BBC News Online's Jane Bardon examines the reasons behind the proliferation of loyalist paramilitary flags around Northern Ireland. You can't miss them - loyalist paramilitary flags fluttering on lampposts in districts, towns and villages all around Northern Ireland. Protestant culture' Newtownabbey councillor Tommy Kirkham's party is linked to the UDA and its cousin the Ulster Freedom Fighters, the largest loyalist organisation in the province. The country towns and villages of south County Antrim have been pulled into Newtownabbey Borough after years of being swallowed up by Belfast city sprawling north. Once self-contained communities have broken up as textile factories and mills closed down.
Farmers have been moved closer to selling-up as beef, pig and lamb prices plummet.
And in between, badly planned estates like Rathcoole and Bawnmore offer little in terms of employment or entertainment. It's not surprising that it doesn't take much to spark off a sectarian row. Tommy Kirkham says in Newtownabbey the reason was that a Sinn Fein representative stood in a by-election. The flag explosion happened in Newtownabbey before it happened everywhere else. Then, he said, comments by a local Ulster Unionist politician, Duncan Shipley Dalton, who was trying to win his party's parliamentary by-election nomination for South Antrim, condemning the flying of paramilitary flags sparked anger.