The ladies of King's Cross

Gavin Stamp

Ilive just off Argyle Square in King's , Cross, currently London's most cele- brated red light district. I have always liked the seedY older parts of inner cities and the Prostitutes do not offend me, so I am quite ec'utent; but the humour of the low life has worn rather thin in the last week with the °L.cuPation by the so-called English Collec- si,ve of Prostitutes of Holy Cross, Cromer :‘reet, the local parish church where I was larded. Local people are upset and outrag- of by the presence in their church of a bevy illasked chain-smoking harridans.

,

s,. he Collective, imitating French pro - putes o occupied the Madeleine in Publicarek ho

to see a series of

figilres and announce that 'this ac- ilin is our official complaint against police pi,eplitY and racism'. 'Illegality' refers to street Ice harassment' of prostitutes on the wreet ; 'n Argyle Square but as, rightly or st,rglY, the Street Offences Act of 1959 is still the law of the land, such actions are asal:FelY illegal. 'Racism' is, of course, a the complaint and, as it happens, half of bute prostitutes and most of the pimps are taai cik- What is going on in King's Cross cer- then'3' °ught to receive more attention from ,, various authorities but I do question wArinether the forcible occupation of an thisglicall church is the best way to achieve tive and, furthermore, whether the Collec- stittn,,as, anY right to represent the pro- or t In the area. None of the newspapers a , P e,evisi on reporters who have taken such rurient interest in the case — attracted,

perhaps, by memories of 'Vicars and Tarts' parties — has asked who those occupying the church really are, for the girls trying to earn a living in the square are scarcely likely to be able to afford to take so much time off. Some of them, indeed, have told the vicar that they are disgusted by what is go- ing on in his church whose masked oc- cupants are, needless to say, not prostitutes at all but middle-class radical feminists at- tached to the Women's Centre in Tonbridge Street under whose umbrella nestle such supporting groups as Women Against Rape and Black Women For Wages For Housework etc, and whose overlapping membership is all too familiar to the editor of the Spectator because they once oc- cupied his office, as readers may recall. Furthermore, I note that the English Col- lective of Prostitutes receives an annual subsidy of £8,000 from the GLC, partly ow- ing to the advocacy of the former vicar of Holy Cross, the Revd Peter Wheatley who chose, tactlessly and impudently, to give his support to the illegal occupation which is upsetting his successor's work.

Several newspapers, including the News of the World and the Sun have chosen maliciously to misrepresent the attitude of the present vicar. For what was the Revd Trevor Richardson to do when a force of masked women entered his church during an evening mass and then declined to leave? To ask the police to evict them would have been to play hito the Collective's hands, for nothing would please them more than the publicity that such violent action in a Chris- tian church would provoke. Although well aware of the disgust felt by his parishioners, Father Richardson has quite rightly been concerned about the real prostitutes, recognising that they also have souls and that Our Lord befriended prostitutes and sinners and condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. On the other hand, He also demanded repentance, which it does not suit the Collective to recall.

To distance the parish from those occupying its church, last Sunday's service was held in the hall of the nearby Tonbridge Boys' Club. Even so, the proceedings were histrionically interrupted by a member of the Collective who asked that members of the congregation should come over to the church to pray with those in there. After the service, a few people tried to do just this, including a 79-year-old retired priest; they were turned away at the door: 'We won't pray with you. You're not Christians.' Enough said. It was, of course, naive to ex- pect any rational or charitable behaviour from the Collective, consisting, as it does, of arrogant shrill feminists trained in the heady days of student sit-ins and consumed by hatred of men. None of them live local- ly. For all its vicarious concern with the plight of the community of prostitutes, the Collective seems little interested in the real King's Cross community which is, as it was in the 1880s when Holy Cross, a simple, dignified Anglo-Catholic mission church was built, largely working class and very poor. One elderly lady in the congregation, near to tears at the desecration of her church, complained with truth that the girls in Argyle Square earned more in a day than she did in a year. The real residents of King's Cross want not less police harass- ment but much more of it.

Argyle Square was part of the Battle Bridge Estate built by the junction of the Gray's Inn Road and the 'New Road', now the Euston Road, in the 1820s and 1830s.

