Welcome to Your Capital

1.15 - At the Stephen's Green end of Kildare Street, well-scrubbed twentysomethings are carrying placards with small tricolours on them that read "Welcome to Your Capital". They don't know that the Love Ulster marchers will never get to see their message. Which is kind of a shame.

1.26 pm Made it to the Spire. [Events prior to that were documented pretty well by Dick O'Brien of Backseat Drivers.] At least 1000 people fill the street.

"Peaceful protest!" shouted a woman at the line of riot cops. One guy from Finglas next to me turns to his companion and in a stage whisper offers: "Peaceful protest? It is now. We're out of ammo."

A Pakistani teen in a Celtic hoodie chirped into a mobile about all the excitement. Two Italian lads filmed each other in turn with the video camera with the police line as a backdrop. A couple yammered on in Spanish. All looking on bemused as paving stones, bottles, bicycle tyres, a bicycle, a wheelbarrow, an iron bar, fireworks, more bottles, more bottles still, a litter bin wrenched out of its base...all thrown at gardai.

"Sit down! Sit down!" yelled a middle-aged sort with close-cropped hair who looked the part for a Republican Sinn Fein organiser, to the crowd. About 50 on the right flank did so. The left flank was erupting into a missile barrage towards the Lexan shields of the gardai.

1.35 A fire engine rushes northbound up O'Connell Street, being pelted with paving stones and bottles. Someone took an iron bar to the front windscreen. It was cracked as it moved through the police lines. Gardai move forward in a baton feint another few metres, much of the crowd runs. Forming a new line at the statue of Jim Larkin.

"No farther lads," urged one older vet in a Derry accent.

Visible in the crowd are several people waving black flags (not, as far as I'm aware, a symbol associated with RSF).

The people close to the black flags are wearing very little green, and smoking Marlboro lights. The older part of the crowd with RSF pins smoke John Players.

1.40 An old woman gingerly leads her middle-aged son by the hand through the crowd from west to east. She passes in front of me. The man is severly mentally retarded. He stops in front of me to pick something up on the street that has caught his eye. The old woman looks terrified. "C'mon Patrick," she says as calmly as she can. "We Have To Go Now."

There are children in the crowd. I feel sick.

1.45 Woman wearing a white T-shirt with "Our Only Weapon is Our Refusal" emblazoned across the back walks back up and down the line.

1.55 Gardai maintain their position. Rumours begin to circulate among journalists and then the crowd that the Love Ulster marchers have already left the scene. Some are headed directly back north. Other rumours suggest some of them have gone to Leinster House, bypassing the crowd. Journalists debate whether this is a head-fake tactic to break up the crowd.

2pm Man with a Celtic scarf over the lower half of his face, identifying himself as George from Ballymun, says he was hit over the head with a baton at 9.10 that morning. He tells me the badge number of the garda who allegedly hit him. "I've been here all day," he says. "This was a peaceful protest. They said we wouldn't care if these fuckers came down our street. Well this shows them we do fucking care."

Rockets are fired at gardai behind me. Wooden palates are brought up to stoke a bonfire that is melting the tarmac on the northbound side of O'Connell Street. A recycling bin full of glass bottles is brought up.

2.10 The lock is prised open of a moped parked in the centre divider of O'Connell Street. A knot of five teens start it and knock it over, then set it alight.

Stocky thirtysomething man with decent threads wearing a bluetooth earpiece who saw me interview another protester stops me, identifies himself as John Meade from Tallaght. As a green banner with white letters about the Dublin bombings is brought forward.

"It's a disgrace what the guards are doing. They're as bad as the unionists, turning batons on their own people".

"We didn't want this to be violent", said another identifying himself only as Daithi. "They wouldn't let the KKK march down the street in Alabama, they wouldn't let the Nazi party march in Jerusalem. We're not letting these people march past the GPO. Simple as that."

Behind me I hear a Belfast accent interrupting Meade. "But they'll just be up back on our streets."

"Fine. Good. Let them," replied Meade. "Not here. They can do what they like at home."

It's a pity the Welcome to Your Capital signs didn't make it to O'Connell Street. Might have made the point.