IT was 112 years ago this month that the campaign for women's suffrage took a new turn, with the launch of a militant wing.

The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was set up in the sitting-room of Emmeline Pankhurst's home in October, 1903, and the struggle that followed involved violent demonstrations, imprisonment, hunger strikes and force-feeding.

Earlier that year, activist Emily Wilding Davison had drawn global attention to the cause by throwing herself under the King George V's horse at the Epsom Derby

The women's suffrage movement is the focus of a newly-released film, Suffragette, paying tribute to the trailblazers who laid their lives on the line in the fight for equality. It stars Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst and Carey Mulligan as a fictional mother, Maud Watts, who stands to lose everything for refusing to walk in a man's shadow. In 1912 London Maud works long hours with her husband in a laundry where women earn less than men. This, coupled with women being denied the vote, rankles some of the workforce, and Maud is encouraged to join the suffragette movement.

When MPs refuse to honour a voting rights bill amendment Mrs Pankhurst stirs her troops into direct action, telling them: "I would rather be a rebel than a slave."

Maud becomes involved in the uprising, risking her relationship with her husband and young son, and falls victim to a police inspector charged with breaking the women's resolve.

The stirring film reminds women of what they owe this early 20th century generation - and stresses that the fight for women's suffrage and other human rights continues in societies around the world.

Meryl Streep's short but significant performance as Emmeline Pankhurst has once again raised the profile of the woman who led the suffragette movement a century ago. But what of her 'forgotten' daughter, Adela, who did much to help suffragettes in the Bradford district?

The suffragette campaign brought the women's vote to worldwide attention, and was further enhanced by the role women played in the workplace during the First World War. Women aged 30 and over were given the vote with the 1918 Representation of the People Bill, and in 1928 women won the vote at 21.

The suffragette movement as we know it started in October, 1903 when Emmeline Pankhurst gathered a group of women in Manchester to form a new franchise campaign, the WSPU, marking the end of Victorian campaigning which had made little impact.

Inspired by Mrs Pankhurst's mantra "Deeds not words", women were encouraged to chain themselves to railings, smash windows, storm meetings and starve themselves in protest. The new defiance began in Manchester but across the Pennines women were already playing a major part too.

In 1882 Parliament received its first demand for the women's vote in a petition from a group of Yorkshire women. The mother of this early movement was Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, a former pupil of Fulneck School in Pudsey.

Another key figure in the region was known as the 'forgotten Pankhurst'. Emmeline Pankhurst and her older daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, were famous suffragettes, but the contribution made by youngest daughter Adela isn't so well known. In her book Freedom's Cause: Lives of the Suffragettes, Fran Abrams looks at individual campaigners, Adela among them, and examines what motivated them and the impact they made.

Adela was born in 1885 to a family of political activists. She became an impassioned public speaker, even while at school, and spoke from platforms across the North, in cities such as Bradford. Appointed the WSPU's West Yorkshire regional organiser, she became known for disruptive public meetings - in Pudsey she and fellow speakers were pelted with rotten oranges, eggs and peas and she often came up against hecklers using tin whistles, bells and stink bombs - and she drew larger and larger crowds.

In May, 1908 Adela and her mother were among suffragettes speaking at a mass rally at Shipley Glen, attracting 100,000 people. Trains and trams to the Glen were stretched to full capacity and Adela described it as a "great triumph for our cause".

Speaking about the rally, Emmeline offered the Prime Minister "the demand of the people of Bradford, which has already spoken officially through its City Council when it adopted some months ago a resolution similar to the one carried at the great open-air meeting on the Suffrage Sunday of Yorkshire.”

A rally on Woodhouse Moor near Leeds the following summer, with ten platforms and brass bands, also drew around 100,000 people.

Cleckheaton's Co-op hall, a regular venue for Adela, soon became too small, while the new 1,000-seat Ilkley Town Hall was often packed full for her speeches. In a social outing to see actress Ellen Terry in a play in Bradford, Adela and her party turned up in full suffragette regalia, to applause from the audience.

The suffragette movement gathered pace in Bradford in 1910 when Winston Churchill MP addressed a political meeting at St George's Hall. His visit to Bradford ended in chaos, thanks to a handful of suffragettes, led by Adela, who disrupted male-dominated gatherings to gain publicity.

The Telegraph & Argus reported that the night before Churchill's meeting two women broke into St George's Hall and hid under the platform all night. "The following day found them thirsty, dishevelled and unwashed, but with hearts on fire for their cause," the T&A reported.

The women waited until the hall filled up and Churchill walked on stage, then launched into their protest before being swiftly thrown out.

The campaign gained momentum in Bradford with increasingly violent and high-profile stunts. The city was the scene for a series of passionate meetings led by well-dressed Edwardian women who came to personify the suffragette movement. The green at Bradford Moor Golf Club was scorched by suffragettes who went on to leave a trail of burning letter boxes across the district.

Following a stint in prison, Adela Pankhurst returned to Yorkshire, "chalking slogans on the pavements of Dales villages" but she gradually grew apart from the militant movement, claiming it was simply "the drum that attracted the crowd".

When she left the WSPU she was effectively written out of its history. "They never admit me or mention me as having played any part at all," she wrote.