 In the words of her local paper, Labour MP Diana Johnson is on a crusade to make paying for sex a criminal offence. To that end, Diana Johnson attempts to pass a sexual exploitation bill which would criminalise purchasing sex and make it illegal for websites to advertise sex. She is also called for amendments to the police and crime bill which would have the same effect. Now, Johnson justifying these moves claims it would have the effect for suppressing demand for sex work and therefore would undermine the profitability of trafficking. And the moves which would bring Britain in line with the so-called Nordic model have the support of high-profile MPs such as Dame Margaret Hodge, Harriet Harman and Stella Creasy. So a wide degree of high-profile support there on the labour benches. However, this drive to criminalise purchasing sex has also provoked opposition including from sex workers themselves. The organisation Decrim now advocates to fully decriminalise the sex work industry and they've released an open letter to MPs arguing that the Nordic model far from limiting harm from trafficking would increase the risks faced by sex workers. Signatories of that letter include Amnesty International, the GMB union, LGBT plus Labour momentum and Labour MPs Nadia Witton and Zara Sultana. Now to discuss the Nordic model and the issues raised by this row within Labour, I'm joined by Lydia Caradonna, an organiser with Decrim now who organised that open letter. Thank you so much for joining the show this evening. First I want to start by asking you why your organisation also opposed to attempts to introduce the Nordic model in Britain which just to clarify for the audience is most importantly to criminalise buying sex, to criminalise being a client of a sex worker and to criminalise advertising sex work. Why do you think that would be a big problem? The big takeaway from the Nordic model is that people die so in just six months after it was introduced in France 10 sex workers have been murdered. The way that the Nordic model works is it criminalises clients which means that you need to protect clients from the police in order to still be able to see them and it's not like you can just stop seeing clients because of poverty which is why people are in the sex industry in the first place. So in order to see clients you have to see them in more and more isolated places like Woodlands. You have to avoid taking things like legal names which sex workers currently use to screen clients and to pass on which clients are bad. You have to protect them from all of that and also any reduction in demand shifts the power back into the hands of the clients because sex workers still need to see clients to be able to eat and pay rent right. So in France in Northern Ireland we've seen it become more and more difficult to demand things like condom usage and people are having to do services that they would not normally do just in order to make ends meet. We also saw in both France and Northern Ireland there was absolutely no reduction in demand but there was a huge increase in violence against sex workers. So this coupled with banning advertising platforms that sex workers used to stay independent and not have to rely on things like pimps or managers is really a violent move against the sex industries of masquerading as rescue. It's not a rescue at all. I want to bring up a tweet from Diana Johnson so she responded particularly to momentum signing this open letter some momentum the left wing group in the Labour Party. She quote tweeted them and said why is momentum on the side of pimps traffickers and organised crime and not women. They sexually exploit women and girls and make huge profits. Sexual exploitation is violence against women and we need to drive down demand hold sex buyers accountable and support women exiting the sex trade. Now how would you respond to that and her argument there is that if we do the Nordic model it will make life harder for traffickers and people who exploit women it will make the industry less profitable. How would you respond to that tweet from Diana Johnson. I mean I have some choice words. First of all are we not women and why is it that that they seem to believe that you know we're being raped every day we don't understand how to consent if we're if we're such victims why do they speak to us so awfully why do they not trust us why do they not listen when we speak about our own experiences of violence and first of all like demand has not reduced in Northern Ireland. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that it has reduced trafficking even in Sweden in Sweden the organisation for security incorporation in Europe saw absolutely no empirical evidence that trafficking could be reduced the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention saw no evidence that trafficking had been reduced like there is absolutely no evidence that it happens and the way that we deal with trafficking in any other sector has not been to criminalise entire sectors how are we going to have good labour rights at work if our workplaces are continually criminalised like as it stands I can't go to employment tribunal about my boss can I. In what world especially in what world is the Labour Party which is claiming to stand for workers making it harder for us to organise taking the power away from workers and subjecting us to more and more police involvement when police are historically one of the most violent groups towards us in what world is that helping us so yeah I honestly Diana Johnson I think it's disgusting I think you should actually listen to us for once and I think the way that we are being dismissed as pimps when this is our lives our bodies