Brothers and Sisters, a bit of hush for the beauty queen

Miss AUEW

It may seem somewhat strange nowadays, but trades unions once held their own beauty contests. Many workplaces did the same, especially the manufacturing factories in the Thanet area. There is no date on the clipping, but this would have been around 1974.

Here is Janet Hughes, winning the Miss AUEW contest at the Margate Winter Gardens. Now merged, merged and merged again into Unite The Union, the AUEW is now a thing of the past, as are trades union beauty shows.

The clip shows how closely beauty shows were linked to working class life, and now to its social history. Miss World 1967 remains the ninth most-watched non-sports TV show in UK history, with 23.7 million viewers.