Two unpublished letters to the Guardian:--

Dear Sir or Madam,

Nick Davies parallels the lies on trafficking to those on weapons of mass destruction -- the same disregard for the truth and for people’s lives to impose a reckless political agenda ("Sex, lies and trafficking -- the anatomy of a moral panic" Guardian, 20 October 2009). 

Yes, the “speculative” claims of academics Kelly and Regan were misused.  But did they complain?  Did they support sex workers when we complained? 

Davies quotes the Poppy Project: there is “confusion … between trafficking (unwilling victims) and smuggling (willing passengers) … they are two very different things.”  But Poppy was key to blurring this distinction, and to labelling anyone with a foreign accent as a victim of trafficking, and promoting legislation which does not require coercion in order to prove trafficking.  Like other embedded NGOs, it has seen its funding and influence increase, to the tune of £9.5m – more a Home Office front than a women’s group.

Feminism is now identified with a fundamentalist agenda.  It blames prostitution as the source of evil, and vilifies women who support our families this way. 

Women (mostly mothers) have paid a high price for this trafficking-generated witch-hunt: raids, arrests, deportations, family break-ups.  Will anyone apologise for wrecking lives and wasting public money which should have been used to protect victims of violence?  

It is not the lack of “specialist” services that prevents victims of trafficking coming forward as Helen Bamber claimed, but criminalisation: the threat of arrest and deportation. Our campaign for decriminalisation, as in New Zealand, is based on safety. 

The police are now saying that they plan to get “back to some kind of reality” and prioritise children who are being sexually abused.  Will they protect children or use them to continue their indiscriminate and costly raids?    

The anti-prostitution measures in the Policing and Crime Bill are based on a tissue of lies.  Will they now be withdrawn or, as with Iraq, are we to pay the price for generations to come?  

Dear Sir or Madam,

MPs Mactaggart and MacShane promote the Policing and Crime Bill as a “Law which will protect women from exploitation.” (Guardian 22 October 2009). They claim it targets ‘demand’, that is clients, but hide that it is mainly women, prostitute women, who will bear the brunt of the new measures. 

Little is said about other measures in the Bill: changing the definition of soliciting on the street to make arrests easier, the forced “rehabilitation” of those arrested, and the targeting of brothels for raids and closure, which will drive prostitution further underground, increasing our vulnerability.  It is well established that working from premises is much safer than working on the street, as women can work collectively and support each other.  Mothers, the majority of sex workers, worry about protecting their children from the stigma attached to criminalisation, and from the separation that may result from a prison sentence.  A criminal record also prevents those who may want to leave prostitution from getting other jobs, even when they are qualified for them. 

Many organisations concerned with health and safety, such as the Royal College of Nursing, which joined the Safety First Coalition, we initiated in the aftermath of the tragic Ipswich murders, are opposing the Bill.  They wrote to Parliament citing the recent resolution passed with a 93% majority to “allow up to four sex workers to work legally before requiring a licence” saying that “nurses, like the vast majority of people, understand that women worried about being arrested are less likely to come forward to report attacks or to access health and other services.”

If women’s safety really were the priority, then this Bill would not pass.

English Collective of Prostitutes

PO Box 287

London NW6 5QU

Tel:  020 7482 2496

Fax: 020 7209 4761

Email: ecp@allwomencount.net

Web: www.prostitutescollective.net