Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was an English feminist and socialist activist and writer. Following encounters with women-led labour activism in the United States, she worked to organise working-class women in London's East End. This, together with her refusal in 1914 to enter into a wartime political truce with the government, caused her to break with the suffragette leadership of her mother and sister, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. Pankhurst welcomed the Russian Revolution and consulted in Moscow with Lenin. But as advocate of workers' control, she rejected the Leninist party line and criticised the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Sylvia Pankhurst carried by supporters, London, June 1914
WSF toy factory, London East End, 1915
Pankhurst protesting in Trafalgar Square against British policies in India, 1932
Pankhurst's grave
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragistα, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.
Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst of the WSPU, c. 1908
Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU in 1903 and became the most prominent of Britain's suffragettes.
Mannequin of Lilian Metge
Emily Davison became known in the WSPU for her daring militant action.