My house stands on the site of a famous giant dust heap, removed in 1826; Argyle Square is on the site of a failed pleasure ground. The speculation which built these typical Late Georgian, third-rate terraces was never successful; already by the 1840s the area was known for vagrancy and drunkenness. The opening of King's Cross station in 1851 did not help. It had been preceded by Euston station, further west, in 1837, and St Pancras station joined it in 1868. The presence of three main-line ter- mini had the usual effect on the area, although in the 19th century the worst vice was to be found in Waterloo station. Today there is none near Waterloo, a little around Victoria and Paddington, and a great deal in King's Cross. Although prostitution has a long history here, in the last five years it has become much more extensive and bla- tant, the result both of unemployment and the activities of the Yorkshire Ripper. It is popularly believed that many of the girls are day-time commuters on 'Have It Away Day' tickets; certainly many come from Newcastle and the north.

The Street Offences Act, which the Col- lective wants repealed, took prostitution off the streets for very good reasons: it is a nuisance. Business begins at about midday and after dark the noise of shouting, screaming, of car-doors banging is in- tolerable. Nor is it pleasant to find in the morning that doorsteps and pavements are littered with used condoms and Kentucky Fried Chicken packets. Many female tenants of council flats are sick of being proposi- tioned, and afraid of letting their children walk in the streets or play in the garden in Argyle Square. As always, prostitution has brought corruption and violence.

The local MP, Frank Dobson (Lab), has taken an intelligent interest in the problem but, as a good believer in the role of the State, proposes legalised brothels as the solution. This the English Collective of Prostitutes opposes, and I rather agree with them. It is a repellent infringement of in- dividual freedom to force girls to work in the sort of revolting sex warehouses to be found in Hamburg or Amsterdam. Local residents also do not much want to live near legalised brothels; they want strong action against prostitution, but the problem will not go away: it will just go elsewhere and I do not relish the idea of the police having more power.

Anna Neale of the English Collective of Prostitutes insists that 'giving the police carte blanche to "clean up the streets" means they can do whatever they please, which can and does include: demanding free sex, demanding money, assaulting or beating up women who refuse to be ar- rested, colluding with pimps to extract more money from the women.' Indeed. What I know of the local police only con- firms that view. During the day, they roar around the square in their cars making a lot of noise; at night they are seldom to be seen. They like arresting prostitutes during the day; the local pimps seem to engage their attention less. One night, at 4.30 a.m. my wife reported to the police that a pimp was beating up a girl outside our house; they seemed only interested in my wife's oc- cupation and possible connection with the incident and took over a quarter of an hour to arrive — too late, of course. My neighbour, who is Italian, was told by an in- spector that he had no business complain- ing about the prostitution as he was foreign — even though he is a taxpayer and ratepayer. And when some enterprising cameramen filmed some members of the force conducting unorthodox interviews with suspected prostitutes in the backs of cars, the video film was seized by the police.

Offensive as its manifestations may be, I see no reason why prostitution as such should be illegal and to prohibit kerb- crawling and the availing of a prostitute's services — as has been seriously proposed — seems to me an alarming infringement of individual freedom. In fact, no new laws are required, for there are perfectly good laws on the statute book to protect the in- terests of the ordinary citizen and make King's Cross return to normal. They merely need to be enforced with fairness and with consistency: laws against soliciting in the street, laws about committing nuisances and breaches of the peace, laws about keep- ing disorderly houses and living off im- moral earnings. But prostitutes do deserve

h £8,000 given to the Collective (let alone!" other subsidies to the various overlaPcililg, manifestations of the Women's CCD would seem to be better spent on waYs trying to give some of the girls anothet,°; cupation. There is a wonderful ironY in militant left-wing feminist organisation choosing to identify with prostitutes, c r prostitution, in theory, is surely a perfect uexnpfroerstsuionnatofyi, there are flaws

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Original Sin? — for the poor prostoitruiles;5 1 Unfortunately, , always manipulated by others, whether 2e pimps or, now, by the clever activists of t English Collective of Prostitutes. pesPi!/,' the bigotry and hypocrisy often present!, the Christian communion, the doors of the church are often the only ones open wIth° strings attached. It would be more aro propriate if my parish church had beee dedicated to St Mary Magdalene — hut,,s,fr ' t should be said, came off the game. Irte i as far as we know, did she ask Our Lotd rcaacmpmaig. n against 'police illegalitY is