Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (5 May 1882 – 27 September 1960) was a campaigning English
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
and
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
. Committed to organising working-class women in
London's East End
The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have u ...
, and unwilling in
1914 to enter into a wartime political truce with the government, she broke with the
suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to member ...
leadership of her mother and sister,
Emmeline and
Christabel Pankhurst
Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst, (; 22 September 1880 – 13 February 1958) was a British suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed its militant actions from exil ...
. She was inspired by the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
and consulted with
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
, but defied
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
in endorsing a
syndicalist
Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of pr ...
programme of
workers' control and by criticising the emerging
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
dictatorship.
Pankhurst was vocal in her support for
Irish independence; for anti-colonial struggle throughout the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
; and for anti-
fascist
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the ...
solidarity in Europe. Following the
Italian invasion in 1935, she was devoted to the cause of
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
where, after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, she spent her remaining years as a guest of the restored emperor
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie I ( gez, ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ, Qädamawi Häylä Səllasé, ; born Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (' ...
. The international circulation of her
pan-Africanist
Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all Indigenous and diaspora peoples of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement exte ...
weekly ''The New Times and Ethiopia News'' was regarded by the British authorities as a factor in the development of nationalist sentiment in
west Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali ...
, and in the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...
of
Ras Tafari
Haile Selassie I ( gez, ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ, Qädamawi Häylä Səllasé, ; born Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (' ...
.
Early life
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (she later dropped her first forename) was born at Drayton Terrace,
Old Trafford
Old Trafford () is a football stadium in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, and the home of Manchester United. With a capacity of 74,310 it is the largest club football stadium (and second-largest football stadium overall after Wembl ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...
, to
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst (''née'' Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was an English political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, ''Time'' named her as one of the 100 Most Import ...
(
née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Goulden) and Dr.
Richard Pankhurst.
Dr Pankhurst had been a founding member in 1872 of the
National Society for Women's Suffrage
The National Society for Women's Suffrage Manchester Branch
The National Society for Women's Suffrage was the first national group in the United Kingdom to campaign for women's right to vote. Formed on 6 November 1867, by Lydia Becker, the organi ...
, and played a role in drafting legislation that gave unmarried women householders a vote in local elections, and married women control over their property and earnings. The family home, for a period in
Russell Square in London, hosted radical
intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...
from both Britain and abroad, among them the Russian
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...
Peter Kropotkin
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (; russian: link=no, Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин ; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activist ...
, the
Communard Louise Michel, and the
Fabian Annie Besant
Annie Besant ( Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights activist, educationist, writer, orator, political party member and philanthropist.
Regarded as a champion of human ...
.
In 1893, Pankhurst's parents joined the Scottish miner
Keir Hardie, a family friend, as founding members of the
Independent Labour Party (ILP).
Pankhurst and her sisters,
Christabel and
Adela
Adela may refer to:
* ''Adela'', a 1933 Romanian novel by Garabet Ibrăileanu
* ''Adela'' (1985 film), a 1985 Romanian film directed by Mircea Veroiu
* ''Adela'' (2000 film), a 2000 Argentine thriller film directed and written by Eduardo Mign ...
, attended
Manchester High School for Girls
Manchester High School for Girls is an English independent day school for girls and a member of the Girls School Association. It is situated in Fallowfield, Manchester.
The head mistress is Helen Jeys who took up the position in September 2020 ...
. In 1903, Pankhurst went on to train as an artist at the
Manchester School of Art.
While completing a ILP commission to paint murals in a social hall the party had built in Salford, Pankhurst discovered that the hall, named after her father, would not admit women. It was an episode that helped convince her elder sister, Christabel, of the need for women to organise independently.
In 1904, Pankhurst won a scholarship to the
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It ...
(RCA) in London,
but she was incensed to learn that of 16 scholarships awarded by the college each year, 13 were reserved for men, and that, in response to a parliamentary question, Kier Hardie should be told that the authoirities "did not contemplate any change".
Suffragette
The
Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership an ...
(WSPU) was founded as an independent women's movement on 10 October 1903 in the family's Nelson Street home in Manchester. Pankhurst's sister Christabel had persuaded a group of ILP women that women had to do the work emancipation themselves, and that they needed a movement free of party affiliation.
In 1906, Sylvia Pankhurst started to work full-time for WSPU, with Christabel and their mother. She devised the WSPU logo and various leaflets, banners, and posters as well as the decoration of its meeting halls.
In 1907 she toured industrial towns in England and Scotland, painting portraits of working-class women in their working environments.
She was later to write that she witnessed "so much distress", that she felt unable to return to her " beloved profession”.
She became a full-time organiser, with
Alice Hawkins
Alice Hawkins (Stafford, 1863 – Leicester, 1946) was a leading English suffragette among the boot and shoe machinists of Leicester. She went to prison five times for acts committed as part of the Women’s Social and Political Union militant ...
and
Mary Gawthorpe, helping establish the WSPU in
Leicester
Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands.
The city l ...
.
Pankhurst contributed articles to the WSPU's newspaper, ''
Votes for Women'' and, in 1911, she published a propagandist history of the WSPU's campaign, ''The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement''. It included her witness account of
Black Friday 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to the
Houses of Parliament as part of their campaign to press for voting rights under the
Conciliation Bill
Conciliation bills were proposed legislation which would extend the right of women to vote in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to just over a million wealthy, property-owning women. After the January 1910 election, an all-party Con ...
, and were met with violence, some of it sexual, from the
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
and male bystanders.
Between February 1913 and August 1914 Sylvia was arrested eight times for protest actions in London. After the passing of the so-called
Cat and Mouse Act
The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, commonly referred to as the Cat and Mouse Act, was an Act of Parliament passed in Britain under H. H. Asquith's Liberal government in 1913. Some members of the Women's Social and Political Un ...
