Sex workers deserve the same pardon as miners and gay men

IN HER plan for government, the First Minister yesterday confirmed miners who were convicted during the notorious strike of 1984 will be pardoned.

Expunging these convictions will not give the miners back the years they faced rotting on the dole, blacklisted as criminals instead of being known as courageous men fighting for the survival of their communities.

But the pardons will be of some comfort to miners who were stigmatised for decades for exercising their legal right to strike.

These men were victims of an overzealous and brutal police force, empowered by the vindictiveness of Margaret Thatcher, who would have happily seen the miners in the gallows given the chance.

We now look back on the state-sanctioned mistreatment of the miners as a shameful chapter in Scotland’s history, just as we do the persecution of gay men convicted under archaic and discriminatory laws, which penalised them for who they chose to love.

When Nicola Stugeon stood in parliament in 2017 and issued an unqualified apology as well as a pardon to convicted gay men, she said it was “shocking” that homosexuality remained illegal in Scotland as late in 1981.

One day, a first minister will surely stand in the same parliament and be equally contrite in delivering an apology and pardon to hundreds of prostituted women, criminalised for being the victims of sexual exploitation.

The Scottish Government’s own definition of prostitution is that it is an act of violence against these women, so we now face the incongruity of them being classed as victims of a crime, while also being deemed its perpetrator.

There was a time in Scotland when women who were subjected to domestic violence, were arrested for crimes such as breach of the peace, alongside the partner who was beating them.

We now think that outrageous but not so women who were charged with soliciting and loitering while the punter exploiting her was sent back to his wife.

As a young reporter shadowing the vice squad, I saw sex workers hauled into police stations while the men faced no sanctions.

Recently, Police Scotland has been reluctant to charge prostituted women but the statute remains which could criminalise them, should an officer wish to.

For the women trying desperately to exit prostitution, they are still paying the price of convictions dating back years.

This criminal history is a source of shame and psychological harm and a major impediment to finding an alternative job, in caring, nursing or any other employment which requires a disclosure check.

In effect, these women continue to be punished by retrograde legislation, in the same vein as the striking miners or gay men.

Earlier this year, three women in England groomed into sex work as teenagers lost a High Court bid to stop their criminal convictions for soliciting staying on their criminal record until they are 100 years old.

They were convicted of loitering for the purposes of prostitution in the 1980s and 1990s when they were little more than children but face a lifelong punshment by the state for the abuse they suffered from pimps.

History will judge us harshly for the perpetuation of such gender inequality.

In April, Ireland announced hundreds of previous convictions for selling sex will be expunged and it is time Scotland followed suit.

This week, an alliance of support organsations, as well as women who have survived commercial sexual exploitation, called for the Scottish Government to decriminalise women selling sex and criminalise the punters.

But yet again, the government has refused to make a stand despite forests worth of consultations on the subject stretching back decades.

It can’t continue to play both sides of the argument, appeasing those who consider prostitution “work” and a “lifestyle choice” while patronising those who agree to the government’s assertion that it is abuse.

For years, there has been a cowardice on the government’s part to make a stand simply because it is frightened of the controversy which will follow.

But just as the women can’t be both victims and perpetrators, the Government can’t be opposed to prostitution, while effectively enabling it.

Women continue to be punished by retrograde legislation