our experiences that you're trying to criminalise is disgusting and misogynistic honestly I suppose the response to some of what you'd say would be to potentially I suppose assume or believe that maybe there is a bit of a division within sex work between people who do have autonomy and have made this decision as a choice and then people who are being exploited who have been pressured into the industry by traffickers or pimps or whatever is that a figment of my imagination or is that something that actually exists and while what Diana Johnson is proposing would be of a real negative to someone like you for other people it might be beneficial is that is there anything to that it's far less of a clean divide so the way you have to look at it is that with choices come power right so I in my life have had very little choice about doing sex work and I have a pimp now so you know I would surely fall into this group that needs to be rescued whereas some of my friends who are entirely independent and independence which would be taken away by this law and would push them into the hands of pimps and traffickers they might be considered in the first group or this like mythical group of you know happy hookers and apparently happy hookers the only ones advocating for decriminalisation but actually it's this big continuum where we slide in and out of poverty based on our circumstances we have more choices and less choices at certain points and it's really setting up this idea of this like mythical I guess pimp figure a figure which is often actually racialised especially when it comes to talking about trafficking it's setting up this enemy and we just need to tackle the enemy and then the whole sex industry is solved but that's not true what we need to tackle is poverty I know so many sex workers including myself who would not be doing sex work if we had easier ways to make ends meet that fit around childcare that fit around disability that fit around language barriers that fit around visas that have limited working hours on there's all of these other issues that labour is normally so good on that apparently go out of the window when there's a penis involved in what world in what world is the answer to any of this making it harder for us to work it's not like if you if there are issues in our sector which I will be the first to say there are I hate my job I've experienced so much violence then the answer has never been to take the power further away from the worker it's always been to give workers more power and as part of a labour movement we should know that there shouldn't need to be said what Diana Johnson and her supporters are pushing for is to further criminalise the sex industry and sex work at the moment it seems to me to is seems to be a very grey area and when it comes to sex work in this country you're presumably not only opposed to what Diana Johnson is proposing but you'd like to go further in the other direction right I mean your organisation is called decrim now what would decriminalising sex work mean what would how would it be different to what is currently the status quo so currently you can buy and sell sex in the UK that is all fine but lots of things around it are criminalised and the things that have been criminalised tend to punish poor people so you can be arrested and fined for working on the street which most people don't do because they like the weather right they do it because there's no other option you are completely criminalised for working together for safety so even if it is just you and a friend working from the same flat that counts as a brothel because there's two of you you are both brothel keepers and pimping each other out so we have to work more and more isolated ways in order to avoid that you're not allowed to have any help at all because of third party laws so this is all like terrible especially if you're in the industry because you're disabled or even if you share a bank account with a partner who is barely involved in your work that's being criminalised and all of the things that these laws are supposedly preventing are still happening I still work in a brothel I just have absolutely no rights all of this stuff has not disappeared criminalisation does not make things disappear like we've seen this throughout history criminalisation just pushes things further and further underground we're not saying that decriminalisation is going to solve all of the problems in the sex industry that's irrational what we're saying is if we decriminalise that puts us on the same footing as other workers to be able to unionise properly to be able to hold our employers to account to be able to access services without stigma and judgement decriminalisation is the way that we bring power back into the workers and we get to change the conditions that we're currently working in I think one of the arguments from Diana Johnson and that strand of feminism really is to say that the fact that you can purchase sex in society has an effect on the status of all women and I don't find that argument particularly convincing on the surface but there is situation so for example in Amsterdam if you go through the the red light district there are whole streets where the windows are full of women sort of dancing naked and I can kind of see how maybe that does affect how people in society see women do you think that there is a bit of a balance to be struck and if that it were to be decriminalised we should have sort of maybe regulations so that it doesn't just become like any other sort of consumerist capitalist industry sexism does not exist because of the sex industry the sex industry exists because women have been economically disadvantaged because