, she would be released for short periods to recuperate from hunger striking. Supporters would carry her back to her home and offices in Old Ford Street,
Bow, where, when the police came to re-arrest her, street battles would ensue. In June 1914, supporters carried her to the entrance to the
Strangers’ Gallery of the
House of Commons where she announced that she would continue her hunger strike until the
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...
,
H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ...
, agreed to receive a deputation of East London women.
Less than two years before, Pankhurst had led a march on
Mountjoy Prison
Mountjoy Prison ( ga, Príosún Mhuinseo), founded as Mountjoy Gaol and nicknamed ''The Joy'', is a medium security men's prison located in Phibsborough in the centre of Dublin, Ireland.
The current prison Governor is Edward Mullins.
History ...
in Dublin in solidarity with two English WPSU militants who, on his visit to the Irish capital, had thrown a (blunted) hatchet at the prime minister. Asquith met the deputation of six working mothers. After listening to them pay tribute to the work Pankhurst had done “in arousing the women of the East End to the importance of the vote in their daily lives", and describe their hardships,
the Prime Minister re-iterated the government's position. Votes for women would have to await a general democratic reform of the franchise.
That did not occur until
1918
This year is noted for the end of the First World War, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as well as for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50–100 million people worldwide.
Events
Below, the events ...
, with votes extended to women over thirty. Full voting equality took another
ten years.
Women-led labour organising in America
Pankhurst undertook two speaking tours in the United States: in the first three months of 1911 and again at the beginning of 1912.
[Connelly, Katherine (2019). "Introduction" to ''A Suffragette in America Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change'', London: Pluto Press. ISBN 978 0 7453 3937 5] Writing letters home, mostly to Keir Hardie, she described herself as having to persuade her largely middle-class hosts that sweated female labour and mother-child poverty was as much a feature of the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...
as the Old. She related her experience of going into factories, workshops, workhouses and prisons, of observing the application of
Taylorist principles (rendering workers "part of the machinery"), and of witnessing in the South the virtual criminalisation of
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
.
In January 1911 she was in Chicago. A strike wave, which had begun in 1909 with “the uprising of the 20,000” mostly immigrant, Jewish women workers in the sweatshops of New York, had spread to the city's clothing workers. Union pickets had been beaten and arrested. Two had been shot dead. Pankhurst visited strikers in their police cells, and observed that their conditions were as bad anything suffragettes had been subject to in Britain.
That same month, in New York City, she met the pioneer socialist feminist
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth contro ...
, together with a twenty year-old
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. A year later Flynn was to be the
"Bread and Roses" strategist for the
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general ...
in the
Lawrence textile strike
The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a ne ...
. Back in New York City at the beginning of 1912, Pankhurst observed in laundry workers the same ability to overcome through collective action the racial, ethnic and sexual divisions systematically exploited by employers .
[Connolly (2021), 270]
In Chicago, Pankhurst had been in the company of
Zelie Passavant Emerson. Emerson had come to the
Women's Trade Union League
The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) (1903–1950) was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions. The WTUL played an importa ...
from the
settlement house movement. Pankhurst had encountered settlement houses in England: as a child she had visited the first of these, Ancoat's Brotherhood in Manchester. But in their outreach to women as both domestic and wage workers, in America she saw a potentially potent form of women-led activism.
Returning to London with Emerson, it was an example she sought to replicate in London's East End.
Before being followed back to England by Emerson, in April 1912 Pankhurst joined the funderal procession in New York City for the 146 grament workers killed in the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The ...
. Speaking beside labour organiser
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman (April 6, 1882 – August 11, 1972) was a Polish-born American socialist and feminist, and one of the most prominent female labor union leaders. As a member of the New York Women's Trade Union League, she drew attention to ...
, she said that their deaths were the result of working class people being denied the right to represent themselves.
East London socialist
In a first show of independence, and with the support of
Keir Hardie,
Julia Scurr
Julia Scurr (née Sullivan; 17 February 1871 – 10 April 1927) was a British politician and suffragette.
Early experience
Born in Limehouse in the East End of London, she married John Scurr in 1900, who was an accountant, trade unionist ...
,
Eveline Haverfield
Evelina Haverfield ( Scarlett; 9 August 1867 – 21 March 1920) was a British suffragette and aid worker.
In the early 20th century, she was involved in Emmeline Pankhurst's militant women's suffrage organisation the Women's Social and Poli ...
,
Nellie Cressall
Nellie Frances Cressall (née Wilson) (1882–1973) was an East End suffragette and labour activist.
Early life
Cressall is frequently stated to have been born in Stepney, but was actually born in Kilburn, on 23 November 1882 to carpenter Ge ...
, and
George Lansbury
George Lansbury (22 February 1859 – 7 May 1940) was a British politician and social reformer who led the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. Apart from a brief period of ministerial office during the Labour government of 1929–31, he spe ...
,
Pankhurst renamed the East London Federation of the WPSU, the
East London Federation of Suffragettes
The Workers' Socialist Federation was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. Under many different names, it gradually broadened its politics from a focus on women's suffrage to eventually become a left co ...
and, although it was to remain a women's—and women-led—emancipatory movement, opened it to trade unionists and to men.
Pankhurst noted that "the East End was the greatest homogeneous working-class area accessible to the House of Commons by popular demonstrations" and proposed that the "creation of a woman’s movement in that great abyss of poverty would be a call and a rallying cry to the rise of similar movements in all parts of the country".
In this spririt, in November 1913, Pankhurst spoke at the
Albert Hall, alongside
James Connolly, in support of the men and women of the
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union locked-out by Dublin employers.
In January 1914, accompanied by
Nora Smyth, Pankhurst visited her sister Christabel in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
(were she was taking refuge from the
Cat and Mouse Act
The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, commonly referred to as the Cat and Mouse Act, was an Act of Parliament passed in Britain under H. H. Asquith's Liberal government in 1913. Some members of the Women's Social and Political Un ...
