November 2016.Dear Editor,We write to support the concerns raised by SCOT-PEP that police “SHAW (Support, Health and Wellbeing) visits” to sex workers’ homes or places of work may be used to gather intelligence to bring prosecutions for criminal offences.We share SCOT-PEP’s concern because that is exactly what happened here. In 2013 250 police raided 20 […]
From Grunwick to Deliveroo: getting organised, getting unionised: Forty years ago Asian women at Grunwick led a strike for basic human dignity at work and for the right to join to a trade union. Today these battles are still being fought, often by migrant workers in precarious employment conditions. The experiences of those at Byron […]
Tabi Jackson Gee “I was a full time mum, and a part-time prostitute. But I was never a regular working girl. I went out one or two nights a month to get money to pay a bill, or for something that needed replacing in the house.” Jenny* is in her mid-forties. She lives in the North of England, where […]
Austerity measures like benefit sanctions are pushing women in Sheffield to sell their bodies on the city’s streets, claims experts. That is the view of staff at the Sheffield Working Women’s Opportunities Project (SWWOP), who report that between June and August this year 51 ‘new’ women became involved with sex work in Sheffield. Manager at […]
We are writing to express our serious concerns about a number of joint UK Border Agency and police operations targeting migrant sex workers which took place during the week commencing 17th October, the week during which Anti-Slavery Day, 18th October 2016, is marked.On Thursday 20th October in Soho and Chinatown, London, six premises were raided […]
By Frankie MirenUntil recently, Holbeck in Leeds was unlikely to see a news reporter from one end of the year to another. Lying on the southern edge of the city, Holbeck is partly residential, partly industrial, with a scattering of businesses: a tile shop, piano shop, printers, a tanning salon. Sex workers have hustled on […]
Last week, six massage parlours were stormed by police looking for “victims” so they could “take them to safety”. Often, this meant arresting women and putting them in detention centres. Frankie Mullin On Thursday the 20th of October, around midnight, police stormed six massage parlours in Soho and Chinatown, making arrests, padlocking doors and nailing […]
No bad women, just bad lawsWomen from the English Collective of Prostitutes and the Sex Workers Open University protest police attitudes to migrants sex workers. Sex workers don’t need a hero, they say, but to be treated like humans.Prostitution is a tricky subject. Most of us don’t talk about it, and if we do, it’s […]
Dear Amber Rudd MP, Home Secretary, Empower Foundation, Thailand. Empower is a Thai organization promoting rights and opportunities for sex workers in Thailand for over 30 years. Empower is predominately led and managed by sex workers. More than 50,000 sex workers have been part of Empower since our founding in 1985. Empower has been recognized nationally, regionally […]
