Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst revolutionary socialist political activist and campaigner for women’s rights, who is remembered chiefly for her use of militant tactics in the fight for women’s right to vote. was born on the 5th of May 1882 in Old Trafford .Manchester, the second daughter of the future militant suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and the radical lawyer Dr Richard Pankhurst.The family briefly located to London. When they returned to Manchester in 1893 her parents joined the Independent Labour Party and Sylvia became an activist, being particularly influenced by her father
The Pankhurst family home was a meeting place for intellectuals and political activists, so while she was still young Pankhurst met among others Annie Besant, the American feminist Harriot Stanton Blatch, and William Morris – who exerted great artistic and political influence on her.
‘If you do not work for others you will not have been worth the upbringing’.
She also acquired from her father her lifelong atheism. Sylvia’s father, Richard, died quite young in 1898 when she was sixteen. A lawyer, Richard graduated from radical Liberalism to socialism and campaigned for the progressive causes of the day. He was the architect of the Married Women’s Property Act, an important reform.Pankhurst was also profoundly influenced by her father’s progressive ideals and she strove always to live up to his admonition:
‘If you do not work for others you will not have been worth the upbringing’.
The other two members of the Pankhurst nuclear family were Sylvia’s sister Adela and her brother Harry. Adela immigrated to Australia where she became a founder member of the Communist Party, but ended up on the extreme right. Harry, a progressive for his brief life, died in 1910.
Pankhurst attended Manchester High School for Girls and trained as a scholarship student at both the Manchester Municipal School of Art and the Royal College of Art. On graduation she supported herself by selling her paintings and textile designs, and made a tour of industrial areas to paint portraits of working women. She also designed murals, banners, regalia and merchandise for the suffragette Women’s Social and Political Union, including the famous ‘Angel of Freedom’ motif.
As a young woman, she was inspired by her parents who were prominent in the labour movement. Her mother Emmeline led the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation and from the age of 24, alongside her sister Christabel, Sylvia worked for the WSPU.Her deep feminism led to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics and resulted in an ultimate split with her family. As a young woman she moved to London’s impoverished East End where she set up a childcare center and fought for poor women’s right to vote. Living and working among the most oppressed informed her deepening socialism, internationalism and ultimate anti-fascist work.
After helping establish the Labour Party, Pankhurst was disgusted with its many betrayals by reformist politicians and party leaders. Winston Churchill had her physically removed from a platform where she was speaking, proclaiming he would not be “hen pecked” into supporting women’s voting rights. The extreme misogyny and violence that suffragists endured from authorities left her with a profound distrust of the entire parliamentary process.
Her commitment to the cause was remarkable Between 1913 and 1914, Pankhurst was imprisoned 13 times. As the movement became more militant, including a mass window-breaking campaign, police stepped up their abuse. They raped, assaulted, and twisted women’s breasts, an extremely intimate form of torture. In prison, Pankhurst suffered solitary confinement, hunger strikes and forced feeding — administered orally and vaginally. Sylvia had the dubious honour of being force fed more than any other activist. She was seen by the British Secret Service as a threat to national security (apparently more so than any other suffragette), but even at this time the government was wary of bad PR. If Sylvia, or any other suffragette had died whilst in prison, their cause would have had all the greater prominence.
Accordingly, under the so called ’Cat and Mouse Act’ which was passed in 1913, prisoners weakened by hunger strikes and at risk of death could be released, and then re-arrested once they had recovered. Despite her commitment, Sylvia’s desire for social equality was increasingly at odds with her mother and sister. Their main focus was on the suffragette cause, and they saw less value in promoting the rights of the working class in general.
In 1913, Sylvia was expelled from the WSPU and, with the help of Keir Hardie (a friend since her childhood) formed her own organisation, eventually known as the Workers Suffrage Federation (WSF). The WSF campaigned against poverty and for better social conditions, and her particular focus was on the East End of London.
By the outbreak of war in 1914, the rift in the Pankhurst family had become a chasm. Emmeline and Christabel suspended their campaign for female suffrage, and the WSPU supported the war effort. Remarkably, there are even accounts of the WSPU handing out white feathers to those who refused to enlist. In contrast, Sylvia was a pacifist and saw the war as a means by which the ruling elite would preserve imperialism and inequality. Sylvia and other women, in the light of the WSPU’s pro-government and pro-war stance, set up the Women’s Peace Army. Sylvia became both a peace activist and a campaigner (and provider) of services for working class communities. In her work The Home Front she showed that the policy of starvation was deliberately used to boost Army recruitment. She also exposed the activities of many of those profiteering from both war and the shortage of food.
A revolutionary and world citizen, she welcomed the Russian Revolution in 1917 and travelled there in order to assess the extent to which the Revolution liberated women. At the same time, she travelled widely throughout Western Europe to build links with other progressive forces. Her involvement in the creation of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) showed the extent to which Sylvia was prepared to argue for a particular approach. She had a robust dialogue with Lenin and although she joined the CPGB there were disagreements about the position of the Dreadnought. and was expelled from the CPGB.
