Religious and moral campaigners picketed a shop on a Liverpool high street after it was discovered to be selling 'adult' material.
Back in 1981, a controversial new 'adult' book shop, Sven Books, opened on Smithdown Road, Wavertree much to the anger of a number of locals.
Reminiscent of the classic Father Ted episode when the hapless Ted and Dougal are instructed to protest outside a blasphemous film 'The Passion of Saint Tibulus', by holding signs saying "Down with this sort of thing" and "Careful now".
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After the shop opened in May 1981, dozens of campaigners led by Wavertree Conservative MP and local residents, picketed the shop for eight hours a day, six days a week.
In photographs unearthed from the Mirrorpix archives, campaigners are seen standing outside the shop holding placards displaying messages such as: "If you need a shop like this, you could have a problem".
One campaigner at the time told the ECHO he felt the presence of the shop would "lower the standards" of the area.
However, the report quoted the cashier of the shop who was unruffled by the demonstration, as saying: "Whatever they do couldn't possibly affect us. It's just silly.
"I'm a vegetarian and there is a butcher's shop down the road, but that doesn't bother me."
The campaigners with the backing of Liverpool's Lord Mayor and the Merseyside Community Standards Association, were joined by church members and continued to protest outside in large numbers.
The protesters were accused by the shop's owners of a dirty tricks campaign which included throwing creosote over the store, as well as pushing pornographic magazines through the letterboxes of neighbouring shops in plain wrapping, which the owner's of Sven Books said had not come from their store.
The shop continued to trade on Smithdown Road despite the protests, but in 1982, the Liverpool Echo reported a women's group claimed responsibility for daubing the shop with slogans and pouring glue into the locks.
The shop was one of a number of 'sex shops' that had opened up in the city around the same time, which prompted calls to Government to grant local councils more powers to bring such premises under stricter controls.
Following greater powers being granted to local councils in licensing sex shops in 1983, Sven Books' application was turned down after councillors deemed it to be in an inappropriate location of the city being close to homes, schools and churches. The shop was forced to shut soon after.
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After initially having application turned down at the same time, the long standing sex shop in Moorfields was eventually allowed to trade being in the more appropriate location of Liverpool city centre.
Despite the changing times, some contentious businesses can still cause many of the same arguments and concerns to be raised even 40-years on.
The recent wrangling surrounding the application to open a Hooters – a bar and restaurant franchise known for its scantily-clad waitresses – in the vacant New Zealand House on Water Street prompted Mayor Joanne Anderson to slam the proposed venture as cultivating "an infamous sexually objectifying and misogynistic environment".
However, members of Liverpool council’s licensing authority sub-committee have since given their approval to applicant Beauvoir Developments Limited to move ahead with proposals to bring a branch of the US franchise to the city.
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