) to discuss the future of the ELFS.
Christabel was insistent upon an independent, women-only WPSU, and was incredulous at sister's unwillingness to attack socialists unpledged to women's suffrage. Pankhurst was equally insistent on supporting popular and labour struggles, and critical of what she considered to the WPSU's social elitism. The sisters agreed that they and their organisations should go their separate ways.
From the East London Federation of Suffragettes, in 1914 Pankurst formed the
Workers' Suffrage Federation.
At the suggestion of
Emerson, Pankhurst started a WSF paper. Provisionally titled ''Workers' Mate'', the newspaper first appeared as ''
The Woman's Dreadnought.''
[Date: 8 March 1914 (1) Newspaper: Woman's Dreadnought](_blank)
''www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk'', accessed 29 February 2020 Nora Smyth (who helped pay the bills) and
Mary Phillips were the principal contributors, with Smyth illustrating the paper with her photographs of domestic East End poverty.
In the first edition of the paper (8 March 1914), Pankurst's editorial defended their insistence on building a working-class suffragette campaign:
Those Suffragists who say that it is the duty of the richer and more fortunate women to win the Vote, and that their poorer sisters need not feel themselves called upon to aid in the struggle appear, in using such arguments, to forget that it is the Vote for which we are fighting. The essential principle of the vote is that each one of us shall have a share of power to help himself or herself and us all. It is in direct opposition to the idea that some few, who are more favoured, shall help and teach and patronize the others.
This "struck a strong chord with many women socialists of an earlier generation who had serious reservations about the WSPU".
Amy Hicks
Amy Maud Bull, MBE or Amy Hicks (16 July 1877 – 11 February 1953) was a British teacher and suffragist.
Life
Bull was born in Great Holland Hall in 1877. She went to Girton Hall where she won a prize every year until she obtained a first d ...
, a veteran of the
Social Democratic Federation
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury, James C ...
, supported the ELFS from its start; as did
Dora Montefiore
Dorothy Frances Montefiore (; 20 December 1851 – 21 December 1933), known as Dora Montefiore, was an English-Australian women's suffragist, socialist, poet, and autobiographer.
Early life
Born Dorothy Frances Fuller at Kenley Manor near Co ...
who had left the WSPU in 1906, and had also spoken on behalf of the Dublin workers at the Albert Hall. The ELFS supported labour struggles and organised rent strikes.
War-time organiser and dissident
The
United Kingdom declaration of war upon Germany on 4 August 1914 found Pankhurst in Dublin investigating the
Bachelor's Walk massacre
The Bachelor's Walk massacre occurred in Dublin, on 26 July 1914, when a column of troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers were accosted by a crowd on Bachelor's Walk following the Howth gun-running operation. After some verbal baiting,Conn ...
. After allowing the initial popular enthusiasm for the war to pass, Pankhurst (who on 8 August decried the "heedless" rush to war of "men-made governments") and the WSF campaigned against conscription and in solidarity with
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objec ...
s. These were positions for which she was attacked in the WSPU newspaper, patriotically renamed ''Britannia''.
Pankhurst retained the confidence of some WSPU veterans. She was invited by
Elizabeth McCracken to
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...
, where had Christabel's wartime directive had put a halt to particularly militant campaign, to speak in support equal pay for women doing war work. It was a demand Pankhurst championed along with universal food rationing, debt relief and improved allowances for soldiers wives. By helping to shift some the costs of the war off the back of women and poor, she believed that these were measures that might hasten its end.
At same time, in the East End docks community, the ELFS/WSF sought to offer women practical assistance. They organised "cost-price" canteens, employment in a toy-making cooperative (whose product was in high demand in West-End shops), and (in a what had been a pub converted from the Gunmakers’ Arms to the Mothers ’ Arms) childcare offered on
Montessori
The Montessori method of education involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills. It emphasizes indepen ...
principles, a home visiting center, and free medical care and advice.
Not wishing to be diverted by actions that might be interpreted as charity (and for which wealthy patrons had to be solicited), Pankhurst had misgivings. She feared that "organised relief, even the kindliest and most understanding, might introduce some savour of patronage or condescension, and mar our affectionate comradeship, in which we were all equals''".'' Mitigation was sought in a policy of paying women not less than the minimum wage paid to men in the area and by creating the separate League of Rights for Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Wives and Relatives, in which women who wished to challenge government benefit decisions were encouraged to act collectively.
Pankhurst later wrote:
It was my great joy that we were stimulating working women to speak up for themselves and their sort, and to master, despite their busy lives, the intricacies of Royal warrants and Army regulations, so as to secure the promised allowances, such as they were, for themselves and their neighbours.
In 1915, Pankhurst supported to the
International Women's Peace Congress, held at
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...
. Her sister Christabel, meanwhile, seconded British diplomatic efforts, travelling to
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
after the
February 1917 Revolution
The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...
to rally support for the country's continued participation in the war.
The 28 July 1917 edition of her paper appeared under a new title ''Worker's Dreadnought''—WSF members "realised that solidarity between men and women was essential if they were going to win their fight"— and with a new strapline, "Socialism. Internationalism, Votes for All". It printed, three days in advance of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'',
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...
’s "wilful defiance of military authority": his statement that having become "a War of aggression and conquest", the conflict was being "deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it". It led to police raid on the paper's offices. The issue of 6 October 1917 advocating a peace referendum among the troops, was destroyed and the type broken up.
In May 1918, the WSF, in line with the paper, was renamed the
Workers' Socialist Federation
The Workers' Socialist Federation was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. Under many different names, it gradually broadened its politics from a focus on women's suffrage to eventually become a left com ...
