HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH: 1921 - Pankhurst freedom celebrated with tea (A Century in Photographs;Times Books 1999)

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Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and her supporters enjoy a celebratory cup of tea following her release after six months in prison. She was a radical figure in the movement to gain votes for women and was sent to prison a total of 15 times. In 1920 she visited Russia, where she met Lenin, and on her return was associated with Britain´s most prominent Communists. The sentence was for the publication of subversive matter in The Women´s Dreadnought, a weekly paper she produced for working-class women.

Sylvia´s political career centred around the suffragette movement. Her mother. Emmeline Pankhurst, and her sister, Christabel, were founding members of the Women´s Social and Political union, established in 1903. Sylvia became honorary secretary. Using the slogan "Votes for Women and Chastity for Men", the suffragettes set fire to churches, blew up stations, threw bricks through windows, cut telegraph wires and tied themselves to railings. As the radical branch of feminism, the Pankhursts and their supporters were frequently the butt of music hall jokes and were sometimes physically attacked. While in prison many went on hunger strike and were subjected to force-feeding, a practice previously restricted to lunatic asylums.

Sylvia parted company from her mother and sister when war broke out in 1914. Her relatives believed their demonstrations should stop in the interests of the war effort but Sylvia promoted pacifist and socialist ideas, forming a breakaway group, the Women´s Peace Army, which demanded a negotiated peace. By the time Sylvia emerged from yet another stretch in prison in 1921, the women´s movement had made some progress: women over 30 and conforming to certain property qualifications were given the vote in 1918, and in 1921 Dr. Marie Stopes opened the first birth-control clinic, in north London. In 1927 Sylvia went on to outrage the British public further when she became an unmarried mother.
(Extract from The Times: A Century in Photographs; London 1999)
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