As a result of her experience Sylvia developed a much more internationalist perspective than many of her peers. She understood from the beginning that fascism in Italy was largely financed by banks and large business in order to operate in their interest. This was at a time when not only the British ruling class but many on the Left saw Mussolini as a positive development.
She began to apply her socialism to a broader analysis of fascism and to develop a critique of British Imperialism. She visited India in 1926 and wrote a book – India and the Earthly Paradise – which portrayed the brutality of the British occupation.
Sylvia was the most incarcerated and tortured of the Pankhursts, and in 1921 she was once more His Majesty’s guest in Holloway Prison. This time her crime was not the struggle for women’s equality but sedition, in publishing anti-war articles in her newspaper the Workers’ Dreadnought. Her health compromised by previous imprisonment and torture, and suffering from endometriosis, one of the bravest Britons of the 20th century served another prison term, this time as a newspaper publisher defending freedom of the press.
Sylvia used her six-month solitary sentence to write. A political prisoner, her only permitted writing materials were a small slate and chalk. Yet she was prolific during this period. On release, she published the poetry anthology Writ on Cold Slate, whose title sonnet agonizes about writing under such conditions.
Whilst many a poet to his love hath writ,
Boasting that thus he gave immortal life,
My faithful lines upon inconstant slate,
Destined to swift extinction reach not thee.
Her ultimate goal was a greater level of social equality, or as some might say “social justice”. She was one of the key anti-austerity campaigners of her day. In 1923, she wrote: "Our desire is not to make poor those who today are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich are now. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places. We wish to abolish poverty and to provide abundance for all”.
In 1924 Sylvia moved from the East End of London to Woodford Green, into Red Cottage with Silvio Corio, an Italian anarchist/journalist/painter and her lover and companion for 30 years. Sylvia continued to demand the vote for working class men and women (not just propertied middle class women) and this eventually came in 1928. In 1927 she give birth to her and Corio's son Richard, named for her father, whom she loved and revered, but she also had little truck with social convention;and declined to marry Silvio.and the birth of a child out of wedlock, widened the rift with her mother and sister, who were scandalised by the affair..
Sylvia Pankhurst had an uncompromising conviction that both individuals and communities have a shared responsibility for everybody’s welfare. She resolutely refused to differentiate between people on grounds of sex, class or colour, placing her intelligence, courage, energy and vision at the service of all. Intensely altruistic, there seemed to be no limit to the sacrifices she was willing to make for others.
The rise of fascism in the 1930s led Pankhurst to return to active politics. She was a staunch opponent of fascism and campaigned against appeasement. Pankhurst was highly attuned to events in fascist Italy because of her relationship with Silvio Corio .No longer in the communist or organised labour movement, Pankhurst’s activities were as an individual, as a journalist, publicist, speaker and letter writer.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s she urged British politicians and opinion formers to reconsider their support for Mussolini and to question their mistaken belief in the potential effectiveness of appeasement. She constantly urged her local MP Winston Churchill to direct his attention to the danger of what was happening in Italy rather than focusing only on Germany. Those elements within the British social elites who offered enthusiastic support for Mussolini included politicians, like Churchill, the centre ‘moderate’ and right-wing press, such as the Observer – whose stated editorial policy was to support Mussolini’s continuation in power..
Pankhurst diverting her energies futilely towards influencing the bourgeoisie rather than organising amongst the working class. She moved to reformism. She admired Carlo Rosselli, who escaped from captivity in Italy, fought in the Spanish Civil War and was murdered on orders from Rome. Sylvia’s admiration of Rosselli, known for his non-Marxist ‘liberal socialism’, is indicative of the direction of her thinking at this time. The British Labour Party and radical movements had greatly influenced Rosselli’s theory of reformist liberal socialism. Sylvia read his book Socialisme Libéral, published in 1930, which contained a passionate critique of classical Marxism in favour of democratic socialist revisionism synthesizing Italian and British political thinking and practice.
Pankhurst accepted a flow of invitations from the Labour Party to speak on the menace of fascism for women. Sylvia devoted a section of her ‘Fascism as It Is’ series in New Times to ‘Women under the Nazis’.
Documenting in detail the exclusion of women from all employment by public bodies, government departments, local councils, hospitals, charities and – as far as possible – even schools, Sylvia pointed out that among the women eliminated ‘are the very people who, since the Revolution of 1918, have actually created government departments dealing with infants’ welfare and the education of girls and women’. She warned against the reaction now turning back the clock in Germany on hard-fought-for feminist advances.
Pankhurst’s activities were not limited to speaking and writing; she and Corio undertook practical solidarity activity. For example, she founded the Women’s International Matteotti Committee which campaigned for Italian political prisoners. In 1933 Pankhurst and Corio organised an International Day of Protest ‘in support of victims of Italian fascism.’
The Italian fascist regime had designs for imperialist conquest in Africa. In October 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia with overwhelming military superiority. Emperor Haile Selassie personally led stiff resistance against the odds. It took until May 1936 for Italian forces to enter Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie symbolised resistance to European colonialism. While the great powers and the League of Nations (forerunner of the UN) did nothing but impose some paltry sanctions against Italy’s aggression, in reality supporting Italy. However, there was massive support world-wide for Ethiopia. Blacks in the US, South Africans and West Africans volunteered to go to Ethiopia to fight, but were prevented from doing so.
