The other night I watched
Stephen Ward at
the Aldwych Theatre, a morality musical about the destruction of an
innocent man by the combined forces of Her Majesty's Government, her
judiciary and her Metropolitan police force. Written by Lord Lloyd
Webber, directed by Sir Richard Eyre, it is the best sort of British
story, set against a world of stately homes and Soho drinking clubs, of
peers, politicians, prostitutes and bent cops – with a few thrilling
Jamaicans wielding guns thrown in – all ending up at the Old Bailey,
where that deep wave of British hypocrisy (masquerading as fair play and
crested by the usual police bullshit) drags Ward out to sea and drowns
him. Convicted of being a pimp – he was not – Ward committed suicide on
the eve of sentencing.
That night, behind the glitter and tinsel
of theatreland, life was imitating art. Fifty years on, the same
puritanical forces were at work, the same women under attack. Nothing
had changed.
It felt like the perfect moment to look up my friend
Nicki, who works with her maid Jodie in a cosy flat at Walkers Court by
Brewer Street, for a cup of tea and a chat. Unfortunately, the police
seemed to have got there first. Flashing police vans blocked the road.
Swarms of bulletproof officers surrounded the doorway of Nicki's
building. It was an image of war, replete with entrenched photographers
and journalists as Nicky and Jodie were led away. I shrank back
(couldn't help it) and watched as they marched past, fragile but poised.
A woman yelled "Shame", but otherwise everyone looked busy and made for
the shadows. Cameras flashed, sirens wailed and it was suddenly over.
Picturesque Soho flickered back to life – blinking neon in halos of
rain, red lights glowing in empty windows, the distant roar of
Piccadilly Circus shaking the air, and a taxi grinding round the corner
into the empty street. "Why?" said the woman watching, to no one in
particular, as she walked off through Walkers Court.
There is a
land grab going on in Soho under the banner of morality. That night,
while Stephen Ward was bowing to an entranced audience, 200 of our boys
in blue raided more than 20 models' flats, arresting 30 girls and
confiscating their earnings. (This money, by the way, is virtually
impossible to retrieve, due to various glitches in the law concerning
legitimate earnings etc.) They broke down doors, intimidated girls into
accepting cautions (ie criminal records) and served civil-eviction
papers that, unless you were a lawyer, you would not know had hidden in
their depths (20-odd pages) the time and date you were to appear in
court if you wanted to appeal.
All this in the name of human trafficking. In witness statements I have read, the police claim to have identified at least 300 cases of human trafficking in London
alone. Half of them, they believe, have "at some point passed through a
Westminster brothel". So grave is the situation, we are told, that it
is written about in a US Department of State report called
Trafficking in Persons.
Presumably it is as accurate as all their other reports concerning
foreign countries. Anyway it is so terrible, the number of trafficked
girls so overpowering, that the EU has provided the police with
a funding stream to tackle the issue.
Human trafficking is a horrific reality. In the course of making a documentary on prostitution
last year I met girls who were abducted, imprisoned and forced into sex
work. Escape for these girls is more or less impossible. Their families
back home are beaten and tortured. One girl I met managed to get away
with the help of a client. Interestingly, when she contacted the police
she was told there was nothing they could do. But while even the police
say that more than 90% of prostitutes work of their own accord,
trafficking has become one of the new "it" words in the bankrupt moral
vernacular, craftily used by puritans, property developers and rogue
feminists to combat the sex trade in general.
Sections 52 and 53
of the Sexual Offences Act – which relate to control and incitement in
sex work – shelter under the anti-trafficking umbrella. These laws are
created to protect women. In reality, they are putting working girls on
to the street and into great danger.
"The police lady said the
raids were not about the prosecution of prostitutes," one girl told me
over coffee a few days later, "but to close down brothels where they
have evidence of serious crimes happening, including rape and human
trafficking. I say to her: 'Show us the evidence.' I haven't heard of
one arrest for rape or human trafficking. Instead some of my friends
were held for 23 hours and bullied into accepting cautions for criminal
offences. Other women I know were taken to a 'place of safety' despite
them saying that they weren't being forced to work."
Dr Stephen Ward, a key figure in the Profumo affair, leaves a court hearing.
In the days after the raid, the musical
Stephen Ward haunts me. In the second act huge spangled curtains swish back to reveal Court Number One at the Old Bailey.
A
judge in silhouette observes from his throne. Stephen, the defendant,
sits beneath him, a pathetic smile in a pool of light – he is watching
his own death – while on either side two street walkers give (coerced)
testimony claiming that Ward introduced them to clients and took a cut.
At
a west London magistrates court Lloyd Webber's deathly Russian theme
(replete with funeral gongs and timpani) rings in my ears as I observe
the morning session. The police and the magistrate must find their own
Stephen Ward. If they can prove that someone is controlling or inciting
these girls to work as prostitutes, they can get closure orders and
evict the girls from the flats.
