Sarah Walker (activist)
Sarah Walker is an English political activist and spokesperson for the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP). She is also a member of Women of Colour in the Global Women's Strike. In 2013 she was named to the BBC’s 100 Women list.
She studied English at North London Polytechnic in the early 1980s. While a student, she faced what she saw as classism and racism in student politics, which led her to look for activist spaces outside the mainstream. She first found the English Collective of Prostitutes at the Strangers and Sisters conference in 1982. Later that year she took part in the 12‑day ECP occupation of Holy Cross Church in King’s Cross to protest police illegality and racism in policing sex workers. The action brought together people from different movements, and Walker soon became a spokesperson for the ECP, speaking to the media on related issues.
In 2001 she challenged police claims of a sex trafficking ring in Soho, saying it related to gentrification and property values. In the 2010s she linked austerity to more students turning to sex work and to poverty pushing other women into sex work. She also commented on fears that the 2012 Olympic Games would increase prostitution. In 2013 she argued that criminalisation traps women in prostitution by giving them criminal records and pushing them into more dangerous situations.
In 2015 the ECP organized a symposium called “Decriminalisation of Prostitution: The Evidence” at the House of Commons, hosted by John McDonnell; its findings were shared with parliamentarians. In 2017 Walker spoke at Tate Modern during a screening of the documentary Generation Revolution, discussing activism, labor, and production. That year she supported Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in their Labour leadership bid and co‑authored a pamphlet advocating support for people of colour in the new movement.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:45 (CET).