ON Tuesday, Leeds City Council (LCC) announced that it is to scrap the so-called decriminalised red-light “managed approach” zone in Holbeck, which for more than six years has been a magnet for predatory men from all over the north.

This is a victory for local campaigners who have fought tenaciously for years to get this misguided scheme closed down. 

I got to know Paula and Claire, two campaigners from local group, Save Our Eyes. 

The group’s name was a reference to what the local residents first noticed — the sex and drug paraphernalia that littered the streets and parks, and people having sexual encounters in public at all hours of the day and night. 

How was anyone meant to bring up children in such an environment?

When they spoke to the “powers that be” about the problems, they were told that the women chose to do sex work and they were instructed to be empathetic and to respect the women’s choices. 

The punters, they were told, were lonely single men who pay for a professional service, much like going to the barber.

But that didn’t chime with what local residents could see. Most of the women soliciting on the streets were clearly off their heads on drugs most of the time. 

They could be seen handing their earnings over to drug dealers and pimps who often lurked nearby, and then scavenging for food in rubbish bins. 

Local residents got to know some of the women and found they hated their lives and desperately wished for something different.

The men who crawled the streets day and night looking for women to buy didn’t behave like men going for a haircut. They harassed local women and even schoolgirls on their way to school. 

There were cases of women being abducted and raped. At least one defendant got off after claiming he thought his victim was a prostitute. 

There were numerous cases of punters physically attacking prostituted women, one of whom, Daria Pionko, was murdered.

Toddlers would pick up discarded used condoms thinking they were balloons. A dog was found with a used hypodermic needle embedded in its paw. Locals begged for the phone box to be taken away so their children wouldn’t have to see people having sex inside it.

It was horrific. It was scary. But anyone who deviated from the official line was shamed for being “judgemental” and “mean-spirited.”

LCC, Basis Yorkshire (an NGO that received public money to provide support for the women), and the police, were all adamant. They were the experts. They were right. The residents were wrong.

The contradictions were such that locals began to dig deeper; to consider the possibility that Leeds officialdom had this catastrophically wrong.

They met Jalna Hanmer, a retired professor of women’s studies, who lives in Leeds. Through talking to her they came to understand that rather than being there through free choice, most of the women had entered prostitution through poverty, disadvantage, coercion and lack of other options and were now effectively trapped. 

Most had been victims of childhood abuse and neglect, many were homeless, almost all had substance abuse problems, and most were under the control of a pimp, typically their partner and/or drug dealer. 

Far from all being lonely single men, many of the punters are in committed relationships. 

They buy prostitution because they get off on control and abuse and their partner would never accept such treatment.

Paula and Claire found and read the blog of survivor activist, Rebecca Mott. They got in touch with us at Nordic Model Now! 

To their relief, they found a whole movement saying similar things to Jalna Hanmer — things that matched what they were seeing every day.

LCC is a Labour stronghold. The Labour councillors who represent the inner-city wards had nothing to offer beyond platitudes, and when it came to the council chamber, they went along with the party line. 

It was Conservative councillors from the well-heeled suburbs who championed the local residents’ cause.

How could this be? How could Labour forget the history of the working class and women’s movements so easily? 

The struggle to ensure that no child would ever have to go up a chimney again. The struggle for equal rights for women; for contraception and abortion so women wouldn’t be condemned to a life of drudgery coping with six or more children in a tiny house with an outdoor latrine; for decent jobs, equal pay, and social security — so that prostitution would never again be the only safety net for women.

That understanding was an unspoken presence among the older women when I was growing up. 

The knowledge of what prostitution really is. And how it would have no place in the bright new egalitarian world Labour was determined to build.

What happened? How did we go from there to the new orthodoxy beloved by so many in the Labour Party now that “sex work is work” and a “woman’s right to choose”? 

How could the role of prostitution as a cornerstone of the system of structural oppression of women and the working class be so easily forgotten? 

How could anyone seriously believe that offering the most intimate parts of your body and psyche to a succession of at best thoughtless and at worst downright cruel blokes is no different from working as a waitress? 

I don’t know what made LCC so suddenly reverse direction and announce they will implement what local campaigners have been recommending for years: a clampdown on kerb crawlers and exit services for the women. But this is hugely welcome. 

Now LCC and all the other agencies must implement this new approach with as much zeal as they gave to the previous one. 

The police must implement zero-tolerance of kerb-crawling and pimping and not sanction the women. 

There must be investment in high-quality specialist services for the women, including residential drug rehabilitation, refuges, training and employment opportunities, and trauma-informed psycho-social care. 

Ipswich has shown that this approach can work and, even though it takes financial investment, it saves the country money in the medium to long term because there are fewer criminal justice and social costs.

Women and girls deserve so much better than prostitution. And actually, so do men and boys. 

Anna Fisher is the current chair of Nordic Model Now! (nordicmodelnow.org).