Their uniform is the baseball hat, a single gold earring, Nike trainers, football shirts and Glasgow Rangers scarves. They are working class, usually unemployed, under-achievers in education, many the products of broken homes who are given a sense of belonging in the ranks of loyalist terror groups.

Driven by testosterone and turned on by terrorism, the largest Protestant paramilitary force in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Defence Association, has created a teenage army that was given its first 'martyr' last Sunday.

Glen Branagh fitted the above description with one important exception - he supported Celtic, the Scottish Premier League side normally followed by Ulster's Catholics and nationalists. Even though 16-year-old Branagh was a member of the UDA's youth wing, the Ulster Young Militants, he was buried in the Celtic colours.

The spot where he died, after attempting to throw a pipe bomb which blew up in his hand during the Remembrance Sunday riots, was transformed into a shrine last week. Among the flowers, cards, UDA flags, Rangers shirts and scarves and a tribute from the jailed loyalist commander Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair, some friends had pinned a Celtic away strip to a wire fence close to the interface between loyalist Tigers Bay and the republican New Lodge Road.

Branagh was only nine years old when the Combined Loyalist Military Command declared a ceasefire in October 1994 - a historic move on the back of the IRA cessation that was meant to herald a new era of peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

But he grew up in Mountcollyer Street, just yards from Alexandra Park where, on the very day of the first IRA ceasefire seven years ago, foundations were laid to build a Berlin Wall-style barrier through the green space, separating warring Catholic and Protestant communities.

The politicians who drove the peace process ignored the facts on the ground in places like Tigers Bay and New Lodge, even while the UDA continued to recruit hundreds of young men, some barely in their teens, into the Ulster Young Militants.

As low-level sectarian attacks continued in north Belfast, despite the ceasefires, the UYM became the teeth of the loyalist hydra, a new army of terrorists waiting for their chance to emulate the likes of Johnny Adair.

Branagh's death has created a new myth in Tigers Bay: loyalists believe he picked up a pipe bomb thrown by republican rioters, dying to protect his community.

'The lad is regarded as a hero around here,' said Eddie McClean, a former UDA prisoner, now a community worker in the loyalist inner city area. 'He died by picking up that bomb and preventing it from injuring others.'

Alan McQuillan, the Assistant Chief Constable for Belfast, begs to differ. McQuillan, whose officers have been subjected to almost nightly attacks by UYM men throwing petrol bombs, blast bombs, rocks and stones, insists that Branagh was killed attempting to throw the pipe bomb at Catholics.

One of the Province's most senior police officers described the UYM as the 'UDA's Frankenstein monster'. He also described the weekly, sometimes daily, disturbances near Branagh's home in Tigers Bay as 'recreational rioting'.

'The sinister thing about this activity is that older men in the UDA are using the riots as a testing ground,' he said. 'They are watching the trouble to check kids out and see that they think is worth recruiting into their youth wing.

'It reminds me of the early 1970s when the Provos used to watch the rioters in republican areas and then recruit the most militant ones, the lads who threw the nail bombs and the petrol bombs. It is completely cynical.'

The UDA's recruitment methods are unorthodox. They include paying drug debts by engaging in acts of terrorism. In August a UYM member hurled a blast bomb at police officers guarding Catholic schoolgirls walking to the Holy Cross on Ardoyne Road.

The teenage loyalist who threw the bomb owed the UDA £500 from a drug deal. He was able to 'wipe the slate clean' by agreeing to lob the bomb at riot squad officers.

Teenagers who spurn the UDA's advances describe recruitment as a strategy of carrot and stick. Eighteen-year-old Louise (she did not give her surname for fear of UYM reprisals) split from her boyfriend after he joined the UDA's youth wing in the Lower Shankill area.

'They lent out money to some of my friends including my ex-boyfriend. They said they could sell drugs and make some money if the boys joined the UYM. They also approached lads who had got into fights with others and said that if they joined the UYM the ones they were fighting would be "sorted out".

'Anybody in trouble with the UDA is also given the choice to join the UYM or else be beaten up. When my boyfriend joined them that was it, I dropped him because I don't believe in what they do. But all the lads we used to run around with in the Lower Shankill have joined the UYM, the only one who didn't joined the Army instead to get away.'

She added that some of the crowd she associated with had been given guns when they were just 13. 'He was allowed to wave a handgun about at a Twelfth bonfire before the loyalist feud in 2000 at the Lower Shankill,' she said.

Some so-called UDA commanders confess that there is a major problem with bringing in hundreds of young men to the UYM, even though the loyalist war is meant to be over. He stressed, however, that binding loyalist teenagers closer to the UDA would prevent them from causing mayhem on the streets of Protestant communities. The evidence in working class loyalist estates contradicts his view.

As Glen Branagh's coffin was driven along North Queen Street past the flags, the flowers, the scarves and the street lamp beside which he fell, two of his 'comrades' launched a vicious attack on a news cameraman. It sparked off threats and intimidation by UDA supporters - including young women pushing children in prams - towards the media gathered for Branagh's funeral.

The UYM's menace paid off; journalists retreated behind army and police Land Rovers. But the sight of loyalists once again shooting the messenger only underlines how alienated young working class Protestant males are from the peace process.