Update on the campaign that defeated a banning order in Newham
In December 2022 Newham Council issued a consultation on its proposal to bring in a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) in the Romford Road.
The justification for the PSPO was that sex workers were:
“. . . offering sexual services to passersby, engaging in sexual activities in public spaces” and that clients were kerb-crawling and that this was causing “harassment, alarm or distress.”
Anyone attempting to sell or buy sex would face on the spot £100 fines, and if taken to court could be fined up to £1000.
A lively campaign co-ordinated by the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) saw the PSPO scrapped in late April 2023.
Newham Council announced instead that it would be:
“ . . . developing a new Sex Work Strategy which will place public health at the centre of approaches to support vulnerable people and reduce the stigmatisation and exploitation of street and off-street sex workers. ” (Newham Council Statement)
Currently the Council is conducting a needs assessment which will conclude in May 2024. The ECP and National Ugly Mugs (NUM) pressed the Council — in the meantime – to provide emergency help to sex workers in crisis.
ECP CO-ORDINATED CAMPAIGN
The campaign highlighted evidence that the PSPO would undermine sex-worker’s safety, dangerously expand police powers and criminalise women during a cost-of-living crisis, all the while doing nothing to address the issues of rising poverty, hunger and homelessness in the area.
An action alert and open letter was used to build the campaign and bring in support from hundreds of people and organisations, including groups like Newham Copwatch, which worked to gather support from people in the borough.
The ECP worked with a few principled Labour and Green councillors. Human rights organisations like Amnesty and Liberty wrote letters of protest and Liberty started to strategise a legal challenge should the council decide to proceed with the proposed PSPO.
After it was raised that Newham council hadn’t consulted sex workers about the PSPO, the ECP was invited to two meetings with the Mayor, councillors, people from health, adult social care and crime and community safety departments.
Women Against Rape (WAR), NUM, local residents and an academic who had conducted research in the area of the proposed zone, were part of the ECP’s delegation at these meetings.
The ECP pointed to research conducted by academics on behalf of the Doctors of The World NGO that showed that 82% of the women working the streets in the area were homeless.[1] Many have been made destitute by benefit sanctions. We pressed the Council to address the poverty and homelessness which pushes so many women, particularly single mothers, into prostitution.
NUM, a national charity, wrote to the Council reinforcing that:
“If you wish to prevent sex workers from working, it is necessary to direct efforts and resources to ensure they have what they need to survive. Placing financial penalties on those trying to survive during one of the worst cost-of-living crises in living memory is cruelty.”
Backed by WAR, the ECP raised that sex workers’ safety would be undermined and that those of us who are women of colour and migrant women would be especially targeted under the PSPO. ECP cited evidence from a report conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that 42% of street sex workers in the area had experienced violence from the police.[2] Considering evidence of widespread criminality, misogyny, corruption and racism in the Met police, any expansion of police powers is unacceptable and dangerous.
Worryingly, it would be officers at Forest Gate police station that would bear responsibility for enforcing the PSPO and officers at this station have recently been convicted of sharing selfies of two murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry.
Layla Omar from WAR said that women are furious at the police’s refusal to investigate violence against women and the cover up of police rape and racism:
“A report just last week said that 150 officers are under investigation for sexual misconduct and racism. How dare the Council try and give police more powers over women! Those of us who are Muslim women, immigrant women, women of colour and sex workers already suffer from the hostilities of the police, and this will make things worse for us.”
A local resident refuted the Council’s claim that the PSPO was needed because women were being subjected to kerb-crawling, saying that street harassment was common throughout the area. She pointed to the way that the area of the proposed zone had been starved of resources, which left residents feeling neglected and resentful. Another resident made practical proposals to address local people’s concerns, such as improved rubbish collection. They also warned that a PSPO would create divisions within the community with worrying and long-lasting consequences.
The ECP dismantled claims that the PSPO would primarily target clients, citing their decades long experience of police crackdowns, showing that sex workers are always targeted first and most acutely during police operations to supress prostitution.
Chiara Capraro, Women’s Human Rights Programme Director at Amnesty International UK wrote to the Mayor providing confirmation of the dangers to sex workers of criminalising clients:
“Amnesty International’s most recent research on the human rights of sex workers in Ireland shows that the criminalisation of the purchase of sex, introduced in 2017, has created a “chilling effect” on sex workers’ safety, well-being, autonomy and ability to earn a living. Sex workers frequently described being forced to engage in more risky behaviours because of client criminalization.”
Ms Capraro added:
“Whether the PSPO targets sex workers themselves and/or clients the result will be that sex workers will be displaced to less safe areas, will have less power to negotiate and vet clients and therefore will face a higher risk of violence.”
Liberty, the globally respected human rights organisation, wrote to the Mayor asking for the Council to provide evidence that it had spoken to sex workers, pointing out that Statutory Guidance specifies that the Council should ensure that “specific groups likely to have a particular interest are consulted”.
Liberty’s letter concluded by stating that:
“Councils are required to consider the root cause of anti-social behaviour and attempt to tackle the cause to create long-term solutions. (…) The proposed PSPO may have the opposite effect of furthering the root problem of poverty by depriving sex workers of their income.”
