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| Model of the proposed statue of Sylvia Pankhurst |
Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the suffragette movement,
and her eldest daughter Christabel are commemorated by a statue and plaque at
the entrance to Victoria Tower Gardens on the south-west corner of the houses
of parliament, no such honour has been bestowed on Sylvia, who broke with her
family over her opposition to the first world war and pursuit of socialist
ideals. The House of Lords – an institution Pankhurst vowed to tear down in a
coming revolution – has over the years repeatedly blocked proposals for a
memorial near parliament, despite the granting of planning permission by Westminster
council.
The TUC and City of London Corporation are to launch a joint
campaign to erect a statue on Clerkenwell Green in Islington in time for the
centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which first gave the
vote to some women. The City of London Corporation is providing a grant of
£10,000 and has set the TUC the challenge of finding £70,000 to get the project
off the ground. The Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee will be announcing two
new patrons – the actress Maxine Peake and the former union general secretary
Rodney Bickerstaffe – to help drum up support for the cause. Megan Dobney, a
founder member of the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee and a TUC official,
said the Clerkenwell statue would constitute welcome recognition. “They have had
this for many years but the proposed statue of Sylvia has always been rejected.
The reason was that she did not fit in with the establishment of the time by
opposing the war. And she was a socialist and an anti-racist campaigner. This
statue will correct the historical record.” She also said, “Sylvia would not
have liked a memorial, but as a symbol of the unsung heroism of thousands of
working-class women who fought for the franchise some kind of recognition is
long overdue.”
What the Socialist Party says is long overdue is the
socialist society that Sylvia Pankhurst tried to achieve.
As Sylvia explained in one article:
“Socialism means plenty for all. We do not
preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance.Our desire is not to
make poor those who to-day are rich, in order to put the poor in the place
where the rich now are. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to
put other rulers in their places.
We wish to abolish poverty and to provide abundance for all.
We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious
thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all,
and more than all the people can consume.
Such a great production is already possible, with the
knowledge already possessed by mankind…
… Under Socialism the land, the means of production and
transport are no longer privately owned: they belong to all the people. The
title to be one of the joint owners of the earth and its products and the
inheritance of collective human labour does not rest on any question of
inheritance or purchase; the only title required is that one is alive on this
planet. Under Socialism no one can be disinherited; no one can lose the right
to a share or the common possession.
The share is not so many feet of land, so much food, so many
manufactured goods, so much money with which to buy, sell, and carry on trade.
The share of a member of the Socialist Commonwealth is the right and the
possibility of the abundant satisfaction of the needs from the common
store-house, the right to be served by the common service, the right to assist
as an equal in the common production…
She also wrote in another article:
Since we are living under Capitalism it is natural that many
people’s ideas of Socialism should be coloured by their experiences of life
under the present system. We must not be surprised that some who recognise the
present system is bad should yet lack the imagination to realise the
possibility of abolishing all the institutions of Capitalist society.
Nevertheless there can be no real advantage in setting up a half-way-house to
socialism. A combination of Socialism and Capitalism would produce all sorts of
injustice, difficulty and waste. Those who happen to suffer under the anomalies
would continually struggle for a return to the old system.
And in the year of the 100th anniversary of the
abortive Dublin Easter Uprising we should remind ourselves of Sylvia’s comments in 1922:
“The Communist Party of Ireland, Third International,
through its organ, The Workers’ Republic, puts forward a programme for an Irish
Republic This programme is not a Communist one: we urge the Irish Communists to
withdraw it and put forward a genuine Communist programme in its place.”
And the programme Sylvia Pankhurst suggested included:
The abolition of Dail Eireann; the creation of workers councils; abolishing all private
property in land, and in the means of production, distribution, transport, and
communication; the abolition of money and the free use by all of the common
products and possessions according to need and desire; as well as the abolition
of all forms of buying, selling, and barter of goods and services.
Creating such a society should be our homage to Sylvia
Pankhurst and many other socialist activists who will not be honoured by any statue.
2 comments:
Great article, I knew about her as a suffragette but I didn't realise she held such revolutionary ideas. Thanks
Perhaps it is better to think of women *suffragettes* as those who wanted votes for women on the same terms as then for men, i.e. who wanted votes for rich women only and of *suffragists* such as Sylvia who wanted universal suffrage for all men and women.
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