COMMENTS ON GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSALS We oppose the government’s proposals which would create new offences: 1) a new criminal offence of paying for sex with a person controlled for gain; 2) a new civil order to enable police to close brothels; and 3) amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 1985, to remove the requirements of persistence, annoyance […]
At the Million Women Rise march against violence on Saturday 8 March, a woman who was going to speak about sex workers’ safety was dropped from the platform at the last minute. Teresa MacKay from Ipswich Trades Council had been invited to address the rally in Trafalgar Square and had submitted in advance her speech […]
The tragic murders of five young women in Ipswich in December last year led to an unprecedented outpouring of public concern and showed that the government, police and media are way behind where the public is at.The media was caught off guard. One Guardian journalist told us recently that she arrived in Ipswich with other […]
Co-ordinated by the English Collective of Prostitutes The tragic murders of five young women in Ipswich have brought us together as individuals and organisations concerned with women´s and children´s safety in the area and elsewhere. There is an unprecedented outcry of never again from many who have understood that women are made vulnerable by legislation […]
For an end to the discrimination of prostitute women everywhere. Our workshops at the Beijing forum in 1995 were attended by sex workers from many countries, South and North. They made clear how much we have in common — all supported decriminalization and viable economic alternatives to prostitution. Founded in 1975, the English Collective of […]
On 6 October 2005, over 40 police and immigration officers raided 55 flats in the Baker Street area of central London. 70 sex workers were held and questioned, some for up to five hours. Women working as ‘maids’ for the working girls were forced to sign cautions under threat that otherwise the flat would be […]
Vulnerable women need protection, not deportationEnglish Collective of Prostitutes response toSetting the Boundaries, Reforming the Law on Sex OffencesWe oppose the introduction of a specific trafficking offence. We oppose the introduction of a new offence of trafficking. The recent police and immigration raids on over 50 flats in Soho leave no doubt that trafficking is being […]
Los Angeles Conference 14 March 1997All sex workers must be decriminalised whether they work on the street or in premises.Scrap the prostitution laws: they criminalize sex workers, divide us from our families and friends, make us vulnerable to violence, and set us apart from the rest of the community — separate is never equal.An end to […]
The calls for legalised brothels reflect increasing public concern with prostitute women’s safety and civil rights. It may also reflect the Government’s drive to cut the unemployment figures.Legalised brothels usually go hand-in-hand with police crackdowns against street workers – the most vulnerable women whose protection the police have rarely prioritised. As with other workers, women […]