Dr. Stuart is an academic who has conducted field research in the specific area of East London where the PSPO was proposed, on the “unmet health and service needs of street sex workers”…[3] She confirmed that sex workers in the area of the PSPO were over policed with 78% reporting that they had been moved on by the police over a six-month period.[4] At the meeting with the Mayor she said that:
“. . . increasing the criminalisation of sex work, through measures such as the proposed PSPO, exacerbates the violence and unmet health and support needs that street sex workers face – who are themselves a highly marginalised and vulnerable part of the community that Newham Council serves.”
Dr Stuart spoke of how women are traumatised by violence and cited statistics showing that 51% of street workers in the area and neighbouring boroughs had had their children taken and placed in care, causing lifetime suffering.[5]
Layla Omar from WAR reacted angrily at one councillor’s claim that Muslim women were pushing for the PSPO saying, “You don’t represent me, don’t use us to support this.” She went on to say that any complaints women had of harassment could be explained by the increasing Islamophobia of the recent years.
Elizabeth George from NUM’s racial justice project provided evidence of the disproportionate impact on migrant and women of colour of the PSPO. They cited research[6] that showed that:
“ . . . ethnically and racially minoritised sex workers had twice as high odds of being arrested and three times higher odds of experiencing police extortion or rape.”
They described preventing the PSPO as a matter of “racial justice”.
The Mayor was respectful and responded with feeling to many of the issues that we raised, saying that the examples of how sex workers had been treated were “alarming”.
The Mayor said that it was hard to square the PSPO with the Council’s anti-poverty, anti-violence strategy. She didn’t want Newham Council to be subjecting women to violence and be complicit in traumatising them further, which would mean the Violence Against Women and Girls policy was fake. As a woman of colour herself, she was acutely aware of the problem of racism, including police racism and the “interface” of racism with poverty.
Some of the complaints about sex workers came from an organisation called “Sisters Against Sex Workers”. When the ECP raised that this was a hateful and discriminatory name and that the Council would never accommodate a group that called itself Sisters Against Gays for example, the Mayor agreed, saying that to recognise them as a group to be consulted could very well be against the Council’s equality policies.
The Mayor said that it had become clear that the “public health frame was not sufficiently embedded and applied to the plight of marginalised and minoritised women failed by the system.”
Dr Stuart warned however that health-centred approaches should not include the police:
“Considering the high levels of violence experienced by sex workers at the hands of the police, and a long history of oppressive policing, police are perpetrators not rescuers.”
On the 27th of April, Newham Council issued a comment, stating that it would:
“ . . . be developing a new Sex Work Strategy which will place public health at the centre of approaches to support vulnerable people and reduce the stigmatisation and exploitation of street and off-street sex workers.” (Newham Council Statement)
There is clearly a massive need to provide resources and help to sex workers in the area.
One woman in the ECP commented:
“We wouldn’t be out there if we had more support around housing and with our children. For me, my mind is full of all the things that have happened like when they took my baby from me. No-one gave me support, so I was on my own. I went on drugs to block it all out. Now I don’t have housing, so no way can I get my daughter back. Sometimes it is hard to think what there is to live for.”
Upon hearing about the scrapping of the PSPO, local group Newham Copwatch commented:
“Community organising CAN stop the expansion of police powers. Very proud to have worked with the ECP to achieve this!”
Green Party councillor Nate Higgins also commented:
“The PSPO would have put sex-workers at risk. We look forward to supporting the development of the Council’s new public health strategy.”
Defeating this PSPO strikes a blow against civil orders generally, which have become ubiquitous. Civil orders represent a parallel legal system where no criminal conviction is required. Instead, a lowered civil standard of proof is imposed, often based on police suspicion/speculation or hearsay evidence. Yet, if those orders are breached, people get a criminal record.
This victory also sets a new standard for other councils to follow. It should mean an end to the persecution and criminalisation of sex workers. Instead, local authorities should address the poverty, violence, homelessness and hunger that pushes so many, particularly mothers, into prostitution, in order to survive.
The ECP is proposing to the Council that they follow the example of some cities in the US which are providing a Guaranteed Care Income to mothers especially where they are at risk of criminalisation and having their children taken from them.
—————————-
[1] Stuart, R. and Grenfell, P. (2021). ‘Left Out in the Cold: The Extreme Unmet Health and Service Needs of Street Sex Workers in East London Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic’ Doctors of the World. Available at: https://www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2021/05/Left-out-in-the-cold-full-report.pdf
[2] Elmes, J., Stuart, R., Grenfell, P., Walker, J., Hill, K., Hernandez, P., … & Platt, L. (2022). Effect of police enforcement and extreme social inequalities on violence and mental health among women who sell sex: findings from a cohort study in London, UK. Sexually Transmitted Infections, 98(5), 323-331. Available at https://sti.bmj.com/content/sextrans/early/2021/10/26/sextrans-2021-055088.full.pdf
[3] Stuart, R. and Grenfell, P. (2021). ‘Left Out in the Cold: The Extreme Unmet Health and Service Needs of Street Sex Workers in East London Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic’ Doctors of the World. Available at: https://www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2021/05/Left-out-in-the-cold-full-report.pdf
[4] Elmes et al. (2022)
[5] Elmes et al. (2022)
[6] Elmes et al (2022)