. Reflecting her growing belief, in the wake of the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mom ...
in Russia, that only
Soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in ...
could form the "guiding and co-ordinating machinery" for a socialist transformation, Pankhurst refused an invitation to stand for the
Sheffield Hallam constituency in the December
1918 “Coupon election”. The WSF did go on to support other socialist candidates,
but claimed to do so merely to "make propaganda … for "the Soviet system
n whichthose who make the laws are delegates chosen from amongst the workers themselves".
Revolutionary
Left communist
By March 1919, Pankhurst was insisting that the choice was clear: socialists had to build "an industrial republic on Soviet lines," and abandon the Parliamentary system.
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
, who in his 1920 thesis ''
Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder'' profiled the WSF, advised Pankhurst that, tactically, the blanket rejection of parliamentarianism is a “mistake“.
In June 1920, the WSF co-hosted the inaugural meeting conference of the
Communist Party (BSTI). In preparation for the meeting, Pankhurst published a manifesto in the ''Workers' Dreadnought.'' Rather than the developing
Leninist
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishm ...
model of the
party-state and
centrally planned economy, it embraced ideas closer to the
councilism
Council communism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. Strong in Germany ...
of the Dutch revolutionary Marxist
Antonie Pannekoek and to the
anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in ...
of her partner
Silvio Corio.
Her contribution was to highlight the potential for extending their models of collective decision-making from the workplace into the domestic sphere. What she called Household Soviets would ensure that "mothers and those who are organisers of the family life of the community" are "adequately represented, and may take their due part in the management of society"
[Shipway, Mark (1988). ''Anti Parliamentary Communism: the movement for workers' councils in Britain, 1917-45''. '' AF-North''. ]London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
: Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
. ISBN
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition a ...
033343613X.
In the event it was the
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...
(CPGB), formed by the
British Socialist Party
The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw ...
in August 1920 (with
Montefiore Montefiore, Montifiore, and Montefiori is a surname associated with the Montefiore family, Sephardi Jews who were diplomats and bankers all over Europe and who originated from the Iberian Peninsula, namely Spain and Portugal, and also France, ...
on its provisional council),
[Allen, J]
Dorothy Frances (Dora) (1851–1933)
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, Melbourne University Press, 1986, pp 556–557. that gained Moscow's approval. In July, Pankhurst had smuggled herself into
Soviet Russia
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
to attend the Second Congress of the
Comintern
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
. There Lenin personally persuaded her that her objections were less important than unity, and that it would be possible for her to maintain a platform within the CPGB.
On her return, Pankhurst was sufficiently enthused to offer a paean to the new Soviet society:
From Russia... I brought away with me a prevailing memory of beautiful, well-grown children and healthy people. It appears that a happy contentment and buoyant, confident enthusiasm is radiating from the active makers of the revolution and builders of the proletarian state, to wider and wider sections of people...
In September, with
Willie Gallacher Pankhurst called a conference, inviting representatives of the
Shop Stewards Movement, the CPGB, the Scottish Worker's Committee and the
Glasgow Communist Group. All the groups at the conference bar
Guy Aldred's Glasgow Communist Group agreed to merge with the Communist Party of Great Britain in January 1921.
In the interim, in October 1920, she had been arrested in the offices of the ''Dreadnought'' and sentenced to six months for calling on dockers not to load arms for shipment to the
anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia. Pankhurst said she considered a hunger strike but was afraid the weapon was no longer available as the goverrnment had just allowed
Terence MacSwiney,
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Gr ...
mayor of
Cork
Cork or CORK may refer to:
Materials
* Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product
** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container
***Wine cork
Places Ireland
* Cork (city)
** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...
, to die in
Brixton Prison.
While in
Holloway, Pankhurst wrote poems published in 1922 as ''Writ on Cold Slate''. “Above all" they are the stories of her cellmates – "the young and the old, the homeless and the hungry, mothers, pregnant women and babies born in captivity – ‘dregs from the ancient system’s wheel of waste’".
Break with Moscow
In September 1921, arguing that there had to be “free expression and circulation of opinion within the Party" and “an independent Communist voice, free to express its mind unhampered by Party discipline", Pankhurst refused to hand over control of the ''Workers Dreadnought'' to the CPGB, and was expelled.
In an "Open Letter to Lenin" in November, Pankhurst warned that the
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
s had begun to "desert communism" and, by default, were opening Europe to path taken in Italy by the
Fascisti. She had serialised Rosa Luxemburg's 1918 critique of Bolshevik policy, and had herself repeated Luxemburg's charge that in sanctioning the division of the land into small peasant holdings, the Bolsheviks had betrayed the revolution. She had also opened the ''Dreadnought'' to
Alexandra Kollontai’s "The Workers’ Opposition", a critique of the developing Soviet bureaucracy, and to appeals from anarchists in Bolshevik prisons.
By July 1923 Pankhurst concluded that "the term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has been used to justify the dictatorship of a party clique of officials over their own party members and over the people at large". Socialism, as interpreted by the Bolsheviks, had been stripped of its emancipatory promise. In one of her last contributions to ''Dreadnought'' on the subject of
Soviet regime she wrote:
The Bolsheviks pose now as the prophets of centralised efficiency, trustification, State control and the discipline of the proletariat in the name of increased production... Russian workers remain wage slaves, and very poor ones, working, not from free will, but under compulsion of economic need, and kept in their subordinate position by ... State coercion.
Stirred by the example in Germany of the
General Workers' Union (AAUD), and, on the principle that Communism can be achieved only by workers themselves "acting where they stand in the process of production", endorsed by
Antonie Pannekoek, the ''Dreadnought'' group called for an "All-Workers Revolutionary Union" (AWRU). This was to organise on
industrial unionist lines, with recallable delegates elected, in rising succession, from workshops, factories, districts, and regions to national councils. With this
One Big Union programme, in February 1922 they formed themselves as the Communist Workers' Party (CWP).
