He served as an articulate spokesman for working-class Belfast loyalism, his evident sincerity providing a stark counterpoint to a sub-culture increasingly dominated by money-grubbing drug dealing and other criminality.

His commitment to conflict resolution, coupled with a brand of backstreet common sense, won him admirers in many quarters as he emerged from the loyalist paramilitary trenches, preaching dialogue and an end to Protestant negativity.

In the 1990s, some speculated his efforts might create the loyalist equivalent of Sinn Fein, though in the end his Progressive Unionist Party proved long on promise, short on delivery.

At the time of his death, he was working towards persuading the paramilitary group he was linked to, the Ulster Volunteer Force, to end all of its violent activities. There are still signs a UVF disbandment might eventually come about, but Ervine's departure from the scene virtually puts paid to the idea of an effective party evolving from the organisation.

An east Belfast working-class Protestant, Ervine was drawn into the Troubles at an early age. He was, like Belfast singer Van Morrison, educated at Orangefield Secondary school, leaving at the age of 15.

By his own account, he joined the UVF two days after his 18th birthday. On his birthday, IRA bomb attacks, taking place on what was known as Bloody Friday, killed nine people in Belfast, including an 18-year-old youth with a name similar to his own.

He recalled later: "People thought it was me. And I thought, it could have been me. At that point, I decided the best way to defence is to attack and I joined the paramilitary organisation or a terrorist organisation, call it what you like."

Two years later, he was arrested in a car containing a bomb. In a bizarre incident, soldiers tied a rope around his waist and sent him in to remove the device from the vehicle. He has never revealed the intended target of the bomb.

He served five-and-a-half years in the Maze prison, where he became a protege of Augustus "Gusty" Spence, a venerated UVF figure who sought to instill in loyalist prisoners a mixture of 1970s socialism and strict military discipline.

On his release, he did not return to violence, although the UVF turned to him for political analysis. He did, however, become active again in the UVF in the late 1980s in an internal disciplinary role. For a time, Ervine ran a newsagent's shop, and unsuccessfully ran for a Belfast council seat in 1985.

When the 1990s brought a ferment of loyalist paramilitary activity - both in terms of violence and of new political thinking - Ervine emerged as the UVF's guru. With the peace process in its early days, he took part in many political talks.

With his self-confidence, wide vocabulary, outgoing outlook and air of pipe-smoking thoughtfulness, he represented a new trend within loyalism, becoming an accomplished performer on TV and at conferences.

As such, he played an important part in soothing unionist and loyalist concerns during the 1990s, when he forcefully challenged the many conventional Protestant politicians who wanted the peace process stopped in its tracks.

He was also highly critical of some senior unionist politicians. This was partly because of what he saw as their incendiary rhetoric and partly because, he said, he had personally witnessed them secretly conspiring with the UVF while publicly condemning such groups.

"I sat there with them - I could tell you the colour of their wallpaper," he said.

He also did not spare the middle-class, parts of which he accused of benefiting from divisions. "Many people come from places where drawing-room sectarianism is at its worst," he declared, "and they have luxuriated and benefited as society, divided more and more, crashes on the rocks."

He and PUP colleague Billy Hutchinson were elected to the Northern Assembly, but in a subsequent contest Hutchinson lost out, leaving Ervine as the Assembly's sole loyalist paramilitary spokesman.

He notched up respectable votes in other contests, winning a Belfast council seat in 1997. This record was an achievement in itself, for he never lessened his support for the compromises of the Good Friday Agreement even as the Protestant grassroots increasingly turned against it.

His constant counsel to the UVF was to hang up its guns, and it is beyond doubt that his approach saved several lives. But his influence had obvious limitations and he could not persuade it to end its violence.

A moment of personal tragedy came in 2004 when his 14-year-old grandson Mark took his own life.

By 2002, Ervine had become PUP leader, but by that stage it had passed its peak. He will probably be best remembered for his rhetoric which captured the hope of progress.

"We can fight all day and all night," he once said, "but in the end of the day all that does is create victims and greater bitterness and greater anger and we have a hamster-wheel cycle of continuum of violence and hatred and bitterness.

"We have got to extend the hand of friendship, we have got to take the peacelines down brick by brick, and somehow or other we have got to introduce class politics. The politics of division see thousands of people dead, most of them working class, and headstones on the graves of young men. We have been fools: let's not be fools any longer."