The Orange Order’s call for supporters to take to the streets had

The Orange Order’s call for supporters to take to the streets had been clearly answered not just by its supporters but also by armed paramilitary groups, who evidently had guns and blast bombs at the ready.Trouble had been widely forecast after the Northern Ireland Parades Commission ruled it would be dangerous to allow a march, postponed since June, to travel along the nationalist Springfield Road.Sir Hugh said yesterday it was fortunate none of his officers had died. The Army, which is rarely used now and appears only at times of severe pressure on police, has been deployed in Belfast as the disturbances have become widespread at up to half a dozen locations in the city.One man, believed to be a loyalist figure, was critically ill in hospital yesterday after a blast bomb exploded while at least six police officers needed medical treatment. Four men have been shot dead in internal loyalist feuding while trouble has repeatedly broken out on the streets.Shots have been fired at police on several occasions in north Belfast, with several bullets hitting armoured vehicles. But alongside the anticipation that this promise has generated, the summer has been marred by bouts of loyalist violence of several sorts, culminating in the weekend’s rioting. He added that 1,000 police officers and 1,000 troops had been deployed.The Government and police blamed the Orange Order but it in turn said that heavy-handed policing had caused much of the trouble.Ironically, most attention in political terms has been focused on republicans, with the authorities waiting for the IRA to fulfil the public promise it made some weeks ago to decommission all of its weapons. Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde revealed that seven weapons were also recovered in north Belfast, where some of the worst rioting took place.

In the village of Ahoghill, where violence has been directed at Catholic residents in recent weeks, young people went on a rampage, setting cars on fire and throwing fireworks at police.A bomb factory was found yesterday during the security operation that followed the violence, which left 32 police officers injured. The city drew breath following a lawless night in which police and troops came under sustained attack after the authorities refused to allow an Orange parade to pass through a nationalist area of west Belfast.

Following an Orange call for supporters to take to the streets, disturbances broke out across Co Antrim, with violence in the towns of Ballyclare, Carrickfergus and Larne, as well as the north Belfast suburbs of Glengormley and Rathcoole. The air in Belfast – which on Saturday was thick with loyalist petrol bombs and blast bombs – has filled with recriminations following one of the city’s worst nights of rioting for years. Instead, he wants to trumpet the stories of people who have come off Incapacity Benefit into work “It will cause less irritation,” he said.. The Government would help people to cope with the “insecurity and instability” caused by the global economy but in return, people would also have to help themselves.Referring to his five months in the political wilderness after his resignation following his affair with The Spectator publisher Kimberly Quinn, Mr Blunkett quipped that he knew that “work is good for you”.But he will not be highlighting his own blindness as an example of what can be achieve by the disabled.

In a speech in Washington today , he will spell out his vision of a new model welfare state based on “active inclusion”. “It won’t be crude,” he promised.Mr Blunkett is in the United States this week to look at its welfare schemes. But Mr Blunkett hinted this would apply to new rather than existing claimants and that he would not impose a maximum time-limit for staying on Incapacity Benefit. “I am not pretending we can do it in one fell swoop because it is mind-blowingly complex,” he said.Insisting that his purpose was not to cut benefits, he sought to reassure Labour MPs by saying: “The challenge is to simplify the system and maintain fairness.”He said he wanted to bring in “more generous” payments for the 500,000 severely ill or disabled people now on Disability Living Allowance.But those among the 2.6 million people on Incapacity Benefit who are capable of work will be expected to attend work-focused interviews with personal advisers.There could be a two-tier system, with higher benefits for those actively seeking work and lower rates for those who do not. There is a plethora of additional payments, all of which go back decades, none of which you would put in if you were starting from scratch.”I have been around a very long time, but I have only just learnt about some of the supplements and additions [to benefits].”Mr Blunkett admitted that he would not be able to recast the whole system overnight. The whole benefit system is a patchwork of past ameliorations and contradictions, with sticking plaster all over the place.”Where one decision led to an anomaly, we then addressed that by bringing in another change or another additional amount. The Government is to embark on the biggest shake-up of the state benefits system for 60 years, according to David Blunkett, the Work and Pensions Secretary.