A report by Kevin Myers on one of the poorest and most violent ghettos in Belfast.

WHERE COUNTY DOWN ends its dismal encounter with East Belfast, through the cramped and decaying streets of Ballymacarret at the rim of the River Lagan and County Antrim, lies the Short Strand, four hundred yards by four hundred yards of belliigerent Republicanism and poverty, surrounded on three sides by loyalist districts and on the fourth by the River Lagan. Its back to the East, the Strand faces Belfast city centre; which a large number of its residents have done their best to flatten.

Our telephone service is a national sick joke. The postal service isn't much better. It's hard to open a newspaper without reading about another strike. Victorian attitudes to staff relations mean that things are going to get worse. By Liam O'Toole

In the past few months, and in particular since the Ferenka dispute in Limerick, the Marine Port and General Workers Union has emerged as the media's No. 1 trade union bogeyman. But the truth behind the headlines is rarely as simple as the harassed subeditors would like to think. LIAM O'TOOLE analyses the recent history of the MPGWU and, in particular its 'troubled relations with the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

How do members of the 21st Dail rate in their attitudes to women? Mary Holland examines a recent survey and comes up with some surprising answers.

"The 'Yes, but' style of reporting concedes the right to strike but makes explicit propaganda against the exercising of the right." Gene Kerrigan analyses newspaper coverage of the Ferenka dispute.

The Fitzwilton experiment contributed nothing to the Irish economy but earned for its three promoters, Tony O'Reilly, Vincent Ferguson and Nicholas Leonard, £1. 4 million in capital gains alone in return for an initial investment of a mere £75,000.
By JAMES PRUFROCK

'I for one could not help wishing the philistine wish that the players could be allowed to forget about rehearsals, and about arguing with God, and get on with the play.' Abbey Theatre: Living Quarters by Brian Friel. Directed by Joe Dowling.

Review by Conor Cruise O'Brien

A ROSC "assemblage" entitled The Office, by the Polish artist, Wladyslaw Hasior, includes in it the broken image of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is skewered to the backside of a Polish cooking utennsil, there is a wire noose around his neck, and his feet have been broken off. From the top of his head stands up a tuft of synthetic hair, and he seems to be preesiding over a brass tap, out of which pours a stream of groszy, the coins with which Polish people buy Polish goods.

When Rudolph Valentino died in 1926 at the age of 31 one hundred thousand people filed through the New York funeral parlour where his body lay. Now the legendary Hollywood lover has been brought back to the screen. Valentino, which opens in DiIblin next month, is the product of an explosively talented partnership. Ken Russell, the director, has become a byword for extravagant controversy with such films as Isadora, The Devils and Savage Messiah. To play Valentino, he chose another superstar, the Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. By DEIRDRE FRIEL

BELFAST has had many organised pogroms bcfore August 1969 whose main aim has been to dispossess Catholics of their houses and jobs and to intimidate them to a point which will encourage emigration. The political advantages of a successful pogrom are obvious, one of the main fears of Protestants being the Catholic birthrate. Of course there are other political advantages for those who rally the people from the street corners by organising campaigns of looting, burning and intimidation.