There are very few reliable statistics about advertising mail but we can say for certain it had become a common nuisance by the 1960s, so much so that it was mentioned in parliament. The context was that the Post Office introduced a Household Delivery Service in 1964, alongside its normal Postal Delivery Service. For the first time, postmen would regularly deliver door-to-door items. Both the Union of Post Office Workers and the Labour Party were less than enthusiastic about the new service. Clement Attlee summed up the criticism rather colourfully in a debate about the Post Office:

[…] I am going to call attention to only one thing, and that is to the silliest proposal I have ever heard put forward by this or any other Government. That is the proposal that unaddressed advertising matter should be placed in all our letter boxes and delivered through the agency of the Post Office. This is a most astounding proposal. First of all we do not want these advertisements; there is quite enough advertising matter which is addressed thrust on us already. Moreover, there is the constant danger of anybody in the house switching on the wire-less and probably having a mass of synthetic enthusiasm for some saponaceous substitute poured in their ears. When one buys a Sunday newspaper nowadays it is full of advertising matter; and there must be a great national waste in all this.

Look at what this is going to do to the postal service. The postman has his round; he has worked out what his round is going to be and it may include calling at the houses of some unfortunate people like myself to whom the postman has to come every day with a mass of addressed nonsense. But many people are spared that; and the postman's call is usually to some houses but not to every house. Now they are going to shove this matter into his bag and the poor fellow will have to look into every house — and he will have a very heavy bag. I wonder whether this proposal has been worked out in terms of staff. I wonder whether it has been worked out in terms of expense. In fact, I wonder whether it has been worked out at all. I do not know what remuneration the Post Office will have for this service. I have been advised by Members of your Lordships' House that the best thing to do if this should occur is to shove all this stuff straight back, addressed to the Postmaster General. I think a lot of people will do that. Why on earth do the Government want to do a thing like this? Why should they?

It is a long time since I was Postmaster General; it is 33 years. I was told then that my job was to serve the convenience of the public, not to act as an internal irritant; my job was to save trouble and not to make it. I hope we shall hear of the withdrawal of this proposal. If not, it will be a great annoyance to very many householders. A mass of labour that might be employed elsewhere would be diverted to delivering a mass of printed matter which we do not want. This is a national waste and a private annoyance, and I hope it will be dropped and that no such stupid proposal is ever brought forward again.

This is, as far as I am aware, the first public endorsement of returning junk mail to the sender. If you are the type of person who routinely shoves unwanted ads in your nearest pillar box, you are part of a long and proud tradition.

The Household Delivery Service did go ahead. For the government, Peter Legh (4th Baron Newton), explained there had been growth in leaflet deliveries by private companies and that the Post Office needed to compete in that market:

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, delivered a forcible attack on what is known as the Household Delivery Service, and I think I had better tell your Lordships why my right honourable friend decided to introduce it. I am told that in recent years from time to time there have been periods when the lack of buoyancy in postal traffic has given rise to some concern, and that a possible contributory cause has been the growth of house-to-house delivery of unaddressed items by private circular delivery companies. This is believed to have drawn traffic from the printed paper post. In the past the Post Office have on occasion carried out distributions of unaddressed matter — for example, the Highway Code, and lately on behalf of a water company wishing to circulate its users. Moreover, in the last year or two there has been pressure by individuals and organisations for the Post Office to introduce its own house-to-house delivery service for unaddressed matter. My right honourable friend came to the conclusion that such a service could be run without affecting adversely either postal services or the interests of the staff. The Post Office was encouraged in this view by the fact that several overseas administrations successfully run such a service. It was also felt that if it was not started there was a real danger that traffic already lost from the post would never be recovered, and that further traffic might gradually be attracted away. So the decision was taken to introduce the service, which was begun last Monday.

And the Baron also suggested the new service could actually be beneficial for junk mail haters, of which he declared himself to be one:

Although I am extremely allergic to all forms of advertisements, I nevertheless receive through the post envelopes bearing a 2½d. stamp — or nowadays, frequently, a 3d. stamp. Such communications have to be opened and read before one realises that they are advertisements — and then they go into the waste paper basket. Now, one can see immediately what they are, and one puts them straight into the waste paper basket. So it seems to me that people like me, who do not like advertisements, will benefit.

Making skilled men into errand boys

Subsequent debates about the Household Delivery Service confirm that many MPs shared Attlee's and Baron Newton's dislike of advertising mail. Nobody sung advertising mail's praises and nobody suggested the new service was something to be proud of; the only argument in favour was that would bring in more revenue for the Post Office. The feeling was, as one MP put it in a debate in February 1964, that skilled men were being turned into errand boys. Even the Conservative MP Kenneth Thompson — a former Assistant Postmaster-General — acknowledged the concern:

I see the point of view of the postman who says that this is a commercial operation which ought to be done by girls, wearing a particular coloured overall with the name of the firm on it, delivering leaflets or samples as a special service, and that this is something different from and less than the kind of service that the uniformed State servant — the postman — proud, dignified and responsible as he is, has been accustomed to give. I see that argument.

It is perhaps telling that the phrase "junk mail" was first used in parliament during this debate. However, in the end the economic argument prevailed. The Household Delivery Service survives to this day.

Literature on sexual matters

In 1970, another innovation by the junk mail industry was debated in parliament; junk mailers had started using the electoral register to target young men with literature on sexual matters. I will get back to the debate when we get to the sale of the electoral register (see A convenient and cheap mailing list). For now, it is worth noting that the practice shows the advertising industry was getting more and more advanced. Targeting advertisements was nothing new — the first mailing list, the Royal Blue Book, dates back to the early 19th century — and the electoral roll had been used to print address labels for some time. However, using the electoral roll to target specific groups of people was an innovation.

An added concern was that the electoral roll could in future be delivered on computer tapes. The government of the day wasn't quite sure if advertisers should get digital copies of the electoral register. When the electoral roll was eventually made available in "computer-compatible form", in 1986, advertisers would have access to the digital copies.