commentary two

Wolfenden Report-Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution HMSO 1957 Cmnd 247 p.90.

Divisional Court (1966) 2 QB 81.

Prosecutions have also been brought with some success under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1956; also section 54 (13) of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 as well as under various local bye-laws. For more details see the Working Party on Vagrancy and Street Offences Working Paper HMSO 1974 pp.85-86.

According to the Observer 26th Feb 1984 Scotland Yard says 'it is responding where there is pressure from local groups.'

For an introduction to 'Left Realism' see Lea, J. and Young, J. What is to be Done About Law and Order, Penguin 1984 pp.262-273.

Between 1967 and 1979 there have been five Private Members Bills none of which have received a second reading, either through lack of time or lack of interest.

Criminal Law Revision Committee - Sixteenth Report, Prostitution in the Street , HMSO 1984 Cmnd 9329 p.4.

Elizabeth Woodcraft-'Prostitution', LAG Bulletin October 1983, p.130.

See English Collective of Prostitutes - Response to the Criminal Law Revision Committee's Working Paper on Offices Relating to Prostitution, pp.8-12. Feb. 1984.

Clrc op. cit para 7, p.3.

ibid. para 3.7, p.23

ibid. para 33 p.11 and footnote.

ibid. para 3.38, p.32.

ibid. para 40, p.13.

ibid. para 12, p.5.

Working Party on Vagrancy and Street Offences Working Paper HMSO 1974 para 271, p.88.

Clrc 1984 op. cit, para 46, p.14.

ibid para 3.8, p.23.

This type of recommendation, of course, has been put forward with slightly different wording on a number of occasions. This particular variation draws upon the statement in the Working Party on Vagrancy and Street Offences Working Paper HMSO 1974 para 238, p.76.

For example see the Finsbury Park Action Group - Submission to the Criminal Law Revision Committee on Prostitution and Allied Offences, 1984.

Clrc op. cit, para 46, p.14.

ibid. para 3.42, p.33.

See Wolfenden Repport , op. cit, and for useful commentary see Lucy Bland , Trisha McCabe , and Frank Mort -'Sexuality and Reproduction: Three "Official" Instances', in Michele Barrett et al (eds) Ideology and Cultural Reproduction, Croom Helm 1979, and Stuart Hall -'Reformism and the Legislation of Consent' in Ndc (ed) Permissiveness and Control, MacMillan, 1980. Although the CLRC maintain a continuity with Wolfenden in that their approach to prostitution remains 'regulationist' and they clearly to not want to make prostitution itself a criminal offence their proposals signal a shift in the direction of illegality and they are certainly more concerned with the enforcement of morals. See statement by the CLRC in the Fifteenth Report on Sexual Offences HMSO 1984 (a) Cmnd 9213 p.2. Also see Patrick Devlin , The Enforcement of Morals, Oxford 1975, for a theoretical elaboration of this position.

Clrc 1984, op. cit, para 46, p.14. Also see pp 32-34.

The problem, of course, is that if the offence is to be inferred from the 'manner' of the offender while presumably under police surveillance then without any necessary reference to the victim, there is a serious problem of distinguishing from a distance threatening from genuinely innocent approaches.

Clrc 1984 op. cit, para 44, p. 13.

See Hough, M. , and Mayhew, P. - The British Crime Survey, First Report. Home Office Research and Planning Unit 1983.

Chambers, G. , and Millar A. Investigating Sexual Assault, Scottish Office Central Research Unit, HMSO Edinburgh 1983 p.2.

ibid, p.58.

Quoted from the Rape Counselling and Research Project - Submission to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, 1981, p.12.

For a discussion of these problems see Wilson, E. What is to be Done About Violence Against Woimen, Penguin, 1983.

For a discussion of the 'New Right' see Wolfe, A. 'Sociology, Liberalism and the New Right, New Left Review, No 128, 1981 and Taylor-Gooby , P. 'The New Right and Social Policy' Critical Social Policy, Vol. 1, No 1, 1981.

For a discussion of the anti-feminism of the New Right see David, M. 'The New Right in the USA and Britain: A New Anti-Feminist Moral Economy ,' Critical Society Policy, Vol 2 No 3, 1983: also Eisenstein, Z. 'The Sexual Politics of the New Right', Signs, Vol 7, No 3, 1982 and Petcheskey, R. 'Antiabortion, Antifeminism, and the Rise of the New Right, Feminist Studies Voil 2, No 7, Summer 1982.

On pornography see Susan Sontag 'The Pornographic Imagination' in her Styles of Radical Will, Secker and Warburg London 1969. Rich R. 'Anti-Porn, Soft Issue, Hard World' Feminist Review No. 13, Spring 1983.

See Walkowitz, J. 'Male Vice and Feminist Virtue: Feminism and the Politics of Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Britain', History Workshop Journal, No. 13 Spring 1982; and Taylor, B. ' Female Vice and Feminist Virtue,' New Statesman, January 1981.