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

这个项目解决了英国公众给政客写信的现象。调查将从格拉德斯通(第一位留下了一批此类信件的总理)开始，并将以最新的事态发展结束。近年来，与传统的政策历史不同，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。尽管已经有一些关于个别政客邮包的具体案例研究，但这些研究都集中在分析表达的观点上。相比之下，我们的研究将在一个多世纪的时间里探索被称为“权力信件”的更广泛的意义。通过研究这些信件--包括电报、贺卡、传真和信件--该项目将探索公众如何理解和反应英国国家、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，这些信件已在先前的范围确定项目中确定为包含来自普通公众的信件。我们将让现任/新任议员及其工作人员和其他相关利益攸关方参与进来，以便从当代的角度了解民选代表如何接收和对待信件，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，政治家收到的信件数量急剧增加。这种上升趋势并不新鲜。在连续扩大选举权的背景下(到1928年，所有21岁以上的成年人都有投票权)，以及国家的扩张，议员们开始收到越来越多的信件，寻求在战争养老金和福利索赔等问题上的帮助。然而，缺乏足够的议会办公空间和行政支持，一些成员拒绝承担“光荣的社会工作者”的角色。随着时间的推移，人们对什么是“好选区议员”的理解发生了变化，使得这种拒绝否认的态度越来越难以为继。当然，也有一些合理的问题需要被问到，即作为民意的表达，给权力的信有多有代表性。议员们倾向于拒绝精心策划的写信运动，认为这是不真实的，尽管矛盾的是，公众对此有强烈感情的问题更有可能刺激有组织的集体努力。将重点从特定观点的代表性转移到更广泛的问题，即选民通过写信给政客试图实现什么，这不仅将使人们深入了解政治行动的技巧，而且还将使这种特殊类型的政治参与具有更广泛的意义。除了探索《写给权力的信》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类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，并强调它们可能被利用的用途。二是探讨在此基础上开展和发表学术研究的法律和伦理意义。鉴于公众写信给政客的合理预期是他们的意见会得到保密对待，而很可能不知道他们的信件可能会被存档，那么他们可以接受的使用的限制是什么？第三是通过与下议院议员和下议院图书馆(项目伙伴组织)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方面的最佳做法，并通过更好地了解公众为什么、何时和如何给政客写信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.