When in July 1923 the CWP announced its campaign to build the AWRU, it was with the admission that they had no funds and very few people. It had managed to established just three branches outside London, in Sheffield, Plymouth and Portsmouth. Despite optimism concerning a rise in revolutionary sentiment, by the end of 1923 the CWP had dissolved.
On 14 June 1924, ''
Workers' Dreadnought'' itself ceased publication.
This was not before raising the alarm at the triumph fascism in Italy, condemning the then-Communist condoned white labourism in South Africa's
Rand Rebellion, and employing its first black correspondent, the Jamaican writer
Claude McKay
Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay Order of Jamaica, OJ (September 15, 1890See Wayne F. Cooper, ''Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner In The Harlem Renaissance (New York, Schocken, 1987) p. 377 n. 19. As Cooper's authoritative biography explains, McKay's ...
. With McKay, Pankhurst shared outrage at the ''
Daily Herald's'' campaign against the French employment of black colonial
troops in Germany.
Writer
With her partner, the Italian
libertarian socialist,
Silvio Erasmus Corio, Pankhurst retired to a cottage in then rural
Woodford Green, Essex (now in the London Borough of Redbridge)''.''
While Corio ran a tearoom, Pankhurst researched and wrote an eclectic series of books: an anti-colonial historical-cultural treatise. ''India and the Earthly Paradise'' (1926);
a promotion of the
international auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...
Interligua, ''Delphos, or the future of International Language'' (1928); ''Save the Mothers: A plea for measures to prevent the annual loss of about 3000 child-bearing mothers and 20,000 infant lives in England and Wales and a similar grievous wastage in other countries'' (1930); her largely autobiographical accounts,''The Suffragette Movement'' (1931) and ''The Home Front'' (1932); and a biography of her mother, ''The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst'' (1935), who, since the birth of Pankhurst's son
Richard
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stro ...
in 1927, had broken off all contact.
Anti-imperialist, anti-Fascist
While the ''Dreadnought'' did not have consistent line on the
1916 Easter Rising in Dublin,
an editorial written by Pankhurst began: "Justice can make but one reply to the Irish rebellion and that is the demand that Ireland should be allowed to govern itself". She put the Rising in the context of the resistance of
Unionists to Irish
Home Rule
Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance wi ...
, and noted that it was they "who first armed". She lauded the rebels' "high ideals", not least their promise of equal opportunities and equal rights for all the citizens of the Republic.
Coinciding with highpoint of her revolutionary zeal, the
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence () or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-mil ...
occasioned the suggestion in the ''Dreadnought'' that "with their industries being destroyed by English capitalists, and with their lives always in danger from the military . . . Irish men and women are compelled to become Communists in word and deed". The paper was open to assertions of
James Connolly's daughter Nora that "the awakening of a revolutionary spirit (caused by the insurrection of 1916) has come an intensive growth of revolutionary thought". In the event, Pankhurst was disappointed by the outcome: the
Anglo-Irish Treaty
The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty ( ga , An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), commonly known in Ireland as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the ...
of 1921 described in the ''Dreadnought'' as "a sad, humiliating compromise of the stand for a completely independent Irish Republic".
In ''India and the Earthly Paradise'', published in Bombay in 1926,
Pankhurst proposed that the social and family life in ancient India had the essential features of communism: equality, fraternity and mutuality. These were corrupted and overridden by priests, rulers and foreign invaders, up to, and including, the British, who introduced, or reinforced, racial and
caste
Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultur ...
distinctions. The work has been described as a "romantic Communist’ contribution to Indian nationalism" which may have been the "result of
ankhurst'scontacts with fringe elements of that movement".
There was no publisher for the book in Britain, but it was background to Pankhurst's outspoken interventions on British policy in India. She addressed protests against the failure to grant India meaningful self-government and against the use of
British air power against insurgent villages in
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
and the
North-West Frontier (a stand she memorialised by working with the sculptor Eric Benfield to create, in 1936, the "Stone Bomb" anti-war monument in Woodford Green).
In 1934, the French feminist
Gabrielle Duchêne organized the World Assembly of Women, and chaired its World Committee of Women against War and Fascism (CMF: ''Comité mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme'').
Pankurst was among the non-Communist British sponsors of the Committee along with
Charlotte Despard,
Ellen Wilkinson,
Vera Brittain and
Storm Jameson
Margaret Ethel Storm Jameson (8 January 1891 – 30 September 1986) was an English journalist and author, known for her novels and reviews and for her work as President of English PEN between 1938 and 1944.
Life and career
Jameson was born in ...
, the
Six Point Group and the
National Union of Women Teachers
The National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT) was a trade union representing women schoolteachers in Great Britain. It originated in 1904 as a campaign for equal pay for equal work, and dissolved in 1961, when this was achieved.
History
Women t ...
. In 1935 the Committee of pooled resources with the
League against Imperialism and the West-African ''Union des Travailleurs Nègres'' to promote freedom of speech and to protest repression throughout the European colonial empires.
The Women's World Committee was active in support of the International Committee for the Defense of the Ethiopian People, which held its first meeting on 2 September 1935 before the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia was launched in October 1935.
Having already in her Open Letter to Lenin (1922) identified Fascism as a gathering threat in Europe, Pankhurst acted in support of Italian exiles (her partner
Silvio Corio among them). She was a founding member of the anti-fascist Friends of Italian Freedom, the Italian Information Bureau and the Women's International
Matteotti Committee.
Later, in the 1930s, she became a vice-president of the League for the Boycott of Aggressor Nations and the Anti-Nazi Council which sought trade embargoes against
Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until Fall of the Fascist re ...
's Italy and
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's Germany.
