Sylvia Pankhurst

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Lore & Background

Sylvia Pankhurst was born on 5 May 1882 at Drayton Terrace, Old Trafford, Manchester, to Emmeline Pankhurst and Dr. Richard Pankhurst. Her father had been a founding member in 1872 of the National Society for Women's Suffrage 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. According to his daughter, he was also distinguished by his support for Irish Home Rule, being 'the first English Parliamentary candidate to pledge himself to Irish self-government when he stood at a by-election in Manchester in 1883'. The family home hosted radical intelligentsia including the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, the Communard Louise Michel, and the Fabian Annie Besant. In 1893, her parents joined Keir Hardie as founding members of the Independent Labour Party. Pankhurst trained as an artist at the Manchester School of Art in 1903. While completing an ILP commission to paint murals in a social hall in Salford, she discovered the hall, named after her father, would not admit women—an episode that helped convince her sister Christabel of the need for women to organise independently. In 1904, Pankhurst won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, but was incensed to learn that of 16 scholarships awarded each year, 13 were reserved for men, and that Keir Hardie was told the authorities 'did not contemplate any change'. Pankhurst started working full-time for the Women's Social and Political Union in 1906, devising its logo, leaflets, banners, posters, and meeting hall decorations. In 1907 she toured industrial towns in England and Scotland, painting portraits of working-class women in their working environments, later writing she witnessed 'so much distress' she felt unable to return to her 'beloved profession'. With Alice Hawkins and Mary Gawthorpe she became a full-time organiser and helped establish the WSPU in Leicester. She contributed articles to Votes for Women and in 1911 published The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, including her witness account of Black Friday 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to Parliament and were met with violence, some of it sexual, from the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders. In 1912, she led a march on Mountjoy Prison in Dublin in solidarity with two English WSPU militants who had thrown a hatchet with a suffrage message into Prime Minister Asquith's carriage and attempted to set fire to a theatre. Between February 1913 and August 1914, Sylvia was arrested eight times for protest actions in London, released under the Cat and Mouse Act to recuperate from hunger strikes, with supporters carrying her back to her home in Old Ford Street, Bow, where street battles ensued when police came to re-arrest her. In June 1914, supporters carried her to the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons where she announced she would continue her hunger strike until Asquith agreed to receive a deputation of East London women. Asquith met six working mothers but reiterated that votes for women would have to await a general democratic reform of the franchise, which did not occur until 1918. Pankhurst undertook two speaking tours in the United States, in 1911 and 1912. In January 1911 in Chicago, a strike wave from the 1909 'uprising of the 20,000' immigrant Jewish women workers in New York had spread to clothing workers; union pickets had been beaten and arrested, two shot dead. Pankhurst visited strikers in police cells. In New York City she met Margaret Sanger and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. A year later, Flynn was the 'Bread and Roses' strategist for the IWW in the Lawrence textile strike. Back in New York City in early 1912, Pankhurst observed laundry workers overcoming racial, ethnic and sexual divisions through collective action. In Chicago, she was with Zelie Passavant Emerson from the Women's Trade Union League and settlement house movement. Seeing settlement house outreach to women as both domestic and wage workers, Pankhurst saw a potent form of women-led activism and sought to replicate it in London's East End. In April 1912, she joined the funeral procession in New York City for the 146 garment workers killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, speaking beside Rose Schneiderman, saying their deaths resulted from working-class people being denied the right to represent themselves. With support from Keir Hardie, Julia Scurr, Eveline Haverfield, Nellie Cressall, and George Lansbury, Pankhurst renamed the East London Federation of the WSPU the East London Federation of Suffragettes, opening it to trade unionists and men. She noted '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 November 1913, she spoke at the Albert Hall alongside James Connolly in support of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union locked out by Dublin employers. In January 1914, accompanied by Nora Smyth, she visited her sister Christabel in Paris to discuss the ELFS's future; Christabel was insistent upon an independent, women-only WSPU and was incredulous at her sister's unwillingness to comply. This, together with Pankhurst's refusal in 1914 to enter a wartime political truce, caused her break with her mother and sister. Pankhurst welcomed the Russian Revolution and conferred in Moscow with Lenin, but as an advocate of workers' control, she rejected the Leninist party line and criticised the Bolshevik regime. She was vocal in support for Irish independence, anti-colonial struggle throughout the British Empire, and anti-fascist solidarity in Europe. Following Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, she devoted herself to the cause of Ethiopia, and after the Second World War spent her remaining years there as a guest of the restored emperor Haile Selassie. Her pan-Africanist weekly The New Times and Ethiopia News was regarded by British colonial authorities as a factor in the development of African nationalism and of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica.

Reader's Guide

Sylvia Pankhurst's significance lies in her radical departure from mainstream suffragette leadership to focus on working-class women and anti-colonial solidarity. Her break with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst over the 1914 wartime political truce highlighted her commitment to socialist internationalism. Her pan-Africanist weekly The New Times and Ethiopia News was regarded by British colonial authorities as a factor in the development of African nationalism and the Rastafari movement in Jamaica. Her advocacy for workers' control and criticism of the Bolshevik regime from a left-wing perspective placed her in a distinct political position. Her legacy includes her role in organising East London women, her documentation of police violence on Black Friday 18 November 1910, her support for the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union alongside James Connolly, and her lifelong dedication to Ethiopian independence after Italy's 1935 invasion.

Did You Know?

• Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested eight times between February 1913 and August 1914 for protest actions in London, and was released under the Cat and Mouse Act to recuperate from hunger strikes.
• On Black Friday, 18 November 1910, she witnessed 300 women marching to Parliament being met with violence, some of it sexual, from the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders.
• In April 1912, she joined the funeral procession in New York City for the 146 garment workers killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, speaking beside labour organiser Rose Schneiderman.
• Her pan-Africanist weekly The New Times and Ethiopia News was regarded by British colonial authorities as a factor in the development of African nationalism and the Rastafari movement in Jamaica.
• She conferred in Moscow with Lenin but rejected the Leninist party line as an advocate of workers' control.