This autumn marks 40 years since the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) occupied the Church of the Holy Cross in the red-light area of King’s Cross, London, for 12 days to protest “police illegality and racism” against sex workers. The occupation took inspiration from sex workers who in 1975 occupied churches across France following […]
Article written by:Frankie Miren For 12 days in late 1982 the English Collective of Prostitutes occupied a church in King’s Cross to protest police brutality. Frankie Miren interviews women who were at the centre of the dispute, and explores explores the legacy of their action today. It’s November 1982 and you wake up on the […]
Ray Filar ‘Sex workers are the original feminists’, say Juno Mac and Molly Smith in Revolting Prostitutes. It’s an incendiary claim–not least because tracking ‘firsts’ is a fraught pursuit–but it might well be true. Mac and Smith point toward the medieval brothel workers who formed guilds and went on strike; the 15th century Bavarian prostitutes […]
This profound and disturbing true-crime show lays bare the case’s outrageous misogyny – and lets silenced women be heard at last. Over the course of three nights, the film-maker Liza Williams is revisiting one of the biggest – and longest – murder manhunts in British history. The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story […]
Sarah Walker Sarah Walker first came across the English Collective of Prostitutes at the North London Polytechnic, where she was studying English, in the early 1980s. In May 2018, Sarah and I sat down to record her memories of the ECP occupation of the Holy Cross Church in King’s Cross in 1982. Sarah talked about […]
In 1975, two immigrant women living in England heard about church occupations and a strike of sex workers in France protesting brutal murders and the refusal of the police to investigate them. Encouraged and inspired, the two women formed the English Collective of Prostitutes to campaign for the abolition of the prostitution laws. Our first […]
A life in writing: Selma James ‘By demanding payment for housework we attack what is terrible about caring in our capitalist society’ The last time Selma James was interviewed by the Guardian was in 1976, by the feminist columnist Jill Tweedie. At that time, James was a household name – in feminist households at least […]
Caroline RyderYou’d have thought people would have finally got used to prostitution by now, what with it being the oldest profession in the world.But it wasn’t until 1982, when a group of angry “sex workers” occupied the Church of the Holy Cross in Kings Cross, that politicians and the media sat up and listed to […]
Buy the book here.Jenny Kitzinger, director Centre for Media and Communications Research, Brunel University, UxbridgeVice girl, social pariah, the victim who “asks for it”—these are some of the stereotypes about prostitutes. Rape, beatings, and abuse are often seen as inevitable, almost justified, hazards of “the lifestyle.” The murder of at least six prostitutes in Glasgow over […]