Correspondence with
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
(who professed to be unmoved by the murder
Giacomo Matteotti) suggest that her alarm at the advance fascism moderated a once doctrinaire dismissal of
capitalist democracy. To Shaw she wrote (9 July 1935):
You have said that "liberty, as understood by the upholders of capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
, is a putreyfying corpse". To a large extent you are right, for if people are slaves of economic stress, as so many are everywhere today, they often find themselves unable to exercise the liberty of standing up for their convictions as they would desire, but at least in the non-Fascist countries, most of us are able to do propaganda for our convictions, as you and I do.
Pankhurst wrote to
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, her constituency
MP, concurring with him on the need for a more resolute foreign policy, but was unable to persuade him of the need for immediate action against the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia.
Friend of Ethiopia
Opponent of British colonial ambition
From 1936,
MI5 monitored Pankhurst's correspondence. In 1940 she wrote to
Viscount Swinton
A viscount ( , for male) or viscountess (, for female) is a title used in certain European countries for a noble of varying status.
In many countries a viscount, and its historical equivalents, was a non-hereditary, administrative or judicial ...
, then chairing a committee investigating
Fifth Column
A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. According to Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz, "fifth columns" are “domestic actors who work to un ...
ists, and enclosed lists of active Fascists still at large and of anti-Fascists who had been
interned. A copy of this letter on MI5's file carries a note in Swinton's hand reading: "I should think a most doubtful source of information."
Meanwhile, the authorities took an increasingly grim view of her anti-colonial agitation, heightened from 1935 as she became "the main protagonist of the ‘print activism’" in the cause of
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
.
In July 1935, representing the
Women's Committee against War and Fascism, with George Brown (
League of Coloured Peoples
The League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) was a British civil-rights organization that was founded in 1931 in London by Jamaican-born physician and campaigner Harold Moody with the goal of racial equality around the world, a primary focus being on bl ...
),
Reginald Reynolds
Reginald Arthur Reynolds (1905 – 16 December 1958) was a British left wing writer, poet, a Quaker and an anti-colonial activist who collaborated with M.K. Gandhi and Horace Alexander.
A Quaker, he was General Secretary of the No More War M ...
(
No More War movement The No More War Movement was the name of two pacifist organisations, one in the United Kingdom
and one in New Zealand.
British Group
The British No More War Movement (NMWM) was founded in 1921 as a pacifist and socialist successor to the No-Consc ...
) and
Reginald Bridgeman
Reginald Francis Orlando Bridgeman CMG, MVO (14 October 1884 – 11 December 1968) was a British diplomat and politician associated with a number of left wing causes including British-Soviet friendship and nuclear disarmament.
Background
Born ...
(
League against Imperialism) she organised a public protest in support of Ethiopia at
Essex Hall
Essex Street Chapel, also known as Essex Church, is a Unitarian place of worship in London. It was the first church in England set up with this doctrine, and was established when Dissenters still faced legal threat. As the birthplace of British ...
in London. After the
Italian invasion commenced in October, she began publication of ''The New Times and Ethiopia News''. As well as reporting Italian atrocities in Ethiopia (and from
July 1936,
Francoist atrocities in
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
), it provided an outlet for anti-colonialist writers elsewhere in Africa.
Nancy Cunard, for whom it was no accident that the
Spanish fascist rebellion first broke out in an African colony (
Spanish Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...
), also wrote for the paper, as did
Jawaharlal Nehru
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian Anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat—
*
*
*
* and author who was a central figure in India du ...
.
Pankhurst visited Ethiopia in 1944 and observed that, although "liberated" by the British, it was still under effective colonial occupation. Returning from a second visit to Ethiopia in 1950-51 through former Italian
Eritrea
Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopi ...
she learned that the British administration had been dismantling many port installations – a policy she denounced in a pamphlet "''Why are we destroying the Ethiopian ports?"'' She unsettled the British authorities by insisting that Eritrea (Ethiopia's "lost" Red Sea province),
Djibouti
Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red ...
and
Somaliland
Somaliland,; ar, صوماليلاند ', ' officially the Republic of Somaliland,, ar, جمهورية صوماليلاند, link=no ''Jumhūrīyat Ṣūmālīlānd'' is a ''de facto'' sovereign state in the Horn of Africa, still conside ...
be "united" with Ethiopia—this at a time when at least some within these territories saw union as the surest guarantee against the return of colonial rule. Already in 1947, a Foreign Office official had been moved to comment: "we agree with you in your evident wish that this horrible old harridan should be choked to death with her own pamphlets".
''The New Times and Ethiopia News'' remained in circulation for 20 years and at its height sold 40,000 copies weekly. This included an extensive circulation throughout West Africa and the West Indies. In 1956, the Governor of Jamaica, Sir Hugh Foot, was informed that Pankhurst's paper was radicalising a "sect" who called themselves the "Rastafari". At the same time, he was cautioned that she could be relied upon to "react violently to any suggestion that her paper should not be made available to all and sundry". In some
Crown colonies
A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony administered by The Crown within the British Empire. There was usually a Governor, appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the UK Government, with or without the assistance of a local Council ...
, such as
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...
from where the nationalist
I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson, I. T. A. Wallace Johnson contributed pieces, the paper had, indeed, been banned.
Friendship with Haile Selassie
Pankhurst did have political contact with
T. Ras Makonnen, the West Indian pan-Africanist (a Guyanese of Ethiopian descent),
[ Amon Saba Saakana, "Makonnen, Ras", in David Dabydeen, John Gilmore, Cecily Jones (eds), ''The Oxford Companion to Black British History'', Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 283.] but there is no indication that she was engaged with the new spiritual movement in Jamaica. Such, nonetheless, was her seeming
hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might ...
of
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie I ( gez, ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ, Qädamawi Häylä Səllasé, ; born Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (' ...
that she has since been proposed as the "first white Rastafarian".