we've been sexualised throughout history because there has been a patriarchy because we've had very few employment options so you know if you found a law which I don't believe exists and you could bring the law in and it would get rid of the sex industry entirely you know their husband still wouldn't respect them the patriarchy would still be a thing people would still be cat called there would still be sexual violence so this idea that sex workers should be volunteered as collateral damage when we're already facing so much violence is really disgusting like I'm not volunteering myself and my co-workers in order to win some ideological battle about whether or not men should be able to pay for sex when actually all that's going to do is make our lives worse and be a symbolic victory at best when it comes to the division within feminism on this question it seems a bit you know another one of those issues a bit like trans rights where obviously the divide is not absolute but there does seem to be a bit of a difference when it comes to the age of people so it's probably not a coincidence that the people who are backing Diana Johnson on this are you know include Harriet Harman who I think is the the mother of the house so she is the oldest female MP in in the House of Commons and one of the signatories of the letter who is backing decriminalization is the youngest MP which is Nadia Whitton is this another issue where generational divides really do matter and potentially you know the dominant position within feminism could change quite quickly and quite dramatically I think it's less an issue about age and more an issue about power the power to define who is the woman in women's rights a power that emerges from a scarcity mentality that thinks that there is only a certain number of resources that can be allocated to women and so we need to create very harsh boundaries around who the deserving woman is in order to conserve those resources and make sure that they go in the quote unquote right hands I think that you know that that tradition is very alive and well in in the Labour Party the Labour Party has a problem with women and weirdly it comes mostly from women Labour MPs and it's that tradition of a particular kind of very reactionary ideology which I think masks itself as feminism which is centered around constructing an acceptable womanhood who is entitled to the gains of the feminist movements and even though the gains of those feminist movements are built off the people that are not considered good women by a lot of these people and it's you know that acceptable womanhood is a highly professionalized middle class white cisgendered womanhood and it defines itself through its opposition to and willingness to marginalize and oppress women who exist outside of that category so there's there's a connection there between the anti trans feminism the the um anti sex work feminism the white feminism it's all around creating these very harsh boundaries and these very sharp edges around the category of womanhood so we see women MPs you know who have built their backs off of feminist reputation endorsing extremely reactionary and harmful rhetoric and policy against racialized communities like Sarah champion in the name of women's safety we see cis women MPs standing up to trans women in the name of women's safety which is an oxymoron um you know like rosie duffield we see people like Jess Phillips who boasts about bullying diana abba and other MPs like who are mentioned here who are pushing through legislation that is harmful to sex workers and therefore harmful to the migrant women the working class women the disabled women who predominantly make up the sex work industry for all the reasons that Lydia outlined um and so you know I I see those things as very connected and when I say that I think the issue is about power I think it's really interesting that um a lot of the elders of you know black feminism uh you know Angela Davis people who are in the same generation of and the same generation as a lot of the titans of sort of anti trans anti sex work feminism are don't hold those politics and it's because they know what it's like to be on the other end of the other side of that sharp category of womanhood and they know that we don't get anywhere by restricting and relying on the model of the good woman um they know that that that is a category that has very sharp edges so I think it I think that the age thing is a bit of a it's a bit of a it's a bit of a kind of cop out um I don't think this is an ideology that is just going to be sort of like grown we're just going to sort of grow out with I think it is really an issue about power and about feminism a feminism that doesn't have a class analysis that doesn't have a race analysis that doesn't have an understanding um of how these things are connected um that is you know reproducing a scarcity logic and a hoarding of resources within the movement and I think that DCRIM now had done a really good job of making this into a labor issue um and not making it into a moralizing issue the question is not do you think someone should be able to buy sex that's irrelevant your feelings about that don't matter it is a question of workers rights and if you care about the actual safety and empowerment of women um of people who sell sex then you would listen to them when they tell you about what they need in order to stay safe and in order to exit the industry if that's what they want to do but I think that essentially what we have here is that attempt to create a feminist reputation off the backs of the women who actually are instrumental in in anything that we can claim as a feminist gain over the past several decades