This post provides links to transcripts and an audio recording of our TUC fringe event held in Brighton on Monday 8 September 2025. As a recording of a live event, the sound quality is not perfect but is mostly easily audible.
The trade union movement has been responsible for some of the greatest social justice breakthroughs in history. Trade unionists have fought tenaciously over centuries against excessive hours of work and dangerous working conditions and for decent pay and paid holidays and sick pay – and for workers to be treated with dignity. When conditions were irreconcilable with decent working conditions, they campaigned for a rethink. They didn’t want better lighting for five-year-olds working in the dark in coal mines, they wanted them to be in school and playing in the fresh air.
A debate is now raging in the trade union movement about prostitution. Is it ‘sex work’ – a service industry that just needs to come under employment regulations? Or is it more like kids working down the mines – something that can never be reconciled with social justice and that should therefore be abolished?
This event explained why prostitution can never be a normal job, how it wreaks havoc on individuals and the wider community, and what exactly the Nordic Model is and how it compares with full decirminalisation.
Podcast
Duration: 1 hour | File size: 42.6 MB | Play in new window (with option to download file).
Transcripts of talks
Speakers
Esther. Esther has a longstanding interest in research on legal and public policy approaches to sexualised violence and domestic abuse. She uses her own experience of porn and prostitution to reflect on these issues.
Heli St Luce. Heli designs and facilitates interactive workshops for adults and businesses, she is a coach, aromatherapist and ceremony/ritual guide. As the child of an underage, immigrant, single mother she was witness to sexploitation first ‘saving’ her mother and then making her sick. ‘I’ve always wanted to change the world, working with NMN creates a real and valuable way to do that’.
Jenna. Jenna is a survivor of prostitution and a passionate advocate for its abolition and for the implementation of the Nordic model.
Sarah Green. CEO of Women At The Well, an organisation that supports women who are affected by or at risk of sexual exploitation. Women’s organisations with specialist knowledge and experience in responding to sexual exploitation are key to any social and political change, but are hard to fund and make sustainable in the current policy and economic environment. Sarah has worked for more than 25 years in human rights and violence against women and girls campaigns and organisational development.
Emily Husain. Emily is a civil barrister and feminist who has volunteered with women’s organisations and groups addressing violence against women for several years. Emily has a particular interest in the domestic and international legislative framework surrounding prostitution and she joined NMN in 2023. Emily will chair the event.