Richard Pankhurst: Son of suffragette Sylvia and chronicler of Ethiopia’s past
1927-2017
PROFESSOR Richard Pankhurst, who has died at the age of 89, was the son of the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and acquired her passion for Ethiopia, publishing many books about its history and culture and establishing, in 1962, an Institute for Ethiopian Studies at what is now Addis Ababa University.
Pankhurst also played a leading role in a long-running campaign to have artefacts looted from Ethiopia by the European colonial powers returned. It achieved its most spectacular success in 2005 when Italy returned the Aksum obelisk, a 1 700-year-old, 180-ton carved granite stele that had been hauled away by the Italians in 1937 during Mussolini’s occupation.
Pankhurst also conducted a rather less successful campaign to persuade British cultural institutions to return the Maqdala Treasures, a collection of precious manuscripts and artefacts removed by British troops in 1867.
Richard Keir Pethick Pankhurst was born on December 3 1927 in Woodford Green, north London, the only child of Sylvia Pankhurst and Silvio Corio, an Italian anarchist with whom Sylvia lived until his death in 1954 and who she refused to marry out of principle.
In a phrase which had less sinister overtones than it does now, Sylvia, who was 45 when she gave birth, told a reporter that her child was a “eugenic” baby, born to “two intelligent adults free from hereditary disease and untrammelled by social convention”.
Sylvia was the second of three daughters of Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the suffragette movement. By the time Richard was born, however, Sylvia’s determination to pursue her own agenda had led to a cooling of relations with her mother and elder sister, Christabel. Sylvia was less interested in militancy, favouring a mass movement for the vote supported by both women and men.
The fact that Sylvia’s son had been born out of wedlock led Emmeline to break off contact with her daughter entirely. Sylvia and Christabel remained estranged until 1953.
Despite the family rift and the disapproval of some neighbours, Sylvia and Silvio were happy. While Sylvia wrote and travelled, Silvio did the family cooking and served refreshments at a cafe.
Richard had fond memories of his upbringing, recalling his mother as “very warm but also extremely hard-working — I would often come downstairs in the mornings and find her sitting at the kitchen table writing — and she would have been there all night”.
Richard was nearly eight when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Over the previous year Sylvia, alarmed by Mussolini’s preparations for the invasion, had written letters on the subject to the British and international press, and following the invasion she founded a newspaper, New Times and Ethiopia News, in Ethiopia’s defence. She was to edit it for 20 years.
Richard was educated in England and, after the war, at the London School of Economics, where he took a doctorate in economic history.
He had learnt much about Ethiopia by reading — and later contributing to — his mother’s newspaper. During the Italian occupation, he met many Ethiopian exiles, including Emperor Haile Selassie, and after the war he befriended Ethiopian students who came to study in London.
When in 1956 Sylvia emigrated to Ethiopia at the invitation of Haile Selassie, Richard went with her as did the woman he would marry the next year, Rita Eldon. Richard got a job lecturing at the university in Addis Ababa and Rita one at the National Library of
He was ’born to intelligent adults . . . untrammelled by social convention’
Ethiopia. Sylvia started a new monthly publication, the Ethiopia Observer, to which Richard contributed articles.
When Sylvia died in 1960 she was given a state funeral in Addis. Richard took over the editorship of the Ethiopia Observer and in 1962 set up the institute, where he was director until 1972. Afterwards he remained at the university doing research and teaching.
The Pankhursts witnessed the revolutionary upheavals of 1974 which led to the overthrow of Haile Selassie and the coming to power of a ruthless socialist dictatorship known as the Derg. They left Ethiopia in 1976, returning a decade later. In recent years he raised funds for a new library at the university.
As well as his books on Ethiopia, he wrote works on his mother.
The Pankhursts had two children. His son, Alula, is a social development consultant. His daughter, Helen, senior UK and Ethiopia adviser of humanitarian agency CARE International, had a small role in the 2015 film Suffragette (2015), and appeared in costume at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, leading a group of women dressed as suffragettes. — © The Daily Telegraph, London