This month marks an anniversary of sorts for me, its 30 years since I started collecting election leaflets!
What began as a small pile of Dun Laoghaire Constituency leaflets from the February 1982 election has grown over time to seven plastic crates full of material in my attic and a few hundred leaflets in my office space downstairs and a few old posters too!
30 years later I’m also totally confident in my hobby. For years I felt embarrassed when asking people to keep stuff for me, I got strange looks and was asked umpteen times “What do you want to keep them for?”.
I was lucky too in that relatives and friends of my parents kept material for me and in school and college people kept stuff for me too. Over the years I also wrote letters to parties and candidates requesting material.
The advent of the internet and email really opened up a whole new world for me, not just being able to start this blog but also in the ability to communicate with candidates and parties requesting material.
It has also enabled people to get in contact with me and send me stuff, something which I am eternally grateful for.
I’ve also been able to supply leaflets to people for various needs. Be it leaflets from deceased relatives, museums, exhibitions, leaflets for books , magazines, newspapers, a thesis on women politicians fashion, or even recently leaflets for a TV show. Last week some old leaflets I’d posted were quoted in the Dail.
It has also opened the door for radio and television appearances, interviews, features in newspapers and magazines.
Aside from the physical material I have also collected thousands of election/ political related images and pdf files which are all backed up regularly to an external disk.
Given I’m a one man band and this is only a hobby I still have thousands of leaflets unscanned and yet to be posted.
As ever if you’ve an old or new leaflet lying about , want to see a certain candidate, want some old leaflets to start a collection yourself , then get in touch. irishelectionliterature AT gmail.com is the email.
Anyway, instead of posting my favourites (of which there are way too many), Here’s some leaflets from that February 1982 election
Irish Election Literature 
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