Adela Pankhurst was one of the most dedicated campaigners for the Women’s Peace Army. In 1917 she was jailed for her anti-conscription activities.

Adela Pankhurst was born in 1885, the youngest daughter of the suffragist Emmaline Pankhurst, and sister of Christabel and Sylvia. Although all of them were involved in suffragist campaigning, both Adela and Sylvia were more radical than the other two. In 1914, estranged from her mother and eldest sister, Adela moved to Melbourne. She immediately threw herself into political organising, and fell in with Vida Goldstein’s Women’s Political Association (and later Women’s Peace Army). She also joined the Victorian Socialist Party.

Pankhurst was an enthusiastic campaigner against conscription. She spoke at numerous meetings and demonstrations. She also wrote several books and pamphlets, such as ‘Put Up the Sword’, which outlined the case for pacifism and internationalism. This image is taken from that work. 

In 1917 Pankhurst was jailed in Pentridge Prison, initially for a month and then later for nearly two months. In the period in between these two stints she resigned from the WPA – in order to pursue socialist politics more fully – and married Tom Walsh, the Secretary of the Seaman’s Union. In January 1918, Pentridge was visited by 200 socialist campaigners who ‘serenaded’ Adela from outside the walls of the prison.

After the war, she and her husband Tom grew increasingly conservative. They were early opponents of the Stalinist regime in Russia, perceiving that many atrocities were being carried out in the name of communism. This, and her conviction that it was women and children who suffered most during strike action, led Pankhurst to become opposed to socialism and in favour of industrial co-operation between workers and employers. In 1928, Adela founded the Australian Women's Guild of Empire, a patriotic organisation. Around the same time, Tom was expelled from the Seaman’s Union.

In 1940, Adela and Tom undertook a ‘friendship tour’ of Japan. As a result, Adela was asked to leave the Guild, and after Pearl Harbour she was interned. She was released just in time to see Tom before he died. Pankhurst lived for another eighteen years, dying in 1961.