Five women have been murdered in Ipswich. The ongoing investigation coupled with intense media interest and speculation has put Ipswich under the spotlight.
This was initially reminiscent of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper aka Peter Sutcliffe and the police were coming up against brick walls when trying to get women to talk.
As the English Collective of Prostitutes say: "The Suffolk police must not use the criminality imposed on sex workers by the prostitution laws as an excuse to deny women the protection we are all entitled to by law."
If the cops want women who work as prostitutes to be more co-operative and helpful then they should stop criminalising them. Criminalising women who work as prostitutes pushes them onto the margins of society and makes them more powerless.
Enforcing ASBOs, for example, does nothing to reduce the stigmatisation, demonisation and the hostility women face - instead it makes it a whole lot worse.
The police are known to be utterly dismissive to crimes against sex workers.
The media and the politicians, both national and local, have used sex workers as a group who can be blamed as the carriers of social malaise, particularly to the particular districts that they are thought to blight.
It is this group of women who have been collectively used to carry the blame for the social atomisation and alienation that is at the heart of British society.
If the cops want cooperation from women to catch this killer then they will have to change their attitude towards them by overhauling the sexism prevalent within the "police. Certainly solutions include decriminalising prostitution and the drug trade which are integral to this situation.
As Ana Lopes (IUSW) argues: "The confirmed murders of five prostitutes in the Ipswich area highlight the desperate need for decriminalisation of sex work.
"These murders highlight how urgent the need is to reassess the law and society's view of sex workers to ensure they enjoy the same rights as the rest of their communities".
But in the mean time the cops have got to treat women with respect and equally. During theehunt for Peter Sutcliffe the language used by the officers in charge of catching him was significantly different when describing women who worked as prostitutes and women who didn't.
Women who didn't work in prostitution were described as "innocent women". In death these women had their lives fleshed out while women who worked as prostitutes were reduced to one-dimensional mug shots staring from the television screen.
The obvious question about the police is: do we trust them to get the murderers... or have they simply gone after two of the local men in the same way that Colin Stagg was framed for the murder of Rachel Nickell?
One of the hallmarks of a
These women were
murdered by an individual misogynist. They were put where they were for him by
the hypocritical and
moralising establishment miscarriage of justice seems to be that the cops are under a huge amount of pressure to make an arrest and to then get a conviction.
Beyond the obvious point is the more fundamental point that the policing of the red light area failed to prevent these women being killed.
Prior to this investigation the role of the police towards sex workers in Ipswich, as everywhere else in Britain, was to criminalise and victimise them.
This of course pushed the sex workers further into a marginal existence, way from the limited protection that other may have. Moralising and coercion of women sex workers created the very social space in which there was no protection for them in any practical sense such.
No one really cares if a sex worker gets abused in any way including being murdered or being raped. It is difficult to imagine a New Labour or Tory politician sticking theirnecks out to stand up for
who have been pushed to the margins once the same women have been used as a kind of social scapegoat.
These women were murdered by an individual misogynist. They were put where they were for him by the hypocritical and moralising establishment that seeks to blame society's ills on the powerless.
Among the powerless, surprise surprise, women make particularly easy targets. That's why socialists and feminists should fight for decriminalisation and to show solidarity in the form of the unionisation of sex workers.
How many more women have to be murdered for the state to realise that criminalisation and prohibition does nothing but worsen the lives of sex workers.
FRIDAY 29TH DECEMBER IPSWICH
TOWN HALL STEPS, CORNHILE
7PM In memory of the five women recently murdered we ask people of all gondere, sexualities, ages and races to march togetier against violence. To demand the right to walk the streets without fear To share their thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams and love with each other. To show that united we will
never he broken. For more details contact - [email protected] or 07877 358456
joined this protest through Ipswich in the
aftermath of
the press
coverage and
the murder
hunt