Nicki, Jodie and several others
are appealing. They are supported by a few others, and some of the
maids, older busty sweethearts with smoker's coughs and droopy eyes. As
far as I can see the girls are all from Eastern Europe, the maids from
East Anglia. I sit among them at the back of the court, while the
barristers and solicitors – prosecuting and defending – sit in front of
us at their desks in frayed suits and unpolished shoes. They joke and
confer among themselves, a band of brothers (pale shadows of men like
Jeremy Hutchinson,
who defended Christine Keeler all those years ago). The prosecuting
counsel is a lumbering elephant of 30. I hate him on sight, but our
barrister is not much better. He is a skeletal bird, and before the
judge arrives is extremely impertinent to one of the girls. "And he's
defending us!" whispers Nicki.
The police constable is a big man
of 45, slightly overflowing from a crumpled suit, with thick hair and
sensuous lips, a sloppy TV cop come to life, with lashings of rough-
diamond charisma. He was probably once very good looking. Maybe he also
had a heart of gold, but I doubt it. He has a threatening charm, and
when one of the girls asks him how he can sleep at night, his eyes bulge
slightly and an artery throbs on the side of his neck. "I sleep very
well, thank you!" (Must be a Christian, I think to myself. They seem to
be able to sleep through anything.)
He has taken down the witness
reports and is clearly in charge of the whole operation. He is humorous
with the lawyers and obsequious to the magistrate, whom he addresses as
"Ma'am" at the end of every sentence. She is small and neat in a tweed
suit, with a thin fringe and a parting across the top of her head, an
old cartoon lovebird in reading glasses with a delivery borrowed from
the Queen. Her demeanour – the gruesome hairdo, the tight temper, the
voice – is contrived to shock. It works. I have seldom felt so
demoralised by someone's behaviour.
We lose the first case. It
turns out the police have given everyone documents with differently
numbered paragraphs, so the court has to go into recess while it is
sorted out. The magistrate is impatient with the arguments of our
barrister, dismissive of our ladies' evidence and endlessly sympathetic
to the policeman.
It's a disaster. But on the second day a miracle
occurs. Our skeletal bird of a barrister is suddenly replaced by a
dashing silver fox – a Sotheby's Smoothie – in a sky-blue shirt and
a pink tie. Good looking, 50, charming and assertive, he looks at me
before the session starts – thinks to himself for a second and says:
"1979. Ginger Donelson. New York." A shared friend, another world.
Night shift: Everett with a senior figure in the English Collective of Prostitutes.
A pulpeuse Romanian beauty in skintight jeans steps into the witness
box. She is jolly and humble, a solitary woman in a pen surrounded by
baying hounds. "Miss Petrinopolous," breezes the Smoothie.
"You are –
and I'm afraid there's only one way to put this – a sex worker."
"Thank you," giggles the lady modestly.
"Explain to us, if you will, how you came to be working in the Walkers Court flat?"
"I
was desperate." Miss Petrinopolous is marvellously matter of fact. Her
legs crossed, arms neatly folded over an exotic bosom, leaning forward,
she seems quite comfortable under scrutiny. Her hands rotate,
punctuating her testimony and waving along any discrepancies in tense or
grammar. Miss Petrinopolous lives in the present. "Seven years ago. I
go to this flat and give the girl working there my number. Maybe if she
go on holiday, I think [full rotation], or want some time off [both
hands], I can fill in for her. In this way she gives me three days. That
is the way we do it. Between girls." She leans earnestly towards the
lawyer.
"Please speak to the judge," he says gently. She turns to
the magistrate. "Nobody force me to do this work!" She explains how
girls organise schedules between themselves, that they leave the rent in
a microwave to be collected.
"A microwave?" squawks the magistrate, the Lady Bracknell of legal aid.
"Well. It get wet in the fridge." Big laugh.
"I see." The lovebird is not convinced.
Later.
"I
suggest to you…" thunders the prosecuting elephant, fingers twiddling
behind his back, "that a third party was organising your hours and that
this third party decided how much you were paid!" He is a damp squib, no
competition for Miss P.
"No. We decide ourselves. It depends on
the client. If he is rich – not like you – maybe I charge him a little
more." She makes a guilty face. "Sorry!"
The magistrate is amused,
charmed actually. Things seem to be taking a turn for the better. The
Smoothie has mesmerised the lovebird. And he has drawn out his client
magnificently. She totters back to her seat. Now he wheels on the
policeman who takes to the witness box, clutching the Bible [promising
fingers], rushing through "the truth the whole truth and nothing like
the truth" as if it is a shopping list, then regards the Smoothie with a
sham working-class reverence.
Never has the class system seemed
more alive than in this courtroom. Both men use it against each other to
great effect. They are well matched, charismatic and adroit, wrestling
with wry humour over the meaning of the word "incitement". "Prompt!"
trills the magistrate, victoriously consulting her dictionary.
The controlling, inciting,
prompting
character is still elusive. Is he the person putting up the signs
directing the clients to the models' flat? (Incitement?) Is he the
freeholder? (Control?) Is he simply a friend who said: "Why not give it a
go?" (Prompting?) How seriously have the police attempted to contact
the freeholders?
"Not very!" according to the Smoothie.
