Sylvia Pankhurst

I mean, that's something which is always fundamentally graded against what certainly ordinary people want, but also the idea that this is in any way sort of... left-wing socialist endeavour as it now likes to think of itself.

I mean, if you think about what Sylvia Pankhurst, the radical suffragette, was writing in the 1920s, she was saying that socialism was a movement for abundance, that this was not about penurious thrift or controls on how many children you can have or any sort of self-negation.

This was about abundance for all.

That's a million miles away from where this Green Party is.

And, and Anne in particular is very involved and she often writes in newspapers to respond to articles written against the fascist point of view.

So in particular, Sylvia Pankhurst wrote a long article in 1936 denouncing fascist policies.

And so Anne replied, arguing that women's employment was actually on the rise in Germany and pointing to Leni Riefenstahl, the groundbreaking filmmaker whose work became some of the most influential propaganda produced for Hitler's Nazi regime.

So the BUF is pushing these policies that are aimed at women.

It was one family who led the fight to force through change.

The Pankhursts.

That family symbolically is so important as a figurehead of the whole suffrage movement and well beyond as a symbol of women's rights internationally.

If you're brought up in a family like that, you're either completely turned off any kind of agitation or politics, or you get involved and make your own mark.

The dramatic thing that went wrong was the death of Emily's youngest child and the heartache for everybody that followed from that and economically as well it wasn't a particularly wise choice in retrospect.

To support her husband's political career, Emmeline had set up a fancy goods store, which soon folded.

This increased the family's financial difficulties, and after a bout of ill health for Richard, the Pankhursts were forced to move back to Manchester.

It was on their return that all members of the family would be enveloped in the newly formed Independent Labour Party.

Now, you have your own opinions of A.S. Byatt, as I recall.

She attended Cambridge at the same time as Sylvia Plath.

Oh.

And made some infamous comments about her in a much later interview.

to say that she had totally artificial red lips, like women wear makeup.

It's bizarre.

It sounds kind of like Sylvia was the popular girl on campus and all the boys liked her kind of thing.

And so there's some resentment there.

And for anyone who hasn't seen the musical, just say a tiny bit about what it's about.

It's Sylvia Pankhurst and the movement for women getting the vote.

It's absolutely amazing.

So everyone knows so much more about her sister and her mother, but this is about Sylvia, who was the sort of...