"Ulster is being sold, help us buy it"

The Orange Order has been caught out over its links with a land company set up to buy property and prevent it falling into nationalist hands. The company's motto is "Ulster is being sold, help us buy it".

The Order last year denied it had any connection to the Ulster Land and Property Company (ULPC), launched in 1995 at the height of the Drumcree standoff, to block Catholics buying land.

A company brochure obtained by the Belfast-based Irish News, marked 'strictly confidential', states that the ULPC is the "landholding body of the Loyal Orange Institution". It also asks subscribers to send their bank details to Schomberg House, the Order's headquarters in East Belfast.

By 2002, over 1,200 Orangemen were contributing to the ULPC, with that number said to have increased "significantly" in recent years.

The brochure also says that the company bought 15 properties throughout the Six Counties and one in County Donegal, valued in total at £1,458,500, between 1995 and 2002.

A letter, written on Grand Orange Order headed paper by Grand Master Robert Saulters, reveals his support for the company and contradicts denials made in March last year by the Orange Order that it had any official ties to ULPC.