From the political pipe to devil eyes: a history of the British election poster from 1910-1997

Despite their use in every British general election of the twentieth and twentieth first century, the political poster remains largely unconsidered by the majority of historians working in the field of British politics. This thesis is the first study dedicated entirely to the posters role in British elections. Through five election case studies, the work contextualises the poster within the broader narratives of election culture. Unusually for studies of political communication, it is the type and content of the communication – namely the poster – that forms the central focus of each chapter. Each of which seeks to locate the production, content and display of posters parties produced for an election, within the broader landscape of that elections particular culture. Understandably given the structure of the thesis, chronologically long, but heavily focused on specific events, the conclusions are at times pertinent to a particular moment. By studying communication in this way, however, by locating posters in one election and understanding them as products of the culture that produced them, the research expands on and questions some of the key totems that define research into British political communication. Moreover, the thesis positions the poster not as an archaic dying form of communication; one replaced by those electronic media that have been of far greater interest to academics, namely television and more latterly online platforms. Rather, as argued here, parties’ use of the poster has constantly been in a state of flux. Ultimately, posters are objects that are constantly being re-imagined for each new age