Proud Valley, the second film I’m highlighting for the 40th anniversary of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, was directed by Penrose Tennyson in 1939. It was the last British film to feature the Black American activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson. He plays David Goliath, an American sailor stranded in Cardiff, who makes his way up the valleys to find work at a colliery.
He is accepted into the community, partly due to his splendid singing voice which immediately assures him a place in the colliery choir. However, all is not well. An underground explosion kills the choirmaster and the management close the mine down.
The miners protest by sending a delegation to march to London to argue the case for re-opening the pit, particularly now that war has broken out and coal will be in desperate need. The management are won over and coal production is restored. While working underground Goliath and three other miners become trapped. He sacrifices himself so that the other may live.
The film is not without its faults: the management are startlingly sympathetic to the miners’ delegation and there is hardly a mention of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (which became the NUM a few years later). Nevertheless, it is an important development in its portrayal of Black and white working class solidarity.
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