Ms Rhymney Valley 1985

Documentary-drama portrait of a South Wales mining community during the coal strike of 1984/5. Eight months into the miners' strike, South Wales remains solid while other coalfields slowly cave in to pressure and despair. But with winter approaching, things worsen in Rhymney Valley: violence erupts and a taxi driver is killed. In order to raise morale and money, Abe Roberts, the local Labor Party Chairman, decides to organize a beauty competition, but in the course of his plans he comes up against a community of women who have been radicalized by the strike. Ms. Rhymney Valley 1985 is the story of those coalmining women who must stop in the middle of a momentous political upheaval, to prove to their men that beauty is more than skin deep. The people of Rhymney Valley portray themselves in this remarkable film by Karl Francis