Suffrage history has focused on the WSPU and to this extent Sylvia has been eclipsed by her mother and sister. Whereas Sylvia sought to build a mass movement among working class women, the WSPU after 1907 sought the support of wealthy, articulate or influential women in which the deeds of individuals were highly prized and received much attention at the time and by suffrage historians. This helps to explain why the British state has chosen to honour Emmeline and Christabel for their contribution to women's enfranchisement (with a statue to the former and a plaque to the latter outside Parliament) while completely ignoring Sylvia's role. The Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee was formed in 1999 in an attempt to redress this historical injustice. The committee (the patron of which is Sylvia’s son, Richard Pankhurst) has launched a campaign in the labour movement to raise funds for a life-size statue of Sylvia as an emblematic symbol of the unsung heroism of thousands of working-class women who fought for the franchise and for socialism.

It is perhaps less surprising that Sylvia Pankhurst’s role in the labour movement has not been fully recognised. Women have traditionally been marginalised in the socialist movement and by labour historians. Sylvia shared platforms with James Connolly and Jim Larkin, was active in publicising the growth of the shop stewards’ movement, was the first British socialist to welcome and publicise the Russian Revolution and among the first to draw attention to the dangers of Mussolini’s fascism. She certainly merits a place in the canons of the British socialism and ranks alongside such contemporaries as George Lansbury and Keir Hardie. What emerges clearly is that Pankhurst was not a "bit player" - she was an initiator and a leader in her own right and made a substantial contribution as one of the first propagandists for Bolshevism in Britain. Her group, the Workers' Socialist Federation, (WSF) was the first in Britain to affiliate to the Third International (Comintern). Indeed in his writings on Britain, Lenin makes no less than 10 major references to Sylvia Pankhurst – more than any other British revolutionary socialist.

Although her work on Ethiopia, informed as it was by anti-racism and anti-imperialism, passed largely unnoticed in Britain, it was widely appreciated by black people in Africa and in the black diaspora. W. E. B. Dubois, arguably one of the most important black leaders of his day, expressed the view of black radicals in the following tribute he paid to Sylvia. “I realised... that the great work of Sylvia Pankhurst was to introduce black Ethiopia to white England, ...and to make the British people realise that black folks had more and more to be recognised as human beings with the rights of women and men.”

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Content last updated: 07/10/2004

About our expert

Mary Davis is Professor of Labour History at London Metropolitan University where she heads the Centre for Trade Union Studies and is the Deputy Director of the Working Lives Research Institute. She has written, broadcast and lectured widely on women’s history, labour history, imperialism and racism. Her published books include Comrade or Brother? A history of the British Labour Movement 1789-1951; Marxism & Struggle; Fashioning a New World: a history of the Woodcraft Folk and Sylvia Pankhurst: a life in Radical Politics. She is an elected member ofthe TUC women's committee. She serves on the national executive of NATFHE (the University & College Lecturers' Union) and chairs its Women’s Committee. She is one of the founder members of the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee.

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