From Telegrams to Twitter: Writing to Politicians in the United Kingdom, 1890-Present

这个项目解决了英国公众成员给政治家写信的现象。调查将从格莱斯顿开始（他是第一个保存了这类信件的首相），并将以最近的事态发展结束。近年来，与传统的政策史不同，历史学家越来越多地研究政治、议会和选举文化。然而，通信作为一种“搞政治”的手段却被忽视了。虽然对个别政治家的邮袋进行了一些具体的案例研究，但这些研究都集中在分析所表达的意见上。相比之下，我们的研究将探索一个多世纪以来被称为“给权力的信”的更广泛意义。通过检查这些信件——包括电报、贺卡、传真和信件——该项目将探索公众如何理解和应对英国国家、政治沟通和领导层不断变化的性质。我们将分析属于英国政治领导人的24封信件，这些信件在之前的一个范围界定项目中被确定为包含来自公众的信件。我们将涉及现任/最近的国会议员及其工作人员，以及其他相关利益相关者，以获得一个关于当选代表如何接收和看待信件的当代视角，特别是在社交媒体兴起的背景下。近年来，部分由于电子邮件的使用，政客们收到的信件数量急剧增加。这种上升趋势并不新鲜。随着选举权的不断扩大（到1928年，所有21岁以上的成年人都有投票权）和国家的扩张，国会议员开始收到越来越多的信件，要求在战争抚恤金和福利索赔等问题上获得帮助。然而，由于缺乏足够的议会办公空间和行政支持，一些议员拒绝承担“光荣的社会工作者”的角色。随着时间的推移，对“优秀选区议员”的理解发生了变化，这种拒绝态度越来越难以为继。当然，关于代表性的“致权力的信”如何作为公众舆论的表达，也存在一些合理的问题。议员们倾向于拒绝精心策划的写信活动，认为这是不真实的，尽管矛盾的是，公众情绪强烈的问题更有可能激发有组织的集体努力。将焦点从特定观点的代表性转移到更广泛的问题上，即选民试图通过写信给政治家来实现什么，不仅可以洞察政治行动的技巧，还可以了解这种特殊类型的政治参与的更广泛意义。除了探索“写信给权力”的历史意义外，该项目还有三个进一步的目的。首先是提高学者们对这些信件的大量收藏的认识，这些信件分布在英国各地的多个档案馆中，并强调它们可能的用途。二是在此基础上探讨创业学术与出版学术的法律伦理意蕴。鉴于市民写信给政界人士，合理期望他们的意见会被保密，而且很可能不明白他们的信件可能会被存档，那么这些信件的可接受用途有哪些限制？第三是通过与国会议员和下议院图书馆（项目合作伙伴组织）的工作人员分享研究结果来产生影响，以促进信件管理和存档的最佳实践，并通过更好地了解公众成员为什么，何时以及如何写信给政治家来更有效地回应信件。

This project addresses the phenomenon of members of the British public writing to politicians. The investigation will begin with Gladstone (the first Prime Minister for whom a collection of such letters survives) and will conclude with very recent developments. In recent years, in contrast to traditional policy history, historians have increasingly investigated political, parliamentary and electoral culture. However, correspondence as a means of 'doing politics' has been overlooked. Although there have been a few specific case studies of individual politicians' postbags, these have concentrated on analysing the opinions expressed. Our research, by contrast, will explore the broader significance of what are termed 'letters to power' over a period of more than a century. Through examining this correspondence-which incorporated telegrams, greetings cards, and faxes as well as letters-the project will explore how members of the public understood and reacted to the changing nature of the British state, political communications, and leadership. We will analyse twenty-four correspondence collections belonging to British political leaders that have been identified in a prior scoping project to contain letters from the general public. We will involve current/recent MPs and their staff, and other relevant stakeholders, in order to obtain a contemporary perspective on how correspondence is received and regarded by elected representatives, particularly in the context of the rise of social media.In recent years, due in part to the use of email, there have been dramatic increases in the volume of correspondence that politicians have received. This upward trend is no novelty. In the context of successive franchise extensions (so that all adults over 21 had the vote by 1928), and the expansion of the State, MPs began to receive increasing numbers of letters seeking help with issues such as war pensions and benefit claims. However, there was a lack of adequate parliamentary office space and administrative support, and some members declined to take on the role of 'glorified social worker'. As time went on, shifting understandings of what it meant to be 'a good constituency MP' made such refusenik attitudes more and more unsustainable. Of course, there are legitimate questions to be asked about how representative 'letters to power' are as expressions of public opinion. MPs tended to reject orchestrated letter-writing campaigns as inauthentic, although paradoxically issues on which there was strong public feeling were more likely to stimulate organised collective efforts. Moving the focus from the representativeness of particular views to the broader question of what voters were trying to achieve by writing to politicians will not only give insights into the techniques of political action but also the wider meaning of this particular type of political participation. In addition to exploring the historical significance of 'letters to power', the project has three further purposes. The first is to increase scholars' awareness of the numerous collections of such letters, which are distributed in multiple archives across the UK, and to highlight the uses to which they may be put. The second is to explore the legal and ethical implications of undertaking and publishing scholarship based on them. Given that members of the public wrote to politicians in the reasonable expectation that their views would be treated confidentially, and very possibly not understanding that their letters might be archived, what are the limits on their acceptable use? The third is to create Impact by sharing the research findings with MPs and the staff of the House of Commons Library (the Project Partner organization) to promote best practice in the management and archiving of correspondence and a more effective responses to correspondence through a better understanding of why, when, and how members of the public write to politicians.