Part two of Jill Mountford’s series on the history of the struggle for women’s suffrage. Part one of this series was published in Solidarity 462. Part three of this article will look at the work of socialist feminists and working class women in the fight for Votes for Women.
CHRISTOPHER HART: Theatres across London are in desperate straits. Many are half-empty night after night, and some aren t even bothering to open the upper circles as so few tickets are selling.
A new pamphlet from Workers’ Liberty, Sylvia, can be bought online here (£3 single copies, five copies for £11). It tells the story of the political journey of Sylvia Pankhurst, the member of the suffragette Pankhurst family who moved to working-class organising and revolutionary socialism while her sister Christabel and mother Emmeline moved to support for World War One and for Toryism. Sylvia’s Workers’ Suffrage Federation were the sharpest and boldest supporters in the British left of the workers’ revolution in Russia in October 1917.