Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (
May 5,
1882 -
September 27,
1960) was a campaigner in the
suffragette movement in the United Kingdom, and a prominent
left communist.
She was born in
Manchester, England, a daughter of
Dr. Richard Pankhurst and
Emmeline Pankhurst, members of the
Independent Labour Party and much-concerned with
women's rights. Her sister,
Christabel, would also become an activist.
In
1906 she started to work full-time with the
Women's Social and Political Union with her sister
Christabel and her mother Emmeline. But in contrast to them she retained her interest in the labour movement.
In
1914 she broke with the WSPU over the group's promotion of
arson attacks. Sylvia set up the
East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), which over the years evolved politically and changed its name accordingly, first to
Women's Suffrage Federation and then to the
Workers' Socialist Federation. She founded the newspaper of the WSF,
Women's Dreadnought, which subsequently became the
Workers Dreadnought.
The group continued to move leftwards and briefly adopted the name
Communist Party, British Section of the Third International although in fact it was nothing of the sort. The CP(BSTI) was opposed to parliamentarism in contrast to the views of the newly founded
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). However, such was the importance attached to being within the same movement as the Bolsheviks, the CP(BSTI) dissolved itself into the larger, official Communist Party.
This unity was to be short-lived and when the leadership of the CPGB proposed that Sylvia hand over the Workers Dreadnought to the party rather than retain it as a personal organ she revolted. As a result she was expelled from the CPGB and moved to found the short-lived Communist Workers Party.
Sylvia by this time adhered to
left or
council communism and was eventually expelled from the organisation. Sylvia was an important figure in the communist movement at the time and attended meetings of the International in
Russia and
Amsterdam and also meetings of the Italian Socialist Party. She argued with
Lenin and was supportive of left communists such as
Amadeo Bordiga and
Anton Pannekoek.
In the mid-twenties Pankhurst drifted away from communist politics into anti-fascism and anti-colonialism. She responded to the Italian invasion of
Ethiopia by renaming the
Workers Dreadnought as
The New Times and Ethiopia News in
1936, and became a supporter of
Haile Selassie. She raised funds for Ethiopia's first teaching hospital, and wrote extensively on Ethiopian art and culture; her research was eventually published as
Ethiopia, a Cultural History (London: Lalibela House, 1955). Having moved to Addis Ababa in
1956, with her son,
Richard Pankhurst, she founded a monthly journal,
Ethiopia Observer, which reported on many aspects of Ethiopian life and development.
She died in 1960, and was buried in front of Trinity Cathedral in
Addis Ababa.
*
The Home Front (First published 1932 - reissued 1987 by The Cresset Library) ISBN 0-09-172911-4
* Soviet Russia as I saw it, London 1921
* The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals, Reissued 1984 by Chatto & Windus
* A Sylvia Pankhurst Reader, ed. by Kathryn Dodd, Manchester University Press 1993
* Barbara Castle,
Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst (Penguin Books, 1987) ISBN 0-14-008762-3
* Mary Davis,
Sylvia Pankhurst (Pluto Press, 1999) ISBN 0-74-531518-6
* Richard Pankhurst,
Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist and Crusader, An Intimate Portrait (Virago Ltd, 1979) ISBN 0-448-22840-8
* Richard Pankhurst,
Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia, Hollywood, Calif. : (Tsehai, 2003). London : Global
* Martin Pugh,
The Pankhursts (Penguin Books 2002)
* Patricia W. Romero,
E. Sylvia Pankhurst. Portrait of a Radical (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1987)
*
Pankhurst Centre in Manchester
*
Sylvia Pankhurst - a biography page from Spartacus Educational
*
Sylvia Pankhurst Archive - in the libcom.org library
*
Communism or Reforms two articles by Sylvia Pankhurst and Anton Pannekoek, first published in the Workers Dreadnought in 1922. First published as a pamphlet in 1974 by Workers Voice, a Communist group based in Liverpool.
*
Three pamphlets detailing the work of Sylvia Pankhurst as an anti-Bolshevik Communist 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
