A PRE-election dirty tricks campaign has been blamed for a mountain of post delivered to the Malvern Liberal Democrat headquarters.

Five thousand envelopes containing "junk mail" were dispatched to the party's Freepost address last week over two or three days.

The mail, which fills six crates, came in good quality envelopes, chiefly white foolscap or A5 manila, with identical address labels.

Many were over the weight limit for standard 26p first-class post, with some franked at £1.10 or £1.20. The total postage cost, to be borne by the Liberal Democrat party, amounted to £1,200.

Until it became obvious that they were a hoax, the first envelopes were opened and found to contain a variety of junk mail, including some fairly thick booklets and diaries.

"It looks like a carefully orchestrated campaign by some other group trying to screw up our system," said campaign director Jock Gallagher.

"It has taken an awful lot of time and energy. We estimate it would take about 50 man-hours to fill and address this many envelopes.

"It was a cold-blooded and deliberate attempt to spike our guns. The timing was such that it would have counted as an election expense if there had been a General Election in May.

"As the total expenses allowed for each candidate are just over £9,000, it would have made a considerable dent in the budget."

Prospective parliamentary candidate Mike Hadley said: "This is the sort of thing that gives politics a bad name.

"The Freepost address was for responses to our health survey, which is a valuable piece of research on people's views of the health service that someone is trying to scupper."

A spokesman for Royal Mail said: "We're not responsible for the contents of the mail. We are just here to deliver it, but we do sympathise with the problems they have experienced and we are looking into it."