In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, Shuttleworths are lists of people canvassed to be likely to vote for a particular

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

in an electoral campaign. "Shuttleworth" was the Liberal Democrat name for the scheme.Caron Lindsay
How did shuttleworths get their name?
Liberal Democrat Voice, 24 May 2014. Accessed 2 December 2021 The idea was that on Election Day once someone is determined to have voted, they are crossed off the list, thus maintaining an always up-to-date record of voters who have not yet been out to vote. Originally, they were usually printed on multi-sheet

Carbonless copy paper Carbonless copy paper (CCP), also known as non-carbon copy paper or NCR paper ('no carbon required'—a backronym derived from its creator, National Cash Register), is a type of coated paper designed to transfer information written on the top shee ...

so that successive updated copies for each street can progressively be torn off and given to party election workers as a list of doors to knock on. They were known as Mikardo pads after

Ian Mikardo Ian Mikardo (9 July 1908 – 6 May 1993), commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour Member of Parliament. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons. He was a member of Na ...

in the Labour party and as Reading pads in the Conservative party - in both cases because of the original invention, using carbon paper during the 1945 General Election in the Reading constituency, won by Mikardo. This method is largely superseded by first EARS and then VAN software (named Connect in the UK) for the Liberal Democrats,

MERLIN The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an interferometer array of radio telescopes spread across England. The array is run from Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire by the University of Manchester on behalf of UK Re ...

for the Conservative Party and Contact Creator for the Labour Party.

References

Election campaigning {{UK-poli-stub

See also

References