Labour says no to ex-hooker

2005-02-28 12:38

London - A trainee lawyer's bid to be a candidate for Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party in Britain's upcoming election was rejected after she revealed her past life as a hooker in Paris and London.

Christine Wheatley, 53, impressed Labour officials with her history as a former student at top-notch Oxford University, making it down to a shortlist of candidates to run in Copeland constituency in northeast England.

Her dreams were shattered, however, after the party read an interview she gave to a local newspaper in which she talked candidly about her colourful past.

"I tried to think of the most interesting thing I had done in my life and decided it was working as a tart on the Left Bank of Paris," Wheatley told AFP in a telephone interview.

"I told the reporter this, Labour went mad and I was out," she said from her apartment in a public housing estate in Birmingham, in the West Midlands.

Wheatley - who now is studying to be a court-room lawyer - described the turn of events as unfortunate, given that attitudes towards once-taboo subjects in Britain have been changing.

Fond memories

"We have had our first lesbian candidate ... and unmarried mum candidate," she said. "We are pushing forward the barriers of acceptability and I am on the sharp end."

Labour Party officials said Wheatley was dropped because she had failed to talk about her former profession during her application to become a candidate - not because of the job itself.

"Christine Wheatley was given full opportunity to disclose all the facts that might be relevant. It became obvious that she failed to do this," a party spokesperson told The Guardian newspaper.

Since winning power in 1997, Blair has sought to give women a bigger role in politics and government, prompting the popular press to brand his female protoges "Blair's babes".

Nicki Adams, a spokesperson for the English Collective of Prostitutes, told AFP her group was "not surprised" that Wheatley was given the political cold shoulder.

"What prostitute women have been facing under this Labour government has been an increase in this kind of discriminatory, moralistic and repressive attitude and legislation," she said.

Wheatley harbours fond memories of her time as a lady of the night, which lasted just six weeks in Paris and another six months in London as she struggled to find a job in the early 1980s.

£20 a go

"I just sat at a pavement cafe in Paris, looking exceptionally attractive and smiling around in an obvious fashion," she recalled.

"A gentleman would step up and ask if I wanted a drink. Then I would say, 'Voulez-vous faire l'amour' (Do you want to make love). They would always answer yes."

She would take her clients back to a hotel for sex in return for cash. "It was not really Parisienne sex. It was all over in three minutes," she said.

Back in London and still unable to find legal work, Wheatley, then 30, used to spend time in a hotel bar where she would solicit businessmen to have sex in their room for £20 a go.

"It was a bit more than you would get working as a secretary," she said.

Dismissing the setback in her political career, Wheatley remains determined to run in the upcoming British election, expected to be called for May 5, saying that she would like to improve the image of prostitution.

"I will be working for the rights of sex workers," she said, adding she intends to go to Copeland herself to directly ask its Labour Party faithful to overrule the objections of Labour's north-of-England headquarters.

"I will persevere in politics," she said.

- AFP