This book takes a provocative second look at paramilitary loyalism, charting the evolution of the loyalist identity through more than forty years of conflict and peace. Based on extensive documentary and oral evidence from former combatants, politicians and key interlocutors, it frames its analysis within a model of identity drawn from theoretical insights in the fields of sociology, anthropology and political theory.
In its central premise - that understanding loyalism means stepping beyond the stock image of the loyalist as thuggish and reactive to engage instead with the complex,...