Her biographer Patricia Romero suggests that Pankhurst was overwhelmed by Haile Selassie so that "her republicanism departed from Waterloo station in June 1936, when the emperor’s train rolled in" and she encountered him for the first time. Others explain the devotional relationship, at least in part, by reference to her strong anti-imperialist, anti-fascist and anti-racist sympathies: "Pankhurst loved to defend the underdog and she saw in Selassie much more a defeated victim of fascism than a reactionary monarch".
[Winslow, Barbara (2009). “The First White Rastafarian: Sylvia Pankhurst, Haile Selassie, and Ethiopia.” In ''At Home and Abroad in the Empire: British Women Write the 1930s'', edited by Robin Hackett, Freda Hauser and Gay Wachman, (171-186) p. 189. Newark (NJ): University of Delaware Press.] According to her son,
Richard
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stro ...
, her mother did not hestitate to tell Haile Selassie that, as a life-long republican, she supported him only because of the cause he represented, and that while she was cautious about involving herself in Ethiopia's domestic politics, she did voice support for trade unions and for universal suffrage.
In 1956, encouraged by Haile Selassie to aid with women’s development, Pankurst and her son Richard moved into an imperial guest house in the Ethiopian capital to
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...
(Corio had died in 1954).
She raised funds for
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
's first teaching hospital, and wrote extensively on
Ethiopian art and culture. She dedicated ''Ethiopia: A Cultural History'' (1955)
to Haile Selassie: "Guardian of Education, Pioneer of Progress, Leader and Defender of his People in Peace and War".
Death and commemoration
Pankhurst died in
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...
in 1960, aged 78, and received a full
state funeral
A state funeral is a public funeral ceremony, observing the strict rules of protocol, held to honour people of national significance. State funerals usually include much pomp and ceremony as well as religious overtones and distinctive elements of ...
at which Haile Selassie named her "an honorary Ethiopian". 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.
There is a two-dimensional silhouette constructed of
Corten steel
Weathering steel, often referred to by the genericised trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as corten steel, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rus ...
representing Pankhurst as a campaigning suffragette in
Mile End Park,
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is an area in the East End of London northeast of Charing Cross. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the Green, much of which survives today as Bethnal Green Gardens, beside Cambridge Heath Road. By ...
,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, England.
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, the
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 seek to tell her story to "younger and more diverse audiences".
Family
Pankhurst objected in principle to entering into a marriage contract and to taking a husband's name. Near the end of the First World War she began living with Italian anarchist
Silvio Corio and moved to
Woodford Green, where she lived for over 30 years — a
blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term ...
and Pankhurst Green opposite
Woodford tube station
Woodford is a London Underground station in the town of Woodford in the London Borough of Redbridge, East London. The station is on the Central line, between South Woodford and Buckhurst Hill stations and is in Travelcard Zone 4. The stat ...
commemorate her ties to the area. In 1927, at the age of 45, she gave birth to a son,
Richard
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stro ...
. As she refused to marry the child's father, her mother broke ties with her and did not speak to her again. Richard became a leading student of Ethiopian history and the first director of the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies
The Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) was officially established in 1963 to collect information on Ethiopian civilization, its history, cultures, and languages.Pankhurst, Richard. "Institute of Ethiopian Studies." In Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: He ...
at
Addis Ababa University
Addis Ababa University (AAU) ( am, አዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርሲቲ) is a national university located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is the oldest university in Ethiopia. AAU has thirteen campuses. Twelve of these are situated in Addis Ababa ...
.
[Pankhurst, Richard. "Institute of Ethiopian Studies." In Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: He-N: Vol. 3, edited by Siegbert Uhlig, 168-69. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007.] His son, Pankurst's grandson,
Alula Pankhurst is an Ethiopian scholar and social development consultant in Addis Ababa, and has been a contributor to the ''Ethiopia Observer'' which continues to publish''.''
Art
From an early age Pankhurst had an ambition to become a "painter and draughtsman in the service of the great movements for social betterment". She trained at Manchester School of Art (1900–02) and then the Royal College of Art in London (1904–06). As part of her work campaigning for the WSPU, for which she created designs for a range of banners, jewellery and graphic logos. Her motif of the 'angel of freedom', a trumpeting emblem had wider appeal across the campaign for women's suffrage, appearing on banners, political pamphlets, cups and saucers.
An exhibition of her artistic works took place at
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
in 2013–14. Information about the exhibition, together with photographs of the artwork itself, is part of the
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) is a public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The university is based on two sites; the City Campus is located in the city centre near Sheffield railway station, while the Collegiate ...
Research Archive.
Pankhurst found it difficult to reconcile her artistic vocation with her political activities, eventually deciding that they were incompatible. She said: "Mothers came to me with their wasted little ones. I saw starvation look at me from patient eyes. I knew that I should never return to my art". By 1912, she had all but abandoned her artistic career in order to concentrate on her political activism.
Writings (selection)
* 1911
''The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement'' London: Gay & Hancock
* 1913: "Forcibly Fed: The Story of My Four Weeks in Holloway Gaol", ''
McClure's Magazine'', August, pp. 87–92.
* 1918:
Education of the Masses'' London: Worker's Dreadnought Publications.
* 1920:
A constitution for British soviets. Points for a communist programme. ''Workers' Dreadnought'', 19 June.
* 1921
"Soviet Russia as I saw it" ''Workers' Dreadnought,'' 16 April.
* 1921: ''Soviet Russia as I Saw It.'' London: Worker's Dreadnought Publications.
* 1922: ''Writ on Cold Slate. Prison Poems by Sylvia Pankhurst.'' London: Worker's Dreadnought Publications. Reissued 2021 by Smokestack Books.
