Sarah Walker (activist)

Sarah Walker is an English political activist. A member of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), she has acted as their spokesperson. In 2013 she was named to the BBC's 100 Women list.

Life
Walker first encountered the English Collective of Prostitutes while studying English at the North London Polytechnic in the early 1980s. She attended the Strangers and Sisters conference in 1982, finding there a movement where she felt at home inl. Later that year she participated in the 12-day ECP occupation of the Holy Cross Church, St Pancras, which protested police illegality and racism in the policing of sex workers. The occupation also involved activists from Women Against Rape, and Black Women for Wages for Housework. Walker remembers that participants "were crossing divisions".

Walker became a spokeswoman for the ECP, speaking to the media on a range of issues. In 2001 she rebutted police claims to have infiltrated a sex trafficking ring in Soho:

"It has nothing to do with illeal immigrants or the rights of women ... The police just want to gentrify the area ... It is to do with money and property values."

In the 2010s Walker linked austerity measures to an increased number of UK students turning to sex work, and other women pushed into sex work by poverty. She also commented on media fears that the 2012 Olympic Games would lead to an increase in prostitution.

In 2015 Walker supported Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in their leadership of the Labour Party, helping to write the pamphlet Why People Of Colour Should Support the new Corbyn/McDonnell Movement.