But after 1945 the climate changed. In 1950 just 297 postcards were ordered destroyed under the Obscene Publications Act 1857, but the election of a Conservative Government in the following year coincided with a rapid increase in the number of police raids on seafront kiosks and stationers’ shops. In 1951 some 11,662 postcards were consigned to the flames, rising to 16,029 in 1952. At the climax of the campaign in 1953 some 32,603 seaside postcards went up in smoke, after being ordered destroyed by local magistrates.