Vice squad goes on porn purge: Weak laws and the recession mean that Soho is in danger of reverting to its sleazier past

Police have renewed their offensive against unlicensed sex shops in Soho in the wake of reports that the area is reverting to its sleazier past.

Club and vice squad officers snatched enough pornographic magazines and videos to fill five storage bunkers during surprise raids on Soho sex shops two weeks ago.

The Saturday blitz, on a total of 20 premises, is part of their continuing drive to purge Soho of the pornographers whose outlets have mushroomed because of the recession and inadequate legislation to curb the trade.

Police working in pairs seized up to 20 bags of material from individual properties in the area around Old Compton Street, Brewer Street and Peter Street.

Some shops were concentrated in Walker's Court, a notorious courtyard off Peter Street, which alone has ten shops retailing pornographic material.

All of the properties hit in the raid were unlicensed.

The material seized fills five converted air-raid shelters used as a storage bay by the pornography unit.

Its officers will have to sift through the literature and view the videos before they can decide what action they can take under the obscene publications legislation.

Inspector Richard Powell, in charge of the unit based in Charing Cross, said: 'When I joined this unit three years ago there were 17 sex shops. Now, partly due to the recession, there are 41, which is quite unacceptable. I won't rest until I've closed them all down.

Inspector Powell said the crackdown followed the offensive established in the three-year-long Operation Baron, which ended 18 months ago, and Operation Habena, carried out in conjunction with Customs and Excise, which ended in March.

'It is part of a blitz on Soho at the moment. But there will always be a blitz on Soho as far as I'm concerned.

Material seized in previous raids has included a large number of films depicting torture and bondage, he said. 'We are not talking about run-of-the-mill male/female sex stuff. Some of it is quite stomach-churning.

But there was no evidence of the existence in Britain of the 'snuff movies, which purportedly depict the participants being killed on screen.

Soho has never again scaled the sleazy heights it reached in the Sixties and Seventies. In 1984, new licensing powers were introduced in Soho which then had 300 premises retailing sex. At the beginning of 1992 there were six.

Westminster council inspectors also patrol the streets. Their records show 47 unlicensed cinemas and shops and six licensed premises. A spokesman said the borough hoped the City and Westminster Bill would clear out the porn kings who mastermind their empires from abroad.

It had begun the move under a special once-a-year procedure for local authorities to introduce a private members Bill, which would give it power to lock up premises without contacting the owner beforehand.

The Bill had its second reading in the last session of Parliament and Westminster hopes it will receive the Royal Assent in October.

'At the moment we raid the shops, close them down and they reopen within 24 hours, the council spokesman added.

Inspector Powell said that pounds 10,000 in cash could buy an unscrupulous vice dealer a lease on an available shop. The property boom in the Eighties, which saw Soho revitalised with new fashion shops and brasseries, was halted when the recession arrived in the Nineties.

'When the recession hit Soho, many shops went out of business and the sex industry filled the empty space. Some of the bigger shops can make a clear pounds 3,000 or pounds 4,000 profit every week.

'The person selling the material at the front end of the operation is usually some poor innocent - the families who run the shops keep their hands clean and do not go anywhere near the area.

'The lynchpins in the sex shop industry are more often than not of British or Maltese origin.

'The Maltese have been involved in vice in Soho for a long time - going back even to the era of the Kray twins.

(Photograph omitted)