Suffragette Sylvia sculpted a legacy

2:37pm Friday 4th April 2008

TUCKED away in a quiet corner of Woodford Green sits a unique piece of history.

Among overgrown bushes and drooping trees, just opposite the Horse and Wells pub, lies a small bomb from the 1930s.

However, there is no danger of it causing a bang - the concrete, Grade II-listed sculpture stands as the world's first monument - and a protest - against aerial bombing in warfare.

But it has further significance as the only monument to Woodford's most famous daughter, suffragette and anti-fascist campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, who commissioned the sculpture to express her horror at the destruction of Italy's war against Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), and the League of Nations' verdict that aerial bombing was acceptable in modern warfare.

Today, few people in Woodford Green are even aware of its existence, in stark contrast to the looming statue of Sir Winston Churchill just down the road.

But, as historian Patrick Wright points out, the irony is that the survival of the small sculpture is in part due to it being hidden from public view for so long.

Designed by modernist artist Eric Benfield, the monument was unveiled in October 1935, with the inscription: "To those who in 1932 upheld the right to use bombing aeroplanes, this monument is raised as a protest against war in the air."

But, like Miss Pankhurst herself, the monument attracted a great deal of local controversy.

Shortly after its unveiling it was "defaced several times by local fascists" according to one contemporary newspaper report, and was vandalised repeatedly in the decades that followed.

In recent years the bomb was even kidnapped, probably by a well lubricated individual from the pub over the road, and thrown into the forest before being recovered and restored.

At the time, Miss Pankhurst's anti-imperialist views were considered unacceptably radical, and she was widely seen as a "weird eccentric" in Woodford Green with many of her neighbours refusing to speak to her, according to local Pankhurst enthusiast Susan Homewood.

She even managed to incur the wrath of MI5, who had their own file on her entitled "Muzzling the tiresome Miss Pankhurst".

Yet, despite the monument's age, enthusiasts say the bomb was ahead of its time in expressing anger at the random and indiscriminate nature of aerial bombings, and is just as relevant today as it ever was.

"The little stone bomb seems very gentle, almost sweet, and is fairly modest in comparison to what's happened since then with the truly apocalyptic nature of warfare today" says Mr Wright.

"It addresses much wider issues and definitely has contemporary relevance - especially considering issues such as Iraq and the illusory idea of the clean' bombing raid.

"The people of Woodford should also remember that it is part of the Churchill story as well. In Woodford you had two prominent figures from both sides of the debate over warfare and imperialism, which was quite unusual."

Miss Homewood added: "I think it makes people think, which is what it was designed to do in the first place."

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