"You know what's going to happen, Mark. We don't want more violence," the senior RUC officer spoke intently. "Are we going to do this or not, like we agreed?"
Mr Mark Coulter, representing the Protestant residents of Glenbryn made no response. A man in a baseball cap replied instead: "No chance". If any promise of peaceful protest had been made, it would not be kept.
At 8.40 a.m. the police charged the residents' blockade, forcing back the 200-strong crowd, restricting them to one side of the Ardoyne Road and hemming some into doorways.
"Don't run away up your own street," shouted a woman defiantly.
"The IRA is letting the RUC bring their children to school," the PUP Assembly member, Mr Billy Hutchinson, declared.
The roaring and taunting of his constituents grew louder as about 50 Holy Cross Primary School children progressed behind security screens. The red ribbons in the little girls' hair matched their bright cardigans.
The children, some as young as four, gripped their mothers' hands tightly. A blond child pursed her lips tightly to stop tears. Some children cried openly, others wept into their parent's side, their faces shielded by an adult hand.
Screams of "Fenian bastards" and "Animals" rose from residents, and a chant of "Scum, scum, scum" came from youths behind police lines. Some of the parents cursed back.
"Move on," urged an officer. The sight of men with no children drove the residents into a frenzy.
Bottles were thrown from Glenbryn Gardens as the children reached the school gates and one mother was injured, her hair matted from the blood.
Father Aidan Troy, the chairman of the school's board of governors, said the "appalling abuse" had made real his worst nightmare.
"After seeing the faces of those children . . . you look into the eyes of a child and you certainly know what's going on."
The school principal, Ms Anne Tanney, said the parents of the most traumatised children had been advised to take them home through the back door as they were too upset to be taught.
"I'm afraid we have just let these children down, all of us. All adults have let these children down," she said.
Later the older children who remained left through the back door as the steel protective shutters descended on the front entrance hall.
In the hall, hanging alongside class photographs and children's artwork, is a quotation from Abraham Lincoln: "If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught we would believe what they believe."