Pankhurst’s letter writing went into overdrive. She pilloried the inaction of the British government in letters to ‘the Manchester Guardian, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Herald, Daily Express, News Chronicle and numerous local, provincial and international papers.’ On the day Addis Ababa was occupied the first issue of Pankhurst’s new venture, New Times and Ethiopia News, went to print. The first issue spelt out the paper’s position. The cause of Ethiopia cannot be separated from the cause of international justice … We shall set ourselves resolutely to combat fascist propaganda [and], to secure the continuance and strengthening of sanctions … We shall strive to induce measures by the League to resist the fascist usurpation, and to aid and defend Ethiopia, and will persistently urge that Britain take the responsibility of initiating an active League policy … We shall urge that Britain shall herself individually give aid to Ethiopia.
Pankhurst’s campaigning for effective sanctions on Italy contributed to pro-Ethiopia public opinion in Britain. She reported receiving daily bags of letters from women ‘thanking me for my repeated protests against the inaction of the League … and of the British Government in face of Italy’s breach of the covenant and diabolical attack on a Member State of the League.’
From 1936 to the outbreak of the Second World War Sylvia saw Fascism as the antithesis of everything she believed in: it was chauvinist and militarist, whereas she was an internationalist, opposed to war; Mussolini had no truck with democracy, whereas she, like her father, believed in its extension; Fascism held that women’s primary duty was breeding soldiers for the Duce, whereas she had been a feminist all her life; and, as a Socialist, she deplored the suppression of the Italian Socialist and trade union movements.
In October 1936 Pankhurst took part in the Battle of Cable Street, a successful mass action that prevented the fascist Blackshirts from marching through the heart of London’s Jewish East End. It was a turning point that set back fascism in Britain. Shortly after, Pankhurst spoke at a rally in the East End and was hit by one the missiles thrown by fascist thugs.
Ger commitment to Ethiopia continued after the war. She raised enough money to build Ethiopia’s first teaching hospital. Sylvia campaigned for liberation throughout Africa, prompting a Foreign Office official to comment in 1947 that ‘we agree with you in your evident wish that that this horrible old harridan should be choked to death with her own pamphlets’
After Corio died in 1954 Sylvia accepted an earlier invitation from her dear friend Emperor Haile Selassie, Sylvia and her son Richard went to live in Ethiopia. permanently in 1956 IN Addis Ababa, where she edited the Ethiopia Observer the emperor and moved with her son to live permanently in Ethiopia in 1956. There she helped to found the Social Service Society and edited a monthly periodical, the Ethiopia Observer. She was honoured with the decoration of the queen of Sheba, first class.
Towards the end of her life Sylvia Pankhurst re-established contact with friends from the early suffrage days, including Teresa Billington-Greig, a founder member of the WSPU, who sent a copy of her autobiography to Sylvia for her comments. She had maintained a relationship with her sister Adela, who shared her socialist views, and in the 1950s Sylvia even corresponded once more with Christabel. In 1959 an exhibition of her art was held at the French Institute in London and she willingly contributed material to the organizers. Sylvia died the following year in Addis Ababa, on 27 September 1960. She was regarded so highly in Ethiopia that the emperor ordered that she should receive a state funeral, which was attended by himself and other members of the royal family. She is the only foreigner buried in front of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, in a section reserved for patriots of the Italian war. Pankhurst's name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, Westminster, London.[There is a two-dimensional silhouette constructed of Corten steel representing Pankhurst as a campaigning suffragette in Mile End Park, Bethnal Green, London. She is also the subject of a mural, completed 2018 by Jerome Davenport, on the gable-end of the Lord Morpeth pub on Old Ford Road in Bow, London. It is next door to the house in which she lived between 1914 and 1924 while working with the ELFS and WSF.
In October 2022, London's Old Vic Theatre announced for 25 January 2023 the world premiere of Sylvia, a hip hop musical about Pankhurst. Directed and choreographed by Kate Prince, it seeks to tell her story to "younger and more diverse audiences".
Whether or not you agree with her politics, and with the nature of her activism, it’s hard to deny Sylvia’s role in the campaign for women and universal suffrage in the UK, and although the focus of her activities changed over time, Sylvia Pankhurst supported socialist and revolutionary politics and campaigns for women's political and sexual freedom and in promoting wider social change throughout her life. in promoting wider social change.
Unlike her mother and sister, Emmeline and Christabel, she was not focused solely on the rights of middle class and propertied women. Her suffrage work and political campaigns prioritised the most oppressed women: the women of the working class. Across the board, she championed worker’s rights and opposed the mass unemployment that was wrecking poor industrial and inner city communities. and opposed the jingoism and bloody carnage of the First World War; supporting the campaign against conscription and backing those who refused to fight: the conscientious objectors.
She was a trailblazer, long before most others, Her life is a study in implacable strength, physical courage and perseverance. A life profoundly relevant for today’s urgent struggles and hopes. Her legacy is a rich one.
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