page_title: Postal censorship
section_title: Imperial Censorship
hierarchical_section_title: Postal censorship / Countries known to have enacted postal censorship / World War II / Imperial Censorship
caption_attribution_description: A view over the city of Liverpool towards the Littlewoods Building from the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral Tower, Merseyside, England.
context_page_description: Postal censorship is the inspection or examination of mail, most often by governments. It can include opening, reading and total or selective obliteration of letters and their contents, as well as covers, postcards, parcels and other postal packets. Postal censorship takes place primarily but not exclusively during wartime and periods of unrest, and occasionally at other times, such as periods of civil disorder or of a state of emergency. Both covert and overt postal censorship have occurred.
  Historically, postal censorship is an ancient practice; it is usually linked to espionage and intelligence gathering. Both civilian mail and military mail may be subject to censorship, and often different organisations perform censorship of these types of mail. In 20th-century wars the objectives of postal censorship encompassed economic warfare, security and intelligence.
  The study of postal censorship is a philatelic topic of postal history.
context_section_description: British censorship was primarily based in the Littlewoods football pools building in Liverpool with nearly 20 other censor stations around the country. Additionally the British censored colonial and dominion mail at censor stations in the following places:
  Dominions: Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Southern Rhodesia (not a dominion but supervised by the Dominion office) and Union of South Africa
  Colonies: Aden, Antigua, Ascension Island, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Bermuda, Ceylon, Cyprus, Dominica, Egypt, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Gambia, Gibraltar, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Gold Coast, Grenada, British Guiana, British Honduras, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaya, Malta, Mauritius, Montserrat, New Hebrides, Nigeria, North Borneo, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Palestine, Penang, St. Helena, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent, Sarawak, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, British Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Tanganyika, Trinidad, Tonga, Uganda, Virgin Islands and Zanzibar,
caption: Littlewoods building where much of the British postal censorship took place
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