Philippa and Megan staffed a stall at the Women’s Hall Garden Party in September 2018
The event celebrated the creation of a community garden commemorating Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London Federation of Suffragettes on the site of the original Women’s Hall
The mural was painted March 2018 on the side wall of the Lord Morpeth pub by Jerome Davenport
The 2018 lecture took place on Saturday 11 August at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield
Sheila Hanlon: Cycling to Suffrage
Here is a link to the really interesting blog by Sheila based on her presentation!
In this illustrated lecture, Dr Sheila Hanlon traced the history and politics of women’s cycling from Victorian times to today. The talk focussed on the integration of the bicycle into the Edwardian suffrage campaign as a form of transportation, protest and spectacle. Sylvia Pankhurst, an avid cyclist, was at the centre of the narrative from her early days learning to ride with the Clarion Cycling Club to the adaptation of the bicycle into the battle for the vote for women and beyond. We rode along with lady cyclists from the golden age of the tricycle to the everyday use of safety bicycles with a few surprises along the way.
Dr Sheila Hanlon is an historian specialising in the history of women’s cycling, particularly as it intersects gender politics from Victorian times to today. She completed her PhD at York University, Toronto and held a Vera Douie Research Fellowship at The Women’s Library. Her research has been featured on BBC radio and TV, and published in journals and magazines. Much of her work focuses on the importance of bicycles to the Edwardian suffrage campaign. She also brings history to modern cycling advocacy, working with a number of organisations such as CyclingUK.
Sponsored by the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee, the National Assembly of Women, and Wortley Hall. The lecture was be followed by light refreshments and further conversation
Sponsored cycle rides to support the statue thanks to all!!! £1,471 raised!
Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 August 2018 – 3 rides all ending at Wortley Hall
Ride 20, 29 or 62km, or sponsor: details from megan@gn.apc.org
The 2017 lecture took place on Saturday 12 August at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield and was a conversation with Helen Pankhurst
Helen, Sylvia’s granddaughter, shared and invited reflections on how far we have got since 1918, based on a book she is writing for the centenary of the vote. Helen works for CARE International and is a Visiting Professor at LSE and Manchester Metropolitan University.
Sponsored by the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee, the National Assembly of Women, and Wortley Hall.
Megan Dobney from the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee writes: Today (Thursday 18 May 2017) I was delighted to meet Dr Hailemichael Afework Aberra, the Ethiopian Ambassador in London, at the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green. I was able to update the Ambassador on the campaign for the statue of Sylvia (she was given a state funeral in Addis Ababa in recognition of her constant support of the Abyssinian/Ethiopian people in their fight against Italian fascism; her son Richard also lived in Addis Ababa until his death in February this year). MML Archivist Meirian Jump welcomed the Ambassador to the Library and showed him round the facilities and collections there.
The picture shows (left to right) Meirian Jump (MML Archivist), Ambassador Dr Hailemichael Afework Aberra, Megan Dobney (Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee), Gail Warden (Press Office of the Embassy of Ethiopia) with the maquette of the statue that is on display in the Library’s reading room
The London May Day march assembled in Clerkenwell Green as usual, and the Marx Memorial Library offered us the opportunity to speak to the trade unionists gathering there. I can tell you it rained… but not for long!
Professor Richard Pankhurst died on 16 February 2017 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
He was the founder and first Director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis Ababa University, and for 10 years the Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society in London. He had lived, together with his wife Rita, in Ethiopia for five decades. Professor Pankhurst devoted the greater part of his life to the study of Ethiopian history and culture, and wrote extensively on the subject (29 books and countless articles). When Richard Pankhurst was awarded the OBE ‘for services to Ethiopian studies’, he wrote to the Queen urging the repatriation to Ethiopia of six Ethiopian manuscripts looted by British troops from Emperor Theodore’s fortress of Magdala in Ethiopia in 1868. They are currently held in the Royal Library in Windsor Castle.
Unsurprisingly there has been an outpouring of grief in his adopted country resulting in widespread calls in Ethiopia for Richard to be accorded a State funeral. Only one other westerner has been given such an honour; namely his mother Sylvia Pankhurst. Both she and Richard gave invaluable support and solidarity to Ethiopia.
Richard Pankhurst was a founder patron of the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee – a committee formed to campaign for a public memorial in the form of a statue to be erected in honour of his mother, Sylvia, who had campaigned since 1935 against the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia and edited the New Times and Ethiopia News for 20 years. Richard was unstinting in his support and enthusiasm for a memorial to his mother that is also intended to mark her many other crusades: for the suffrage, against World War One, for working class women, against racism, imperialism and fascism. Richard too supported these causes as is clearly shown in the seminal book he wrote about his mother Sylvia Pankhurst, Artist and Crusader: An Intimate Portrait.
We know he would be pleased to learn that we now have the support of Islington Council and the Corporation of London to raise the statue of Sylvia on Clerkenwell Green, London. We are sure he would agree that Clerkenwell Green is a very fitting place given its long standing radical traditions. London’s first May Day march, organised by the London Trades Councils, set off from the Green in 1890 and still does. It was the site of Chartist gatherings, rallies supporting Irish freedom and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Clerkenwell Green is also home to the Marx Memorial Library, a meeting place for many progressive causes in the nineteenth century. In 1933 it was established as a library and Workers’ School against the background of the barbarism of fascists burning books in Germany in 1933. It houses the archives of the International Brigade and the Bernal Peace collection. This is where the book of donors to the statue will be kept.
Written by Professor Mary Davis on behalf of the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee
On Thursday 18 August we held a small event to welcome the maquette of Ian Walters’ statue to the Reading Room of the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green.
above: Helen Bagley (Just Giving), Helen Pankhurst (Sylvia’s granddaughter), Kat Fletcher (Mayor of Islington), Rodney Bickerstaffe (campaign Patron)
below: Helen with Ian’s daughter Jess and the maquette
The 2016 lecture took place on Saturday 13 August at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield and was given by Ruth Taillon the text is available here
Ruth Taillon is author of the 1996 book When History Was Made: the Women of 1916, a book that broke new ground at the time by identifying approximately 200 women who had taken an active part in the Easter Rising and highlighting their contribution to the events of Easter week. She edited Marie Mulholland’s book,The Politics and Relationships of Dr Kathleen Lynn for Woodfield Press and was also a contributing editor (Women and the State) to the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol. IV. Ruth was a founder of the Mary Ann McCracken Historical Society, that throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s organised a range of activities to promote interest in women’s history and their contribution to Irish political, social, economic and cultural life. During this period, Ruth also worked with and for a number of community-based women’s groups and the trade union movement as both researcher and activist. She continues her interest in gender, equality, and peace and conflict issues and lectures occasionally on women’s history. Ruth is Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, which promotes and supports cross-border cooperation – on the island of Ireland and beyond. She is currently a member of the Irish Government’s Oversight Group for the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.
We are delighted to say that actor Maxine Peake has joined Rodney Bickerstaffe, Richard Pankhurst, Brenda Dean, Margaret Prosser and Chris Smith as a Patron of the campaign for a statue for Sylvia