Left communist who broke from her mother's WSPU to stand with East End working women, buried among Ethiopian patriots
"The Bolsheviks have begun to desert communism." In her 1922 Open Letter to Lenin, Pankhurst broke with Moscow. Expelled from the CPGB for refusing to surrender the Workers' Dreadnought, she chose free debate over party discipline.
British suffragette, left communist and anti-colonial activist. Breaking from her mother Emmeline's WSPU to organise working-class women in the East End, she debated Lenin and turned council communist before devoting her final decades to Ethiopia's anti-fascist struggle.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1882Born in Manchester to Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst
- 1903–1914Full-time WSPU organiser — designed logo and banners, witnessed Black Friday 1910, organised nationwide suffrage campaign
- 1914–1918Founded ELFS, launched Woman's Dreadnought — anti-war and anti-conscription agitation, rent strikes and cost-price canteens
- 1918–1920Founded WSF, published Workers' Dreadnought — attended 2nd Comintern Congress, debated Lenin directly
- 1921–1924Expelled from CPGB; published Open Letter to Lenin — turned council communist, formed Communist Workers' Party
- 1935–1956Founded and edited New Times and Ethiopia News — opposed fascist invasion, shaped pan-African and anti-colonial opinion
- 1956–1960Moved to Ethiopia — adviser to Haile Selassie, fundraised for first teaching hospital, wrote Ethiopia: A Cultural History
- 1960Died aged 78 in Addis Ababa — Ethiopian state funeral, buried among patriots at Holy Trinity Cathedral
Related historical events
East London organising and support for women workers during the war
In January 1914, after the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) leadership rejected Sylvia Pankhurst’s independent socialist approach, its East London branch separated as the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS). Pankhurst and her associates linked the suffrage campaign to working-class women’s organisation and the labour movement, and advocated adult suffrage. During the First World War, the ELFS opposed the war while also addressing East Londoners’ subsistence and working conditions. Within two weeks of the declaration of war, Pankhurst opened a cut-price restaurant serving 400 meals a day at one penny each, and a baby clinic offering medical care and distributing milk, eggs and clothes. She also converted a disused pub into a Montessori-style nursery called the Mother’s Arms. A toy factory she established in Bow in 1914 employed 59 women at £1 a week. The women could devise toys themselves; the factory bought saleable designs and paid royalties on sales. There is little evidence that Pankhurst intended the factory as an alternative to munitions work, but she also campaigned to improve conditions in the low-paid, dangerous munitions industry. Her newspaper exposed long hours and low pay in munitions factories; when a factory solicitor threatened a libel action, she appealed for a fund to fight the case. In 1917 the organisation changed its name to the Workers’ Suffrage Federation and then the Workers’ Socialist Federation; its newspaper continued as the Workers’ Dreadnought.