eyeful and an earful yesterday when he visited the two sides of the Short Strand peaceline, currently Belfast's most troubled district.

On both sides of the great ugly walls he witnessed the appalling conditions in which families live behind screens in homes damaged by petrol-bombs, acid-bombs, paint-bombs and thousands of other missiles.

On both sides he was berated for not doing enough to protect residents against attacks. He was called Dr Dolittle by Protestants, and dismissed as "scum" by an angry Catholic.

Mr Reid spent several hours meeting those affected on both sides, visiting several houses for private talks. As he moved from home to home he was occasionally involved in angry little scrums.

"You have to understand the anger of this community – there's a pogrom going on this last three months," an emotional Catholic woman told him. A man called out to him about the police: "We don't want them standing outside our houses – scum. You're as bad as them scum anyway."

He began his visit in Cluan Place, the small Protestant cul-de-sac directly behind the peaceline, where only four of the 24 houses are still occupied.

Accompanied by a woman who has now moved out, he inspected a roofless house before speaking to some of the few people, mostly pensioners, who remain in the street, which is splashed with paint and littered with glass.

Mr Reid then moved to the Catholic Strand area by car, visiting homes that are only feet from Cluan Place, though separated by high walls. There the mood was angrier.

One slogan, written on a piece of protective wooden sheeting, proclaimed: "John Reid's open prison" while banners declared: "Everyone has the right to be free from sectarian harassment."

An additional complaint on the nationalist side is that residents are now fearful of going outside the area to community facilities such as doctors, dentists and post offices since these are in Protestant areas and threats have been issued.

Mr Reid said later that paramilitary groups were destroying rather than defending their areas. "I knew before I went this morning, and I am even more convinced, that the vast majority of people on both sides of these interfaces are good, decent, hard-working, honest people who just want a better life for their families.

"We have to break the cycle of violence which is destroying the communities and making their lives a misery. Some of the people I met this morning were obviously traumatised. Some of the people who were putting their views to me with such frustration and such anger weren't necessarily politically motivated.

"They were ordinary decent people whose lives have been disrupted, whose children have been traumatised, who are on prescription drugs."

Elsewhere in Belfast, Alex Maskey, the recently elected Sinn Fein lord mayor, stirred controversy by placing an Irish tricolour flag in his study inside the city hall. Mr Maskey has retained the Union Jack in the room as well as photographs of the British Royal Family. A Unionist critic said: "The Union Flag is the flag of this country and no other flag should be flown."