FILM VERSION

Four demands were drawn up. Equal pay, equal job opportunities, equal education and free childcare. We also wanted free contraception and abortion on demand.

“None of us were in conventional housewife roles. There were groups of women living in communes all round London who did not want to live as a nuclear family. We met weekly to discuss everything from relationships, to family to work.”

Sarah and Jo, from Blackpool, lived in a commune in Islington, North London, with other women where they shared everything, even money.

“We decided to change ourselves as well as the world,” says Jo. Although the equal pay act was passed in 1970, it was a difficult climate for women with many financially reliant on husbands or fathers.

They could not get loans or buy houses without permission of men.

The action of the women at the Miss World contest had far-reaching consequences.

Sarah says: “The first women’s march was the following year, 1971, and it was enormous. Four thousand women handed a petition in to Edward Heath, the prime minister, with a list of the demands.

“It’s taken a long time, but it filtered down into people’s consciousness. Over the years, we’d meet women and they’d say: ‘Miss World is what made my mother become a feminist’.”

Jo, who has worked as a teacher, midwife and gardener, says: “It had profound effects. Women became emboldened to fight about whatever’s happened to them. You can see that with the Me Too movement and Black Women’s Lives Matter. “Sexism still goes on today.”

But she adds: “A lot came out of that night and we’re still hopeful that society can change more, and women can be truly equal.”

Misbehaviour is released nationally on March 13.

THE WINNER Miss Grenada