At the beginning of the twenty-first century, loyalism in Ireland is understood as a product of the recent ‘troubles’ in northern Ireland. as such, it has distinctive connotations of paramilitarism, sectarianism, illegality and a form of tribal identity displayed in territorial markers like flags on lamp-posts, gable-end murals and kerbstones painted red, white and blue. The boundaries between loyalism and unionism are vague; it is common to refer to the political representatives of paramilitary groups as ‘loyalist’ politicians in distinction not only to republicans and nationalists, but also to the various unionist parties. Moreover, with loyalist flags including the union jack, the Ulster flag and various paramilitary emblems, the focus of contemporary loyalism is ambiguous and often contradictory. The demarcation between this form of loyalism and the main traditional vehicle for loyalism, the Orange Order, while occasionally overlapping at local level and at the ritual parades, is nonetheless distinct at an institutional level. Socially, contemporary Ulster loyalism is located largely outside the middle and professional classes. Indeed, when a renewed ceasefire by the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association was mooted in November 2004, and financial assistance sought for urban districts in which traditional industries had declined, these areas were described in terms which implied that their working-class Protestant inhabitants were in danger of becoming a marginalised underclass. Such a situation would have been foreign to the tens of thousands of unionists of all social classes who signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912 in opposition to the third Home Rule bill, when it was commonplace to consider the terms loyalist and unionist as synonymous.