Passion, anger, a significant degree of community solidarity and, almost inevitably, recrimination featured at the main ICTU-organised peace rally outside Belfast City Hall yesterday.
Unionists and loyalists accused Sinn Fein of hijacking the event. The SDLP said republicans tried to upstage the peace rally. Sinn Fein claimed the lives of Catholics were being disregarded.
While several thousand people gathered in cities and towns around Northern Ireland to express their opposition to the recent sectarian killings their witness for peace was overshadowed by controversy surrounding the Belfast demonstration.
Speakers from the platform spoke with conviction of the need for a united cross-community dynamic to combat sectarian violence. "The force of argument has to replace the argument of force," said Mr Frank Bunting, Northern Ireland chairman of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
But his appeal to nationalist community representatives from west Belfast and other nationalist areas of the city to take down anti-unionist and anti-loyalist banners was rejected. His call was greeted by boos and cheers from different sections of the crowd.
Banners that Mr Bunting and unionist, SDLP and loyalist politicians viewed as causing disharmony or offence alleged British army and RUC collusion with loyalist paramilitaries and accused unionist and loyalist politicians of being at best indifferent to, and at worst colluding in, the recent murders of Catholics.
The banners proclaimed messages such as "Stop Unionist Death Squads", "British Army - RUC - Loyalist Death Squads", "Sectarian Murders - Sectarian State". These contrasted with the more neutral trade union banners declaring, "Stop All the Killings".
Initially the UUP deputy lord mayor of Belfast, Mr Jim Rodgers, and Progressive Unionist Party politicians intended joining other community leaders at the rally, but when the nationalist community groups refused to lower their banners they left the demonstration in protest.
"I am offended by this. This is Sinn Fein at work. Either people care about Catholic lives or they don't. You don't make propaganda out of it," said Mr Billy Hutchinson of the PUP.
"This was no place for anything being politically hijacked. These people will use anything, anything to manipulate for a political circumstance. And I must say the situation is much too serious in Northern Ireland for playing games with, and these people are playing games," added his PUP colleague, Mr David Ervine.
Mr Hutchinson reinforced his point when later he met the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, at the entrance to Belfast City Hall. "Those banners were an insult. We see it as Sinn Fein, with its republican agenda, as dancing on innocent Catholics graves . . . We were there to commemorate the innocent Catholics who were killed," he said to Mr Adams.
As Mr Hutchinson continued to accuse Sinn Fein of "point-scoring" Mr Adams said: "Billy, take it easy, take it easy. Come over here and talk here."
But there was no meeting of minds.
In turn, Sinn Fein rejected the criticisms. Mr Adams accused Mr Hutchinson of engaging in a "contrived and theatrical stunt". "It was a good thing that he and his colleagues attended the rally, but it was entirely negative of them to lose their nerve and withdraw," he added.
"Sinn Fein is against all of the killings. They are taking place in a vacuum created by the unionist refusal to engage meaningfully in discussions."
A Sinn Fein councillor, Mr Michael Browne, added: "It is insulting to the memory of the innocent Catholics killed by loyalist death squads, and to the families of those killed, to accuse Sinn Fein of hijacking the rally at City Hall," he added.
Ms Liz Groves, spokeswoman for the nationalist community groups, said it was shameful that the trade union organisers of the Belfast demonstration refused them permission to speak from the platform outside City Hall.
"Trade union leaders and others who express condemnation of recent killings fail to acknowledge and challenge the sectarian institutions and agenda of this state which contribute to the climate we have now, where Catholic lives are seen to be expendable," she added.
Mr Bunting, of ICTU, said the nationalist groups' banners were inappropriate. Mr Alex Attwood, the SDLP leader on Belfast Council, said republicans had upstaged the peace rally.
"Republicans constantly lecture about the selective condemnation of others, yet they carried banners selectively condemning the police, army and loyalist paramilitaries. The double standard was obvious, and the lack of judgment clear," he added.
The controversy served to undermine the effectiveness of the Belfast rally, and the other demonstrations in Derry, Enniskillen, Lurgan, Antrim, and Omagh, although trade unionists strove to refocus on the purpose of the demonstration.
Mr Bunting reflected the central message of the rallies. "We have no future if we cannot learn to live together peaceably and to work together to our mutual benefit . . . There should be no shelter for those who practise violence. The only way forward is through peaceful dialogue," he told the crowd.
Ms Inez McCormack, vice-president of ICTU, said she took into account the anger and resentment of those community representatives but added that they should understand that everyone at the rally, both Protestants and Catholics, was there to vent their opposition to the sectarian killings.
They had "come from every community" to say the killings were "wrong, were evil, were inhuman". She said the killers were trying to diminish people by their religion, to create the evil impression that they were not human.
And then Ms McCormack - paraphrasing the words of the anti-Nazi Martin Niemoller when he spoke about people not assisting the Jews, gypsies, Catholics, trade unionists, when they were under threat from Hitler - concentrated minds again on the real purpose of the rally.
She said: "When they came for the taxi-driver, when they came for the bouncer, when they came for the community worker who had republican beliefs, they'll come for the community worker with Protestant beliefs, they'll come for the trade unionist, they'll come for the ordinary citizen of the Irish Republic who is now under threat, they'll come for the Protestant minister, they will come if we do not say that the humanity of those who died, and the grief of their families, and the anger of their communities is ours as well. That is what this is about today. That is what this is about."
In Derry, about 1,000 people attended a lunchtime rally at Guildhall Square yesterday to protest against the recent sectarian murders in the North.
The rally, also organised by the Northern committee of the ICTU, was addressed by several trade unionists and a member of the Derry Peace and Reconciliation Centre.
Among those at the rally was the Mayor, Mr Martin Bradley, as well as church representatives, the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, and the Sinn Fein MP, Mr Martin McGuinness. Several Sinn Fein members carried posters alleging collusion between the RUC and LVF as well as calling for the release of "political prisoners".