Pankhurst lobbied Post Office over call intercept fear

SUFFRAGETTE Sylvia Pankhurst lobbied the Post Office against the practice of installing duplicate telephone lines over fears they could be used to intercept private calls, newly discovered letters have revealed.

Ms Pankhurst – herself the subject of an MI5 surveillance operation – wrote to the Postmaster General raising concerns that duplicate lines opened the door to “improper use by unscrupulous persons”.

In two letters found in the BT Archives in Holborn, London, she argued that the practice was “opposed to the best interests of the community and contrary to public policy”.

She received a response to the first letter, which was dated February 6 ,1934, but internal, handwritten notes between Post Office employees showed they were instructed to “stonewall” Ms Pankhurst if she sent any further correspondence.

It emerged in 2004 that MI5 had monitored Ms Pankhurst and intercepted her letters in the 1930s and 1940s after previously classified government files were released.

Among the documents were references to MI5’S “telephone checks” and other intercepted calls.

The file contained information on her fight for women to be granted the vote and her work as part of the Worker’s Suffrage Federation going back as far as 1914.

Ms Pankhurst’s fears about duplicate phone lines were sparked by a news story about a gynaecologist who was struck off following an affair with a patient, the letters revealed.

The relationship was exposed by the husband of the patient who arranged with the Post Office – which ran the UK’S telephone service at the time – to duplicate the phone line installed on his house to intercept his wife’s calls.

The letters were discovered by Dr Sarah Jackson, an associate professor at Nottingham Trent University. Ms Jackson, who was conducting the research as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council fellowship, said: “Sifting through a file of old press cuttings about wiretapping, I was astonished to find letters from Sylvia Pankhurst to the Postmaster General revealing her concerns about surveillance.

“In the year we celebrate the centenary of women’s suffrage, the discovery brings home once again the efforts and achievements of this remarkable woman.”

Dr Jackson also said Ms Pankhurst’s concerns were part of her wider ideology: “She was very much a socialist.”