* 1921:
Free discussion" ''Workers' Dreadnought,'' 17 September.
* 1921-1923
''Workers' Dreadnought'' (serialisation)''.''
*1922:
Open Letter to Lenin. ''Workers Dreadnaught''. 4 November.
* 1926:
'' Bombay: Sunshine Publishing House.
* 1927
''Delphos or the Future of International Language'' London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co
* 1930: ''Save the Mothers: A plea for measures to prevent the annual loss of about 3000 child-bearing mothers and 20,000 infant lives in England and Wales.'' London: A.A. Knopf
* 1931'': The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals.'' Reissued 1984 by Chatto & Windus.
* 1932 ''The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England During the First World War.'' Reissued 1987 by The Cresset Library.
* 1935: ''The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst'', Boston: Houghton Miflin
* 1951:
Ex-Italian Somaliland.' Digitized 2006 by the Philosophical Library.
* 1953: with Richard Pankhust, ''Ethiopia and Eritrea. the last phase of the reunion struggle 1941-52''. Woodford Green: Lalibela House.
* 1955: ''Ethiopia: A Cultural History.'' Woodford Green: Lalibela House.
* 1987'': E. Sylvia Pankhurst - Portrait of a Radical'', London: Yale University Press.
* 1993'': A Sylvia Pankhurst Reader'', ed. by Kathryn Dodd, Manchester University Press.
* 2019: ''A Suffragette in America, Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change'', Ed. Katherine Connelly. London: Pluto Press.
Newspapers, Journals
* ''Womens' Dreadnought.'' 1914-1917.
* ''Workers' Dreadnought.'' 1917-1924.
* ''Germinal.'' 1923.
* ''The New Times and Ethiopia News'' 1935-1956.
* ''Ethiopia Observer.'' 1956 - present.
Secondary literature
* Richard Pankhurst, ''Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist and Crusader, An Intimate Portrait'' (Virago Ltd, 1979),
* Richard Pankhurst, ''Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia'' (Hollywood, CA: Tsehai, 2003) London: Global Publishing
* Ian Bullock and Richard Pankhurst (eds) '' Sylvia Pankhurst. From Artist to Anti-Fascist'' (Macmillan, 1992)
* Shirley Harrison, ''Sylvia Pankhurst, A Crusading Life 1882–1960'' (Aurum Press, 2003)
* Sylvia Pankhurst, ''The Rebellious Suffragette'' (Golden Guides Press Ltd, 2012)
* Shirley Harrison, ''Sylvia Pankhurst, Citizen of the World'' (Hornbeam Publishing Ltd, 2009),
*
Barbara Castle, ''Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst'' (Penguin Books, 1987),
*
Martin Pugh, ''The Pankhursts: The History of One Radical Family'' (Penguin Books, 2002)
* Patricia W. Romero, ''E. Sylvia Pankhurst. Portrait of a Radical'' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987)
* Barbara Winslow, ''Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism'' (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996);
* Katherine Connolly, ''Sylvia Pankhurst. Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire'' (Pluto Press, 2013);
* Katy Norris, ''Sylvia Pankhurst'' (Eiderdown Books, 2019);
* Rachel Holmes, ''Sylvia Pankhurst. Natural Born Rebel'' (Francis Boutle Publishers, 2020);
See also
*
Anti-Air War Memorial
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes Surface-to-air m ...
*
History of feminism
*
List of suffragists and suffragettes
*
Pankhurst Centre
The Pankhurst Centre, 60–62 Nelson Street, Manchester, is a pair of Victorian villas, of which No. 62 was the home of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Sylvia, Christabel and AdelaHartwell 2001, p 320 and the birthplace of the suf ...
in Manchester
*
''Sylvia Pankhurst'' (artwork)
*
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
*
Patricia Lynch
Patricia Lynch (4 June 1894– 1 September 1972) was an Irish children's writer and a journalist. She was the author of some 48 novels and 200 short stories. She is best known for blending Irish rural life and fantasy fiction as in ''The Turf-Cu ...
References
External links
Sylviapankhurst.com a comprehensive information resource about Sylvia Pankhurst from Hornbeam Publishing Limited, sponsored by the UK Heritage Lottery Fund
spartacus-educational.com; accessed 4 April 2014
Sylvia Pankhurst Archive libcom.org; accessed 4 April 2014
*
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst papersarchived at the
International Institute of Social History
The International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) is one of the largest archives of labor and social history in the world. Located in Amsterdam, its one million volumes and 2,300 archival collections include the papers of major figu ...
in Amsterdam
Application for naturalisation of Mrs Margarethe Morgenstern and her husband Erwin, including written plea from Pankhurst* , two articles by Pankhurst and Anton Pannekoek, first published in the ''Workers Dreadnought'' in 1922; first published as a pamphlet in 1974 by Workers Voice, a Liverpudlian Communist group.
"Anti-Parliamentarism and Communism in Britain, 1917–1921" by R.F. Jones, ''Anti-Parliamentary Communism: The Movement for Workers Councils in Britain, Class War on the Home Front''
Sylvia Pankhurst: Everything is Possible– A documentary that chronicles the life and political campaigns of Sylvia Pankhurst and includes an exclusive interview with her son Richard Pankhurst and his wife Rita. The accompanying website includes images of a large number of security files held on Pankhurst, from the collection at the National Archives.
Profile nrs.harvard.edu; accessed 4 April 2014
Profile radcliffe.harvard.edu (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University)
"I Was Forcibly Fed"by Sylvia Pankhurst, ''McClure's'' (August 1913)
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pankhurst, Sylvia
1882 births
1960 deaths
People from Old Trafford
Anti-Stalinist left
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Ethiopia–United Kingdom relations
Feminism and history
Left communists
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Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University
Women of the Victorian era
People educated at Manchester High School for Girls
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