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Suffrage and the Pankhursts – Part 2

© Katie Anne Gustafsson

Although the Pankhursts were all devoted to the cause of women's rights, their perspective on the issue eventually split the family into two fractions, with Sylvia being on the outside.

Sylvia became the more socially conscious of the three, following on from the time she spent with her father as a child. As time progressed, she found that she couldn't support the policies of her mother and sister who were moving towards a vote that would only allow some women a voice, rather than all women. It wasn't until 1912 that she finally broke from the WSPU because of it's adoption of more violent related action. From then on, Sylvia became more active promoting the Labour Party and producing a weekly paper called "the Women's Dreadnaught" which was aimed at working class women. Despite her background, she was very much in tune with working/lower class women, and was responsible for opening mother-and-baby clinics in London during the war.

The outbreak of World War I caused a greater split in the family. Emmeline and Christabel took their suffrage movement into a "truce" situation, determined to work for the greater good - that of saving the nation. They placed their enthusiasm behind motivating the public into war work. They used their media connections to bring to the public the actions of officials they considered to be anti-patriotic. They urged for male conscription, and for the trade unions to allow women to take up the positions vacated by the men going off to war. As the programme for their Women's Party" formed in 1918 demonstrated they favoured a "fight to the finish with Germany". The WSPU's newspaper was changed from "The Suffragette" to "Britannia" to show the patriotism of its members.

Sylvia on the other hand took a pacifist stance and urged for a quick end to the conflict. She continued her suffrage work and campaigned for a fair wage for those women taking up employment in jobs vacated by men going off to war. In direct opposition to her mother and sister, she co-founded the Women's Peace Army which demanded a negotiated peace. Sylvia was also getting involved with Russian Revolution and visited Lenin in Russia 1917, an activity not welcomed by the British Government.

In the years following the war, Christabel moved to America where she became involved with the Second Adventist movement writing books and giving lectures on the subject. Emily also spent a great deal of time in North America where she lectured on combating venereal disease. After first helping to found the Communist party in Britain, Sylvia's life took off in the opposite geographic direction to her mother and sister and she devoted her life to fighting Fascism in both Ethiopia and Spain.

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