If Sinn Fein propagandists had been able to write the plot, they couldn’t have organised it better: Catholic families scared out of their houses by loyalists, just like in the Sixties; confrontations between Orangemen and the police; Major urged to disown the chief constable of the RUC. Oh, happy day!Unionists have learned to play the underdog and to use language that is listened to by liberal opinion-formers, to speak of violations of their civil rights and of the threat to their identity. As with republicans, moderate Unionists have become adept at pointing, half-warning, half-threatening, to the gunmen in the shadows.Whether this does them any good with liberal public opinion remains to be seen. In burning cars, blockading airports, stoning police, and accusing the state of depriving them of their culture, the Unionist rebels are behaving and sounding increasingly like … well, like republicans.Early on in the peace process, Conor Cruise O’Brien predicted that it would break down. He mapped out how the breakdown of order would occur, with staged confrontations, escalating violence and rising demands made upon the British Government.

A community that prides itself on being law-abiding and loyal to the Crown, and which regarded the Royal Ulster Constabulary as its champion, is currently in revolt against the policy and agents of the Crown and, in particular, the RUC.
Dark-suited, church-going Orangemen find themselves being rebuked by people close to Loyalist paramilitaries of inner-city Belfast. “There are people who are addicted to light relief,” says Ms Cartwright. People seem to view Hello! in the same category as chocolate; they speak of it as a luxury.”But it has yet to achieve the ultimate triumph – a cover declaring: “The Queen and Prince Philip invite us into their lovely home to share their sorrows and speak of putting family difficulties behind them.” What reader, even of the Independent, could resist that?. Northern Ireland is on the brink But then, Northern Ireland is always on or near the brink. Even after months of nervous peace, in important ways it remains a society living on the edge of a nervous breakdown, a history-drenched province on the brink of the British Union, hanging by its fingertips from the edge of a secular, materialist country that no longer understands its own history. Our familiarity with confrontation in Northern Ireland could easily dull us to the strangeness of the past few days.

For instance, people talk about a Hello!-style wedding,” says Hello! publishing director Sally Cartwright.One commuter, reading the New Scientist, said: “If it was next to me on the train, I would not be ashamed to read it.” What he didn’t say was that he couldn’t stop himself from picking it up. Who else would realise that what we really need to know is that Donald and Marla Trump have given their toddler Tiffany a “proper garden”, by lifting 30 tons of soil to the top of the Trump Tower in Manhattan? Or that “intelligent” people would find themselves looking at all four photographs of heiress Tamara Beckwith (“the fiancee of actress Sharon Stone’s brother”) running out of petrol in Knightsbridge.”We’re almost an institution these days. It has its own curse (the latest victim is Margot Hemingway, featured before her death looking too happy to be true) and its own inimitable “news” judgement. If they wait until society – the frightened men – are ready for it, it could be a long time..

Real men do read Hello! in public Just ask Adrian Dixon. He’s 27 and not afraid to admit to a glance at the great and glamorous. “Besides, everyone else would probably be trying to read it over my shoulder,” he says. This week the Great Gazza Wedding issue hits the newsstands. Even Israel has pulled its women back from the most dangerous zones.The army is right to realise that giving women bayonets breaks the last taboo – but the army is wrong not to do it now.