Sylvia Pankhurst, as her granddaughter quietly reminded us, led quite a life. To her efforts on behalf of women’s suffrage alongside her mother, Emmeline, and sister Christabel one can add her pivotal role in the foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. And all of this – the marches on Westminster, the debates with Lenin – came before the quarter-century-long involvement in East African politics that gave rise to Helen Pankhurst’s highly entertaining documentary.