Housmans bookshop at No 5, Cally Road

WHEN Tom Willis was conscripted to do National Service, the Yorkshireman found polishing boots and pressing a uniform a life-changing experience: he came out of the British army a confirmed pacifist and become a Church of England vicar.

He inherited a tidy sum from a relative and decided he wanted to spend the money on helping a pacifist group.

At the time, the peace movement was growing in numbers and influence: in 1958, CND had marched to Aldermaston and given a generation a cause.

Pacifism has a long history in the UK, dating from well before the First World War but given impetus by the mechanisation of murder. The rise of Nazism meant many on the left saw the need to bear arms – but when the Cold War began the peace movement, with the threat of mutually assured destruction, found a popular cause.

This was the background for the opening of Housmans book­shop in King’s Cross, and now its incredible history of political activism has been brought together in a new book.

As author Rosa Schling reveals, long-term campaigner Harry Mister had published Peace News since 1936, and Peace Pledge Union sponsor the writer and illustrator Laurence Housman had run a shop in Shaftesbury Avenue, selling political tomes and radical pamphlets. The huge numbers on the Aldermaston march set the ball rolling for a permanent headquarters for peace movements in London.

It meant Tom Willis’s windfall came at an opportune moment: No 5 Caledonian Road was bought and so began a six-decade history of political work.

More than 50 different political groups have at some point called No 5 home – and now their stories have been carefully collated by a group of researchers aged between 18 and 25, with their interviews of key players being edited by Rosa.

“The building has weathered many kinds of attacks,” says the author in her introduction. “It has been the scene of bombings, arrests, police raids and espionage. Since the 1960s, there have been attempts to redevelop the area, which would have led to the building’s demolition. That it remains is thanks to the trustees’ refusal to sell and the campaigning and lobbying of the local community.”

Laurence Housman

The book draws on a two-year project to catalogue and archive the Housmans and Peace House story. They revisited projects and movements linked to the building, the people who worked there and used it as a base for changing the world.

It was 1959 when Housmans first opened in Caledonian Road, a stone’s throw from King’s Cross train station.

Organiser Harry Willets would explain: “I had been yearning for years to get a proper bookshop going, so I gave him a very full set-up of starting a Peace Centre and getting offices for our organisations and the bookshop… In the end he coughed up £5,000, a vast amount in those days, and I went hunting for premises and found this shop in the Cally Road.”

King’s Cross was a busy shopping area and also Housmans had allies nearby: The Movement for Colonial Freedom, The Independent Labour Party, The Quakers and the Peace Pledge Union were all a walk away.

The 1970s saw No 5 become home to one of the most successful civil rights campaigns of the latter part of the 20th century.

The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) found a home there and organised a ground­breaking demonstration in Highbury Fields. A list of demands included an end to discrimination, the age of consent to be the same as it was for heterosexual couples and that gay people should be allowed to hold hands and kiss in public.

In 1974, from the GLF sprang the London Gay Switchboard – a telephone service that helped thousands of people and would stay in the building until the 1990s. An advert was placed in Gay News and they received 45 calls in the first five hours. By the following year, the switchboard was taking calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Another group linked to the address was the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). Peace campaigner Albert Beale recalled how he had run off a duplicator by hand and stuffed hundreds of envelopes with newsletters for the CAAT, before posting them in a box outside the shop.

Little did Albert know the IRA had decided to bomb King’s Cross station and the closest suitable spot they could find was the Cally Road post box.

The shop’s opening ceremony in 1959

He heard about the blast and rushed back to find Cally Road sealed by police tape – and his newsletters blowing around.

The British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign launched in 1973 to encourage a political solution by the Irish people. A leaflet for British squaddies outlined how they could avoid serving in Northern Ireland.

Campaigner Pat Arrowsmith handed them out and was arrested and found guilty of “incite­ment to disaffection”.

Pat was sent to an open prison, and promptly absconded to re-emerge at a rally in Hyde Park, her presence deemed good for publicity.

National Council for Civil Liberties and GLF member Nettie Pollard recalls: “She made a rousing speech.”

No police appeared to re-arrest her, so they headed to the Cally Road. There they called the Daily Telegraph and a front-page photo prompted the police to finally act. The law was never far away.

In 1977, journalist Duncan Campbell worked with Mark Hosenball from Time Out on an article that focused on the government’s secret communications hub in Cheltenham, GCHQ.

Hosenball was promptly deported and his colleague Crispin Aubrey joined Campbell to fight the decision. It became known as the ABC trial and the defence was run from No 5.

Albert Beale was involved. He went to the committal hearings and noted an anonymous expert witness, Colonel B, was called to state information held by Campbell and Aubrey was a danger to the state.

Albert received a tip-off about how he could discover the real identity of Colonel B and Peace News revealed his identity.

“All hell broke loose,” recalls Albert. “The police started running around saying ‘you are all in contempt of court, you’re going to be done for this, that and the other’.”

Sympathetic MPs named the colonel in parliament under privilege, and persons unknown started a campaign of spray painting his name on walls for all to see.

An Old Bailey jury found them not guilty.

The address has been home to many progressive movements – from peace campaigners to defendants on the McLibel trial, to stocking alternative newspapers and magazines, and even fighting to stop swathes of King’s Cross being redeveloped.

The radical booksellers remain in place and with conflict, the climate crisis and inequality as bad as it ever has been, Housmans remains a beacon for peace, freedom… and very good books to read.

• Peace! Books! Freedom! The Secret History of a Radical London Building. By Rosa Schling. Housmans, £10