WOODFORD GREEN: Revolution in the suburbs
5:47pm Thursday 10th March 2011 in In Focus By Tom Porter
THE leafy suburbs of Woodford have long been known as bastions of suburban conservatism.
Yet for three decades one of the most radical figures in British 20th century politics made her home here.
Sylvia Pankhurst was a campaigner for women's rights, social equality, and a fearless opponent of fascism and imperialism. At her 'Red Cottage' on the High street she plotted insurrection and revolution with anarchists and communists from around the world.
In a week in which International Women's Day was celebrated throughout the world and a statue of Sylvia's mother, women's rights campaigner Emmeline Pankhurst, was unveiled in Westminster, the family's legacy has never been stronger.
Sahela Ali has just completed a documentary exploring Sylvia Pankhurst's life. She was inspired to make the film when giving alternative tours of London, highlighting the capitals radical and revolutionary past.
Miss Ali said: “I decided to make short film about the capital's radical past but the more I read about Sylvia the more I realised that she deserved a film of her own. She was involved in so many of the vitally important causes of the time.
Pankhurst was born in to a family of wealthy social reformers but turned her back on a privileged life in Bloomsbury where her parents lived.
“It was when she saw the poverty in the East End first hand that she realised the suffragette movement needed more than just individual acts of terror. It needed deep social reform.
Pankhurst was introduced to Woodford by her friend, the Labour MP George Lansbury. In 1924 she moved to Vine Cottage on Woodford High Road, which she renamed 'Red Cottage', and used it as a base from which to launch social and political campaigns.
“She saw Woodford as an extension of the East End. She wanted to be among the people she was fighting for, but really wanted to encourage them to speak up on behalf of themselves.”
Ali said: “Many people in the 1930s supported Mussolini but she recognised the danger he presented early and made it her aim to publicise the fight against fascism.
She opened a cafe which was a hub for political radicals from around the world and gave refuge at the home she moved to on Charteris Road to many fleeing political persecution.
One such was Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, who fled his homeland after it was invaded by Mussolini's fascist army in 1936.
Pankhurst went on to become a staunch ally of the Ethiopians, relentlessly championing their cause and eventually emigrating to the country in the 1950s on the invite of the Emperor. She became the only foreigner to be buried on the plot reserved for patriots of the Italian war in front of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa.
She started The New Times and Ethiopia News which printed from the same press in Walthamstow as the local Guardian, now the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian's sister paper.
Because she lived with out of wedlock with her partner, Silvio Corio, and their child she was reviled by locals.
Ali said: “I talked to an old resident who said that people would tell their children when approaching her house: 'don't walk on that side of the road, that is where the witch lives.' “ “She was known as a thorn in the side of the establishment but was a steely sort of woman so would not have let their hostility chase her out of the area.
Woodford's Tory MP Winston Churchill reputedly hated her and in 1948 MI5 considered strategies for “muzzling the tiresome Miss Pankhurst.”
Though the Red Cottage was pulled down in 1939 to make way for a block of flats, a reminder of Panhurst's legacy remains in the form of a small stone sculpture she erected in 1935 to protest the horrors of aerial warfare.
It can be found just opposite the Horse and Well pub.
Ali said: “She is a truly inspiring figure and her legacy should be celebrated.”
Ali's documentary will premier at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury on April 14.
