SUFFRAGETTE, SYLVIA PANKHURST – Woodford Green, Waltham Forest (A blue plaque and Pankhurst Green opposite Woodford Tube Station commemorate her link to the area)

Born in Manchester, in 1882, she was the daughter of Dr. Richard Pankhurst and Emmeline Pankhurst, members of the Independent Labour Party and much concerned with women's rights. She and her sisters attended the Manchester High School for Girls. Her sister, Christabel, also become an activist.

In 1906, she started to work full-time with the Women's Social and Political Union with her sister and her mother, but in contrast to them she retained her interest in the labour movement.

In 1914 she broke with the WSPU,  to set up the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), which over the years evolved politically and changed its name accordingly, first to Women's Suffrage Federation and then to the Workers' Socialist Federation. She founded the newspaper of the WSF, Women's Dreadnought, which subsequently became the Workers Dreadnought.

It organized against the war, and some of its members hid conscientious objectors from the police.

In later life she became a staunch supporter of Haile Selassie as a result of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936.

She died in 1960, and was given a full state funeral in Addis Ababa at which Haile Selassie named her 'an honorary Ethiopian'. She is the only foreigner buried in front of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, in the area reserved for patriots of the Italian war.