UK election leaflets, archived

Linkies! [The Straight Choice](http://www.thestraightchoice.org/) is a new website collecting campaign leaflets from UK elections.

If it takes off, this could become a very useful resource. Leaflets ofen show campaigns at their most brutal and desperate. Enhancing the collective memory of what politicians have done is a great way of holding them to account. That goes for the outrageous behaviour that comes out during elections (who [remembers](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5391/is_200410/ai_n21358424/) the Tory slogan “if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour.”? Would pictures help?). More importantly, it goes for the little promises that are made and then ignored, safe in the knowledge that what’s said in the campaign vanishes soon afterwards.

Of course, libraries do have collections of this stuff; there’s one at [LSE](http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/archive/gutoho/election_ephemera.htm), and another in Bristol. But I doubt they get much attention, except from academic historians and the occasional zealous party worker. Online images have much greater potential, provided the intial enthusiasm is enough to start it snowballing.

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