ONE of the first great anti-fascist speeches was re-enacted 100 years on to the hour on Saturday, as actor Emma Beattie delivered an address from Sylvia Pankhurst on the very spot it was first delivered.

The Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee, which is fundraising for a statue of the revolutionary feminist to be raised in Clerkenwell Green, organised the commemorative event at Clerkenwell’s Gunmakers’ Arms — where on March 25 1923, when it was an Italian community club called Dondi’s, Pankhurst spoke at a protest meeting “against the fascist reaction in Italy.”

The crowd booed, hissed, cheered and applauded as Ms Beattie brought Pankhurst to life with the passionate denunciation of Mussolini’s terror — and its complacent or even admiring reception in Britain, with the exception of her own Workers’ Dreadnought newspaper.