A new guest exhibition, Sylvia and Silvio, has opened at the Working Class Movement Library, and runs until 23rd May, highlighting the relationship between the suffragette and the anti-fascist Italian revolutionary.
The Italian revolutionary was Silvio Corio, who arrived in London in 1900 after fleeing his country having been involved in anarchist and socialist militancy. He was aged 41 at the time of meeting Sylvia Pankhurst in 1917. She was then 34, and already famous as a leading suffragette, with a passionate interest in anti-colonialism, humanitarian issues and revolutionary politics.
It was a meeting of minds that led to an intense collaboration, battling for justice and human rights...
"I became interested in Sylvia Pankhurst and Silvio Corio's anti-fascist activities while researching for a Channel 4 documentary on the Italian community in the United Kingdom" says author and historian Alfio Bernabei, who has curated the new exhibition "My interviews with their son, Richard Pankhurst, helped me to piece together a number of episodes which now form the narrative that runs through the exhibition."
The nine exhibition panels reproduce documents rarely seen before, some throwing light for the first time on the 'Italian' Sylvia...
"After meeting Corio's circle of Italian friends whose experience of exile alerted them to the danger posed by Mussolini, Pankhurst became the first well-known British person to raise the alarm against the threat of fascism" explains Alfio "She did her utmost to inform public opinion of the risk the world was facing by this new form of authoritarianism. The trouble is that very few people were listening. In our current times of renewed threats and political confusion, Sylvia and Silvio represent a formidable example of the need for continuing vigilance."
The political activist couple were tailed by Mussolini's fascist spies and watched by MI5 and the exhibition aims to shed light on the mystery surrounding the Italian revolutionary who became Sylvia's lifelong partner.
The exhibition also features items from the Library collection relating to Sylvia Pankhurst, including a newly-acquired volume of the newspaper she edited, Woman's Dreadnought.
Sylvia and Silvio
Until 23rd May
Working Class Movement Library
The exhibition is open Wednesdays to Fridays, 1pm-5pm, and the first Saturday in both April and May 10am-4pm.
For further details and directions to the Library – click here
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