Diane Easby wrote: "The reference to the Protestant Association using a blue cockade strikes me as slightly odd since it was previously associated with the Jacobites. So perhaps the colour has as much meaning as a football strip, possiby being changed for away matches."

I've no idea as to the reasoning behind the choice of colour of the cockade with regard to the Protestant Association, I just knew that Gordon, for whatever reason, used a blue one as a symbol. What I read about the Gordon riots was in a chapter in a book about Newgate prison rather than anything on religion, or nationalist politics per se.

Colours of anything - whether it's cockades, flags, nazi/bonehead bootlaces or football strips - are all a bit arbitrary when it comes down to it. Unless, of course, it's something obviously iconically-motivated like red representing blood or green representing fields or something.