"Everythin'
oomanly possible, Ma'am," volleys the policeman. The freeholder's
address is written down as Notting Hill, Cheshire, a deliberate decoy
according to the officer, a brick wall at the end of "an extensive line
of enquiry".
"But if you just look here at the postcode after the
word Cheshire…" snaps the Smoothie, waving his notes. "W 11 5 S 2 Z. Why
did you not pursue that line of enquiry? A postcode, after all, is a
hint, is it not, as to where someone lives? And you would find…" The
policeman rumbles out a litany of complications.
"No. No. No!"
commands our man with a dramatic swipe. But the policeman won't stop.
"Let. Me. Speak. Officer." There is a sudden pin-dropping silence. "You
would find that the freeholder's address is Holland Park Avenue. But you
didn't really try, did you?"
"We did everything possible, Ma'am."
"You went through the motions."
"We did not, Ma'am."
The magistrate squeaks at the Smoothie: "You have made your point."
She
is torn between the two of them and suddenly it feels as if we could
win. In a reasonable screech she weighs up the case, acquiesces to
everything the Smoothie has proposed, praises Miss Petrinopolous's
"truthful and compelling testimony" – and now we're all holding our
breath – this is it. The girls hold hands and the maids shut their eyes.
The lovebird turns to Miss P – two women, face to face, for the last
judgement. In a firm regretful voice she banishes her from all the
safety and familiarity of the models' flat, its Christmas tree still
twinkling in an empty room, and consigns her to the streets – to sex in
cars on laybys and parking lots, to all manner of danger.
The policeman's hearsay has trumped the sworn testament of the working girl.
"It's
not fair" is all Miss Petrinopolous has to say, and it is pathetic to
watch her leave the witness box. A black Christmas awaits her, shivering
on a street corner, while the magistrate reads under a lamp in
Wimbledon, carols on the radio, mince pies in the fridge, and the
officer stuffs himself with turkey on the Isle of Dogs in a paper hat.
As
the next case begins the Smoothie despairs of repeating his arguments
and says, simply: "It's not really worth going into all this, is it?"
"No, not really," replies the magistrate, looking him in the eye. And so, inevitably, Nicki and Jodie lose their flat, too.
A few weeks before all this happened I joined the English Collective of Prostitutes and
other ladies of the night in a demonstration outside the offices of
Soho Estates, which owns the Walkers Court flats. It was very sweet. The
girls wore masks, carried banners and were draped in tinsel. We all
chanted: "Save the girls. Save Soho." One girl had a megaphone, and soon
the CEO came down among us. "We want to build more theatres," he
proclaimed loftily. More theatres? We can't fill the ones we've got.
Soho’s players: Paul Raymond with daughter Debbie and granddaughter Fawn.
Soho Estates is a property empire built by the late Paul Raymond during
the second half of the last century. It is a fortune built on flesh, on
the sex trade. It has been inherited by Raymond's granddaughter Fawn.
She wants to become an actress. In the meantime she is playing Monopoly
and seems determined to redevelop Soho and double her money. In
a curious coincidence, the week after the big raid she receives
permission from Westminster Council to knock down the houses on Walkers
Court, where many of the models' flats are located, and build two
hideous towers replete with heliports, so that Soho can take its place
in "Cool (tax-haven) Britannia".
Fawn seems to have no feeling for
the hard work that has kept her warm and wealthy all these years. Much
of every dividend she enjoys, after all, comes from the toil of some
long-forgotten vagina. But now she has bigger prostitutes on her books –
Westminster Council and British Heritage. She has "prompted" them into
selling their bodies – our home – but nobody seems to notice.
A
burst pipe brings me back to town at Christmas. I walk through Soho on
Christmas morning. There is not a soul about. I am suddenly transported
to those days when London died each Sunday and the only noise was church
bells.
Bar Italia is closed. The theatres are dark. No lights in
the models' flats. The Christmas Eve storm has blown everyone away.
A couple of brain-dead queens stumble across Old Compton Street towards
an elusive orgy. Under the blue sky, in the weird silence, the ghastly
Christmas spirit hanging there, just the sound of the queens' slurred
voices asking directions, everything is suddenly clear.
Out on the street: sex workers join Rupert Everett in a protest about evictions in Soho.
In the current climate, with its curious puritanical undertow, these
poor girls will always be swimming against the tide. To really get on
these days you must be what the world wants, what it perceives you to
be, and it wants all prostitutes to be victims. As soon as you declare
that you are not one, you are charting a course across hostile waters
and you will probably sink.
At the end of the musical, Stephen
Ward takes his place in Madame Tussauds, another waxwork. He sings his
last goodbye and freezes as a translucent curtain closes around him and
Andrew Lloyd Webber's principal theme – the Russian dirge with funeral
gongs – swells to a climax.
The translucent curtain is closing
around Soho, too, our historic village of vagrants and immigrants, of
hookers and queens, of cheese shops and coffee shops and sex shops and
peep shows. It, too, is being reduced to a giant waxwork in a museum,
nothing more than the set for a foreign film.
