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 […]
PRESS RELEASEThe International Wages for Housework Campaign, and the International Women’s Count Network, is calling for the abolition of Prostitution Laws. We call for Legal, Civil and Economic rights for prostitute women in Trinidad and Tobago. Women are divided by the prostitution laws and are vulnerable before these laws. Those who enforce them take advantage […]
Speech by a Black woman in the International Prostitutes Collective at the Forum “Sex Work, Sexual Violence and Sexual Choices”, on the 20th anniversary of the English Collective of Prostitutes, London, 29 June 1995. There’s discrimination against ail prostitute women, but Black prostitute women face an additional racism. Its often hidden, and increases your workload. Dealing […]
Click here to read the document: For Prostitutes Against Prostitution For original 1975 version please see here: For Prostitutes Against Prostitution (1975)
Since 1981, when the English Collective of Prostitutes issued the first rights sheet for prostitute women in England and Wales, we have been taking up cases of false arrest and intimidation by police. In 1982, we occupied the Church of the Holy Cross in King’s Cross, London, for 12 days. We were inspired by […]
Letters: Vol. 2 No. 23 · 4 December 1980SIR: Rosemary Dinnage in her review of Prostitutes: Our Life (LRB, 18 September) does not escape society’s puritanism. Thus she confuses prostitution with prostitutes, and morality with the law. Despite compassion and a great effort to be balanced, she cannot hide her disgust and her distance from women who […]
DOWNLOAD: For Prostitutes and Against Prostitution
In 1975 the ECP was started as an autonomous organisation within the Wages for Housework Campaign. At the time the WFHC was one of the few women’s organisations that was ready to work with sex workers and help us defend our rights.