Relatives of the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst will next month premiere a choral work commissioned by the BBC to mark 100 years since women won the right to vote.
The writer and women’s rights campaigner Helen Pankhurst and composer Lucy Pankhurst aim to deliver a rallying cry with lyrics that call upon “a sisterhood of sacrifices made along the way”. The Pankhurst Anthem will first be heard on Radio 3’s website on 6 February, the centenary of the passing of the key Representation of the People Act.
“It all resonates now in a particularly eerie way because, in its concerns for equality between the genders, 2018 suddenly feels more like 1918 again,” said Helen Pankhurst, Emmeline’s great-granddaughter. “Most of us are interested in the centenary of women’s suffrage because of our understanding that we are still on that journey. So the work is divided into two parts. The first, Echoes of Emmeline, celebrates my great-grandmother’s own ideas, while the second, Anthem, is a way for us to mark where we are now.”
The score will be available to download at no cost, and Lucy, a distant relative of the suffragette leader – hopes singers around the UK will join in – creating a vast choir across Britain’s varied communities.
Helen, the lyricist, who works full-time as an adviser with the charity Care International, said her source was a famous Pankhurst speech delivered in 1913 at Hartford, Connecticut, which built to the conclusion: “Power commands much attention, those with no power are ignored!” – lines Emmeline’s great-granddaughter believes will underline a contemporary feminist debate.
“What I was interested in was the power of the words, and the idea of power itself,” Helen said. “There is a danger today that we begin to think that all power in itself is a bad thing, and that it always corrupts. But women have to claim power since it will not be given to us.”
Emmeline and her militant daughters Sylvia, Christabel and Adela remain heroes in the struggle for gender equality, although growing up as a Pankhurst was not always smooth: “As a young girl I found the surname had negative associations with ‘those harridan extremists’,” said Helen. “Now, if anything, there is a tendency to gloss over the suffragettes’ more militant activities and even rose-tint their campaign.
However, it means something that there are still people with the name Pankhurst who are engaged. I am carrying on the legacy and hope my daughter, Laura, may do the same.”
The first performance of the new choral work, by the BBC singers, will be conducted by Hilary Campbell. Radio 3 will broadcast it three days later for the opening of the station’s Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.
“Working with Helen has been such a wonderful experience,” said Lucy, who is an award-winning composer. “The stirring words, derived from those of Emmeline, are so powerfully emotive – setting them to music was a very humbling experience.”
