Sylvia Pankhurst

Sylvia without the politics

Sylvia at the Old Vic has some good qualities. As a musical it is well written and well performed. The songs are catchy, even if sometimes, at such a tempo, the audience will struggle to catch all the words. And despite the odd fluff or somewhat overbearing sound, the cast do very well to keep up with it. Hip-hop, soul and funk-inspired songs and a largely black cast will evoke inevitable comparisons to Hamilton . And some of the casting choices did leave me confused. Almost the entire cast is not made to look like the figures they are playing, different hair etc. The period clothing is...

Ambedkar, Pankhurst and political awakening

Playwright Sonali Bhattacharyya may be known to some readers as a member of Momentum’s national coordinating group (elected as part of the Forward Momentum grouping ). Judging by her Two Billion Beats , which has just finished a second run at the Orange Tree Theatre in SW London, her generally wider fame as a writer is well-deserved. (Last year Bhattacharyya's Chasing Hares , about factory workers’ lives and organising in West Bengal, was on while I was involved in discussions about setting up the India Labour Solidarity campaign . Somehow I didn't go in the end, and hope it will return soon.)...

Sylvia Pankhurst and "the first of its kind"

A new pamphlet from Workers’ Liberty, Sylvia, can be bought online here (£3 single copies, five copies for £11). It tells the story of the political journey of Sylvia Pankhurst, the member of the suffragette Pankhurst family who moved to working-class organising and revolutionary socialism while her sister Christabel and mother Emmeline moved to support for World War One and for Toryism. Sylvia’s Workers’ Suffrage Federation were the sharpest and boldest supporters in the British left of the workers’ revolution in Russia in October 1917. Their paper Workers’ Dreadnought of 17 November 1917...

Sylvia: a pamphlet telling the story of Sylvia Pankhurst

Of the famous suffragette family Pankhurst — Emmeline, Christabel, Adela — Sylvia became the pioneer communist who organised the East End of London, where many working-class men also lacked the vote. The pamphlet tells the story of the contrasting evolutions of the "votes for ladies" Christabel and Emmeline, and of Sylvia's working-class organising. Click here to buy: £3 plus postage More: • Video presentation by Jill Mountford: "Red Suffragette and Scourge of the Empire" • "An anti-Jewish pogrom in East London" , from Sylvia Pankhurst's paper Woman's Dreadnought , 26 May 1917 • The story of...

An anti-Jewish pogrom by the British police: London, May 1917

This article is taken from Woman’s Dreadnought , paper of the Workers’ Suffrage Federation, 26 May 1917, where it was an editorial under the headline “A pogrom in London”. It describes London’s East End of that era, which also produced the Poplar council revolt four years later (described in Solidarity 601 ); and the big wave of anti-migrant agitation which had already produced the Aliens Act of 1905. Woman’s Dreadnought changed its name to Workers’ Dreadnought in July 1917; the group soon after changed its name to Workers’ Socialist Federation, and in 1921 merged into the then-revolutionary...

Minnie Lansbury — a different sort of Labour councillor

A meeting organised by Lewisham Workers’ Liberty Wednesday 28 March, 7.30 Amersham Arms, New Cross. Minnie Lansbury was only 32 when she died in 1922, but she had a full and inspiring life. She was one of the Poplar Labour councillors who carried out extensive reforms in the interests of the borough’s working class and, when the council began to struggle financially, led a mass campaign for poor boroughs to receive more funding. Defying the Tory-Liberal coalition government, she went to prison as a result along with 29 other councillors (including four other women). They won! Before that she...

The Pankhursts: bravery, autocracy, folly

Part two of Jill Mountford’s series on the history of the struggle for women’s suffrage. Part one of this series was published in Solidarity 462. Part three of this article will look at the work of socialist feminists and working class women in the fight for Votes for Women. Women’s suffrage history is dominated by the militant campaign of the WSPU, led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, set up in 1903. It is, in part, an inspiring story of wild bravery and passion, but it is also, a very incomplete story of the battle for votes for women. The story of the WSPU itself is often told in a one...

The story of Votes for Women

The first leaflet in Britain to “insist” on woman’s suffrage was written in 1847 by a prominent woman Chartist, Anne Knight. Seventy years later women over 30, with certain property qualifications, were granted the right to vote as part of the Representation of the Peoples Act in February 1918. The fight for women’s suffrage is best known for the militant campaign waged by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and conducted for almost a decade from 1905 to 1914. However, the history of the fight for women’s suffrage goes way beyond those militant nine years and the activities of the...

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