Influenced by the rising tide of rank and file militancy during the war years, and inspired by the Russian Revolution, Sylvia’s feminism underwent a profound change from 1917 onwards. Her organisation changed its name to the Workers’ Suffrage Federation (later the Workers’ Socialist Federation, WSF) and the Women’s Dreadnought was renamed the Workers’ Dreadnought. She was still committed to the women’s cause, but what had begun as a single issue campaign for women’s suffrage was transformed into a struggle to end exploitation not only for working class women, but for all workers.

The relentless campaign for the votes for women forced the government to introduce a Franchise Bill in 1917. However its terms were unacceptable to the WSF and to all socialists since although, for the first time women were included in its provisions, it proposed to enfranchise only women over 30 on the basis of a small property qualification. Sylvia regarded this as a shabby all-party compromise which explicitly rejected the principle of equal suffrage.

The Bill gained Royal assent in February 1918. For Sylvia this was not a great victory for women and not a matter for rejoicing. In an article for the Worker's Dreadnought, she pointed out that "less than half the women will get the vote by the new Act...the new Act does not remove the sex disability; it does not establish equal suffrage." 17 women stood as candidates in 1918, the first General Election in which women could participate. One of the female candidates was Sylvia’s sister Christabel who stood for her newly formed and very short lived Women’s Party. (Despite its title this was not a feminist party. It was funded by the British Commonwealth Union, backed by the Coalition and by the conservative press.) Only four women were adopted as Labour candidates, none as Conservatives. The following year (1919) Lady Astor entered parliament as a Conservative - she was not elected, taking over her husband’s Commons seat when he entered the House of Lords.

Only one woman was elected in 1918: the revolutionary Sinn Fein candidate who had fought in the 1916 Easter Rising, Countess Constance Markiewicz. However, she refused to take her seat as a protest against British rule in Ireland.

By this time Sylvia’s increased disillusionment with the parliamentary process was evident. This was expressed in an important article she wrote entitled 'Parliament Doomed’. In it she advanced the view that Parliament’s decision to enfranchise women was made not, as was usually supposed, as a reward for war work. It was motivated by fear of Bolshevism. The women who enter parliament she argued, whatever their politics, "will go in and play the sad old party game that achieves so little" whereas those who remain outside, "the more active and independent women" remain "a discontented crowd of rebels". These rebels were waiting for the Soviets to replace parliament, which, according to Sylvia, had now become an outdated 19th century institution. She was mentioned as a possible parliamentary candidate for the Sheffield Hallam seat and, of course, refused on the grounds that she was "in accord with the policy of the WSF" which "regards Parliament as an out of date machine." Hostility to Parliament was later to become a major hallmark of her political position, isolating her from many other socialists during the discussions on the formation of the Communist Party.

In 1928 all women over 21 were enfranchised. The general election of 1929 witnessed, much to Sylvia’s embarrassment, the strange paradox of her mother, Emmeline, standing (unsuccessfully) as a Conservative candidate for Whitechapel, the heartland of the old East London Federation of Suffragettes!

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Content last updated: 07/10/2004

About our expert

Mary Davis is Professor of Labour History at London Metropolitan University where she heads the Centre for Trade Union Studies and is the Deputy Director of the Working Lives Research Institute. She has written, broadcast and lectured widely on women’s history, labour history, imperialism and racism. Her published books include Comrade or Brother? A history of the British Labour Movement 1789-1951; Marxism & Struggle; Fashioning a New World: a history of the Woodcraft Folk and Sylvia Pankhurst: a life in Radical Politics. She is an elected member ofthe TUC women's committee. She serves on the national executive of NATFHE (the University & College Lecturers' Union) and chairs its Women’s Committee. She is one of the founder members of the Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee.

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