Many of them have now rejected communist ideology but their desire for a fairer society remains as strong as ever and their black-shirt-clad militant wing has not hesitated to use the same combination of political activism based on simple emotional slogans and violence to achieve their aims.

Suddenly the word 'democracy', no matter how qualified, can no longer be attached to the national name. Even though the actual confrontation was limited to a small area of the capital, no part of the country has been left untouched. Political Red shirt unrest has been reported from at least 8 provinces, not to mention the other parts of the country that already have varying degrees of disaffection with the centre, particularly the Muslim regions on the border with Malaysia, where the anti-government protests will have been welcomed.

Of course this, like so many other protest movements, did not itself have entirely clean hands and, given the communist and Maoist inspiration, its planning and motivation was every bit as focussed and ruthless as one can imagine. The renegade general, Khattiya Sawasdipol, whose nom de guerre was Seh Daeng ('Commander Red') and who modelled himself on Mel Gibson's Braveheart, was central to the planning and execution of the military side of the movement, which may have included bombings and the killing of a fellow Thai general, who was a favourite of Queen Sirikit, with a rocket-propelled grenade. His own assassination with a well-aimed bullet to the head, from which he subsequently died, as he was interviewed by a journalist from The New York Times only served to confirm how high were the stakes on both sides. General Khattiya's murder cannot definitely be laid at the door of the government as such; it might well have been inspired by one of the businessmen who have lost so much money because of lack of access to their businesses.

The nature of the mass protests both for and against the central figure at the heart of the original stand-off, Thaksin Shinawatra, the multi-billionaire prime ministerial champion of the poor, and the deaths of the two generals indicate that Thai politics is losing its innocence: the genie is out of the bottle and no amount of well-meaning compromise is going to put it back. At some point the political arguments have to be fought out without their premature curtailment through royal or other intervention. Driving the rebels off the street has only forced them back into a period of planning and retrenchment which will see them re-emerge later.

What was different about this political confrontation was that it became clear to both sides that the old panaceas will not work any more.

Starting with the brutal Thanom Kittikachorn military coup of 1973, and later army adventures witnessed by this correspondent, the striking element common to all of them was the skilful way the elite — including the royal family — protected their position by allowing the street theatre to play itself out with a greater or lesser number of deaths and then, when the political pressure cooker had done its work, King Bhumibol would step in and calm things down. Business would then return to the status quo ante, the elite to their corruption and wealth-generation while the lowest common denominators in society would return to their allotted station in life, only to realize some time later that nothing had changed.

The accepted wisdom has always been that the people loved the king to distraction and saw him as their champion, whereas he was, in reality, defending the interests of the elite. It was also usually the case that the army and police were unified in support of the status quo but this time there has clearly been intra-army and intra-police conflict that Thais have not witnessed before.

This time around no-one has invoked the name of the king, his posters have been notably absent from the streets and he himself has made no pronouncements to try and calm his 'children' — hardly surprising, given the poor state of his health.

The 'children' have been left to get on with it themselves only this time they seem to have realised that the king was not such a good ally after all and the appeals for assistance coming from the Red Shirt camp were not directed at the palace but at the international community. That is a profound sign of the now deepening rifts in Thai society which are now beginning to look irreconcilable without the sort of radical re-working of social structures which the Red Shirts have been seeking.

It is hard to see where Prime Minister Abhisit goes from here. His offer of a compromise — apparently with the consent of Thaksin — with elections in November was rejected by the Red Shirt leadership. With Thaksin's financial muscle to back up their campaign, they would surely have returned voting success on a scale that no amount of manipulation would have been able to forestall. That would have given them great credibility.

But the militants' influence is clearly showing here with a determination not to give Abhisit democratic credibility — on the assumption that the balloting would not be free and fair — since he has yet to win approval at the ballot box, taking office after Thaksin's rule had been disqualified by the courts. As it is, the prime minister appears to have fallen into a Red Shirt trap. He now has blood on his hands and has not attracted any noticeable declarations of international support, leaving open the question of what the long-term damage to the economy and the nation's political standing will be.

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