VANDALS have torn down, damaged, stolen or defaced dozens of General Election signs in Worcester - with furious city Conservatives hitting out at the culprits.

Your Worcester News can reveal how over the last few days mystery attackers have been targeting Robin Walker's re-election campaign by trespassing onto private land belonging to householders across the city to wreck his posters.

The situation has got so bad that some members of the public, many of them pensioners, are now too frightened to accept replacement banners for fear of reprisals, with Tory chiefs contacting West Mercia Police to try and halt it.

Last night 15 different posters held up on wooden stakes were snapped down, with one left balanced on the top of a council candidate's car.

Posters have been defaced and snapped off in areas like Droitwich Road, Lansdowne Road, Bath Road and pockets of Battenhall, with Mr Walker calling it "pathetic".

Over the last two weeks activists have put around 100 wooden stake posters around the city and say "several dozen" have now been targeted, costing hundreds of pounds of damage.

One of those targeted was pensioner Beryl Gummery, 89, who lives at the top of Bath Road and has always had a Tory poster on her front garden by St Peter's island at election time.

Mrs Gummery, who lives with husband Ronald, said today: "I said they could put two signs up and the next day I came out and couldn't believe it, one was chucked on my garden and the other was thrown on the pavement outside.

"I thought 'someone will get hurt on that' and had to get it back inside, it was so dangerous.

"My husband wouldn't let me put them back out, he's too frightened for me that something will happen.

"All these years I've been doing it and I've never had a problem before - it's such a shame."

Businessman Stuart Allen, who founded the social media phenomenon Worcestershire Hour and lives in Henwick Road, St John's, has also had a poster ripped out.

Mr Walker said: "It's pathetic and pretty unpleasant, whoever is doing this is trying to intimidate people into not offering us support but it's not on.

"Part of a healthy democracy is surely allowing everyone to respect each other's views, no other party has been targeted like this.

"It's very bad that in many cases, people who are elderly and vulnerable have agreed to put these signs up and then this happens."

Some of the posters have been ripped off the posts and found in the bushes or roads.

Will Pryce, Mr Walker's campaign manager, has contacted police and is appealing for it to stop, labelling it "outrageous".

"It's costing us money, as soon as they go up people are ripping them down," he said.

Mr Pryce has also pointed suspicion at the Labour Party, adding: "We've been deliberately targeted, I haven't seen any Joy Squires (Labour's city parliamentary candidate) ones taken down."

But the Labour Party has distanced itself from the saga, saying it expects to be targeted at some point too.

But Councillor Joy Squires said: "I doubt if there is any political motivation behind this.

"I expect to lose a few of my boards as the campaign goes along and it wouldn’t occur to me to blame my opponents. It is far more likely to be late night revellers."

Mr Walker is defending a slim 2,982 majority in next month's General Election, putting the contest on a knife-edge.

* Anyone who knows anything about the damaged posters can ring West Mercia Police on the non-emergency number 101.