Skip to main content
Sylvia Pankhurst’s revolutionary life
PAULINE BRYAN commends a new biography of the legendary women’s leader whose life included achieving suffrage, butting heads with Lenin as a Communist International delegate in Moscow and becoming a hero in Ethiopia's national struggle
Suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst leads the marchers outside the House of Commons in 1948 during protests against any proposal to return Eritrea and Somaliland to the Italians. They carried banners showing photographs of Italian soldiers performing atrocities

RACHEL HOLMES has already written about some remarkable women including Eleanor Marx. This biography of Sylvia Pankhurst has the detail that will satisfy both the serious student and those just wanting an enjoyable read.

It is long, with over 900 pages. But such a big life deserves a big book, especially when it is written with political understanding and tremendous sympathy for women in politics.

Central to Pankhurst’s politics was a commitment to working-class struggle.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
BROAD PLURALIST APPROACH: Adopted by nearly all the left parties in Europe including France Insoumise / Pic: France Insoumise/flickr/CC
Features / 25 April 2026
25 April 2026

JOHN REES replies to Claudia Webbe

Tom Mooney Company from the Lincoln Battalion, during the Spanish Civil War, Jarama, Spain, 1937
History / 24 February 2026
24 February 2026

CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history

(L to R) Claudia Jones on the cover of the Young Communist Weekly Review (US), October 1938, Claudia Jones and Betty Gannett (CPSU theoretician) arrested after their bail was revoked July 17, 1951 / Pics (L to R) YCL/CC, Public domain
Features / 21 February 2026
21 February 2026

On the 121st anniversary of communist Claudia Jones’s birth ROGER McKENZIE looks at political events that shaped her, and those she helped shape

Feminist books
Features / 16 December 2025
16 December 2025

Held at a last-minute undisclosed venue amid fear of disruption, a Women’s Rights Network event brought together authors and activists, offering a day of debate on feminism’s past, present and future. JADE MIDDLETON reports