A very notable day spent in West Yorkshire, including taking part in a recorded radio debate in Bradford

Having agreed to take part in a radio debate in Bradford organised by BBC Radio Leeds due to start at 3pm, I decided to combine it with some business and after a lot of ringing around, I lined up a number of potential calls. As usual I got a text telling me she could not meet me from one of them, Debs, a.k.a. Big Bold Babe of Shipley, but I had one definite call lined up and as it turned out another one materialised during the day.

I kicked off the day by popping into American Soda in Ashton-under-Lyne, just off the M60, where I picked up some more of my favourite soft drink, root beer and I then headed on to the M62 and Yorkshire, getting a text from Debs, telling me her father was seriously ill, so understandably wrote her off for the day. En route I found myself listening to Women's hour and an article featuring Liz Green, who would be hosting the debate I was due to take part in and Julie Bindel, a strident opponent of women's right to sell adult services, together visiting various legal brothels in Nevada. I reflected on how one sided any view coming out of such a visit would be would be without someone of a more open mind on the industry. However I thought no more of it and got on with my next call on Mistress Hellena, who used to be the supremo at the unfortunately now closed Hotel BDSM.

www.mistresshellena.com

Mistress Hellena now sees her slaves at an altogether more modest premises, though practically any premises she might now work from would be more modest compared to Hotel BDSM. It is a converted barn located on the outskirts of Huddersfield and it shows distinct promise. We had a successful conversation interrupted slightly by the arrival of one of her obviously greatest fans and then I headed over to Leeds to top up a sex shop there. Then it was back to Bradford for a similar call on a shop in Manningham Rd., only a short distance from the building where the radio debate was to be taking place.

Having taken part in numerous such debates on television and radio previously, when I arrived I was surprised to find no one there that I knew from any organisation that might have similar views to my own, but thought some such people might well emerge as the debate developed, particularly as a gentleman helping to run the debate, before it started, told us all that half the people there would disagree with the other half.

Little did I expect it to be the case that I would make up one half and the other thirty odd people there the other.

On the platform and hence able to interrupt the proceedings whenever they felt like it were four people, Julie Bindel and a lady who had had unfortunate experience of the adult services industry, both stridently opposed to the sex industry in any form, an inoffensive gentleman who helps women leave working on the streets of Ipswich, notable because of the murders there and a local Labour MP, Gerry Sutcliffe, who it turned out was as near an ally of mine as there was, but who had voted for the repressive legislation making it a crime for men to be prosecuted for having sex with trafficked women, even if they were totally unware that the ladies had been trafficked, hardly someone who was unbiased. All four made statements at the beginning of the debate and at the end. Mine was the only voice in sympathy with the supposed theme of the debate i.e. that it might be a good idea for brothels to be legalised.

I was the first to speak to refute some of the extremely intolerant views expressed, particularly by the two ladies on the platform. Then more people in the audience including two more ladies opposed to the industry and various religious people added their views. Initially I was not invited to speak again, but as the only person coming up with an alternative viewpoint, I was invited again, but was so busy refuting the intolerant views of the majority that there were certain very important points which I had wanted to make that never got made, in particular a proposition I had planned on mentioning that the last Labour government and the local police were to some extent indirectly to blame for the Griffiths murders. I say this because of the pressure brought by the government on local papers to stop massage parlours advertising, leading to the local papers notably the Yorkshire Evening Post, which at one time even boasted a massage hotline, pulling all their adult adverts thereby making it no longer clear to prospective punters where they might go other than the streets and the fact that when I first surveyed the national parlour scene in 1995 there were nine massage parlours in Bradford and when Griffiths was caught just two were left, which could no longer advertise their presence, which in turn led to more men visiting the streets and hence more ladies working there and with the police busy closing parlours down and targeting the punters, they completely missed Griffths, who was once must remember was only caught because he was fool enough to commit a murder on CCTV.

I feel sure a representative of the English Collective of Prostitutes or the International Union of Sex Workers, would have been happy to attend. Indeed if it had been pointed out to me that they were looking for some more people to address the balance issue for the debate, I would have contacted a number of people to help out. It should not be forgotten that there is not just one feminist view of the sex industry, i.e. that anyone working in it is a victim. The noted feminist and professor Camille Paglia takes the view that women in the sex industry empower themselves by working in it and there are academics in this country of a similar view, notably Dr. Belinda Brooks-Gordon, who took part recently in a debate on the Moral Maze on this topic, shocking Melanie Phillips in the process, which says it all. We were also treated to a policeman telling us there are 400 brothels in Suffolk, but only five in Ipswich, which does leave one wondering until one realises the police love to paint any situation for which they are responsible in as black a light as they can manage. I have no doubt there are getting on for 400 ladies entertaining from their homes throughout Suffolk, but a lady on her own does not constitute a brothel and is not working illegally, except I suppose if she does not have planning permission, but then again if one was to enforce such laws rigorously these days one would see even higher unemployment, the last thing any government would want currently.

Maybe the people at BBC Leeds tried to get some sensible people to take part, but if that was the case and they had no success, the very least that should have been done would have been to allow me on the platform as a balance to the rabidly anti-sex industry people there. I have now written saying the above to the top person at BBC Radio Leeds and I now await her reply.

When the debate finished it was 4.30 and I had another appointment lined up to see Abbie Leigh of Leeds at five at her apartment in Morley, so I headed off immediately, which was a pity since I would have liked to have talked to the Labour MP if no one else.

I finally got to Morley at 5.15 and found Abbie Leigh was waiting for me and we had a successful conversation despite the fact that I could not get any connection to the internet from the dongle on my laptop. It was one of those areas.

www.abbieleighleedsescort.co.uk

And with that I headed home getting back around 8.

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Friday November 11th

15/11/2011