From our archive collections

The documents shown are election posters from one hundred years ago, when Britain held two general elections in the same year.

Like the recent election, the election in January 1910 was fiercely contested. The first poster was produced by the Liberal Party and highlights one of their main campaign issues during the election - reform of the House of Lords. The scales shown in the poster are labelled 'Liberal' and 'Unionist' (the collective name for the Conservatives and former Liberals who opposed Irish Home Rule), with the scales tipped heavily in favour of the Unionists as an illustration of the predominance of Conservatives in the House of Lords.

The January 1910 election, again like the recent election, produced a hung parliament. The Liberals had to form a coalition government with the Irish Nationalists.

By December 1910, the government had been forced to call another election. The second poster shown here, this time issued by the Conservative Party, suggests that this coalition arrangement had given a disproportionate amount of power to the Irish Nationalists, led by John Redmond, stating that "Redmond is Master, Asquith [the leader of the Liberals] is his Servant, You are the Slaves."

The December election again failed to produce a decisive result, and the coalition arrangement continued. It was the last election in which the Liberals won the largest number of seats. The Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats.

The reference for these documents is D.683.

From our Local Studies library

Materials for a History of the County of Dorset, compiled by A J Dunkin, is part of our Local Studies collection. It contains numerous cuttings and election posters from the 1868 general election campaign in Poole, mostly material supporting the Liberals.

One poster ends with the warning "What I want to do is to warn the New Electors, whose memories don't back as far as mine. Judge a man by the company he keeps, and take care of the tricks and traps of these old Poole Tories". The reference to 'New Electors' acknowledges the fact that the number of people who could vote had grown dramatically since the last election, thanks to the Reform Act in 1867.

Another election circular takes a more lyrical approach:

Who ruined Poole, and brought her low,

By law, for Thirty years or so;

Who still keeps up this "little go"?

                                The Tories.

Nationally, the 1868 election was won by the Liberals, led by William Gladstone, who increased their majority in parliament. However, in the Poole constituency, it was the Conservative candidate, Arthur Guest who became MP.

The shelfmark for Materials for a History of the County of Dorset is 942.33. It should be requested in the searchroom, as it is not on open access.