Falling out with her mother and sister on the issue of working class women (whom Emily argued were of no true worth to the Suffrage and therefore a distraction from her ultimate goals), Sylvia devoted her life to the relief of oppressed people: no matter their class or nationality.
She supported the Russian Revolution in 1917 (meeting and arguing with Lenin on the issue of censorship),
Urbis Garden in Manchester
likewise the republicans in Spain, ending her life having rallied against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia as a trusted advisor and confidant of Emperor Haile Selassie. She was truly her father’s daughter, and had he lived, Richard would surely have negated Emily’s obvious preference for Christabel with additional support for Sylvia. And yet perhaps it was his very absence that spurred her to achieve so much.
At Sale Brooklands Cemetery in Manchester the tombstone of Richard Pankhurst still stands. It is inscribed at Emily Pankhurst’s request with a line from the poet Walt Whitman:
‘Faithful and true and my ever loving comrade’.
Rebel, father, idealist and stalwart. Richard Pankhurst; the flame that lit the fire.
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