PATRIOTIC posters dating back to the 1930s which urge shoppers to 'buy British' have emerged for sale in Dorset.

The poster campaign was created to get Brits to stop importing foreign goods in a bid to boost the economy after it took a major hit in the Great Depression.

It was fronted by the then Prince of Wales who made an official announcement in November 1931 stating the nation was buying 'more than it could afford' from abroad and that Brits should 'buy at home'.

To support his message, 26 posters were issued on a weekly basis to factories across the country carrying slogans demanding workers to do their bit and purchase local goods.

The copies of all 26 that are now for sale were kept by a factory owner who took them home. They have subsequently been passed down the generations to his grandson.

After rediscovering them in his attic while recently moving house, the vendor has now consigned the posters for sale with Onslow Auctions, of Stourpaine, near Blandford.

They are tipped to sell for £5,000.

In launching his campaign, the future King Edward VIII implored the British public to buy more goods and food produced at home to boost the economy.

He said: "It is now recognised that as a nation we have been lately buying from abroad more than we are able to pay for by our exports, and that we should concentrate in the first place on buying at home more of what we need - on using to the full what our own farms and our own manufacturing plants can provide.

"There is a great determination among us this winter to lessen our unemployment - to bring back work to those thousands of homes that are seeking and waiting for it, and to restore the fortunes of our countryside."

One poster has a picture of a horse with the caption 'plain horse sense - buy British and protect your jobs'.

Another has echoes of Lord Kitchener's famous World War One recruitment poster with a man pointing a finger at the reader.

There is one depicting a young brother and sister at a shop counter asking the cashier 'I want the kind my Daddy makes'.

And another poster shows a rugby match pleads 'buy British and pass your wages to another member of the British team'.

Patrick Bogue, owner of Onslows Auctions, said: "The posters were issued to urge British people to buy goods made in the country instead of from abroad at a time of economic depression.

"They are numbered one to 26 and were issued every week to be displayed at factories.

"The message is very similar to what is going on in this country at the moment with Brexit.

"They belonged to a factory owner in the 1930s and were inherited by his grandson, who had them stored away but rediscovered them when moving house.

"I believe these posters were only issued in factories and they were likely destroyed after use so to find surviving copies is in fact quite rare."

At the time the posters were produced, Britain was in the clutches of an economic depression which originated from the US Great Depression of 1929.

Unemployment reached 70 per cent in some areas, with the industrial and mining areas of the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales particularly hard-hit.

The sale takes place on December 14.