The English Collective of Prostitutes has compiled the information below on raids, arrests and prosecutions of sex workers. These continue despite recommendations from a prestigious parliamentary committee that sex workers should be decriminalised. In July 2016, the Home Affairs Committee published the findings of its inquiry[1] and recommended a change in the law “so that […]
On 17 December we remember and commemorate the more than 140 sex workers who have been killed in the past year across the globe. Many others have lost their lives who have never hit the headlines. But we also acknowledge and count the ongoing struggle, led by sex workers to win safety and protection from rape […]
A significant number of sex workers in the UK are also mothers, research suggests. So what is it like to sell sex while bringing up a child? “I’m certainly not ashamed of what I’ve done,” Sherri, 42, from Essex says. “And I’m quietly furious about the lack of recognition that myself and other women I […]
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 […]
