Who Was Sylvia Pankhurst?

Sylvia Pankhurst dedicated her life to campaigning for worldwide human rights. In the early 1900s, she worked tirelessly alongside other suffragettes to fight for women’s right to vote, and she was imprisoned many times. In 1913, she founded the East London Federation of Suffragettes. Her activism was empathetic and inclusive. For the rest of her life Sylvia remained a campaigner – particularly passionate about her advocacy for human rights in Ethiopia after it was invaded by Mussolini’s fascist Italy in 1935. Before she died in 1960, she moved to Ethiopia in 1956 where she worked to improve conditions for women’s healthcare.

When Emmeline (Sylvia’s mother) and Christabel (her sister) Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903, they were fighting for voting rights for women who owned property. Sylvia on the other hand was fighting for equality for all (at that time, working class men also didn’t have the vote) – regardless of wealth, gender, social status or ethnicity. During the First World War, the East London Federation of Suffragettes helped working class mothers to get employment and feed their families. Appalled by inequality, Sylvia became a supporter of communism and was again imprisoned in 1920 for the articles she wrote in the group’s magazine, Worker’s Dreadnought.

Sylvia refused to support the war effort during the First World War, unlike Emmeline and Christabel and this, along with several other differences in approach to their campaign, caused a split between them. Sylvia’s group, the East London Federation of Suffragettes, opposed the war unlike the vast majority of suffragettes who supported it.

Sylvia studied at the Royal College of Art between 1904–1906 and was an extremely talented painter and graphic designer. She created designs for the suffragettes but ultimately her activism dominated her life, overshadowing her artistic career.

Sylvia was born to two social reformers – her mother Emmeline Pankhurst and her father, barrister and legal reformer Dr Richard Pankhurst. Working with her mother in the suffrage movement, she took on her father’s ethical socialism – ultimately dividing her from her mother in their cause. She later fell in love with Silvio Corio, an Italian revolutionary with whom she had a son, Richard, in 1927. She gave Richard her own surname and caused scandal by having a child out of wedlock – further dividing her from her mother and sister.