Sylvia Pankhurst remembers her mother Emmeline (1953)

Available for over a year

In this account of her mother's life, broadcast on the BBC Home Service, Sylvia Pankhurst remembers both Emmeline Pankhurst's strength of conviction and her great personal charm. Interspersed with recollections of her mother founding and leading the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the great suffering she endured to achieve the goal of votes for women, are more personal memories that reveal Emmeline's huge energy and love of fashion. Sylvia Pankhurst herself was a lifelong political activist and campaigner. During the struggle for female suffrage she was arrested and imprisoned on numerous occasions and frequently subjected to force feeding. Unlike her mother and older sister Christabel, Sylvia was a committed socialist and saw the struggle for women's rights as part of a broader campaign for a socialist society. Her pacifism and opposition to World War I deepened the split with her mother and sister, who both threw themselves into the war effort.