Sally Hawkins stars as Rita O'Grady, a feisty factory worker who leads a fight for equal pay in the historical comedy-drama Made in Dagenham. (Maple Pictures)In that incendiary year of 1968, when students were rioting in the streets of Paris and occupying administration offices on U.S. college campuses, a ragtag army of British working-class women struck a resonant blow for equal rights.

These unlikely feminist radicals were the sewing machinists of the Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham factory, whose historic strike for equal pay with their male counterparts kick-started the ongoing drive for wage parity.

The film is perfectly pleasant and predictable, but you have to hand it to the Brits – they know how to do this formulaic material with style.

Made in Dagenham gives that real-life labour drama a Norma Rae spin, with the marvelous Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) in the Sally Field role as our poor-but-plucky heroine. The film, directed by Nigel Cole from a script by William Ivory, is a perfectly pleasant and predictable feel-good story. But you have to hand it to the Brits – they know how to do this kind of formulaic material with style.

Hawkins plays Rita O’Grady, a wife and mother of two who works as a machinist stitching car seats at the Ford plant. Small and soft-spoken, she’s hardly the labour-agitator type, but Albert (Bob Hoskins), the savvy local union leader, evidently sees promise in her. He picks her to join him and the women’s shop steward, Connie (Geraldine James), for a meeting with management to dispute the female workers’ “unskilled” pay grade.

Albert’s instincts are dead right. Although expected to look pretty and let the men do the talking, Rita pipes up and demands from the Ford executives not just better pay, but a wage on a par with the men at the factory. Nor does she merely talk feisty. When Ford refuses to consider her demands, she leads her fellow workers on a one-day work stoppage that eventually escalates into a paralyzing strike, causing Ford’s British assembly lines to grind to a halt. (These women have evidently hit the car industry where it hurts — in the upholstery.)

Rita feels pressure not just from Ford and the old-school Marxists in the union, but on the home front, where her good-natured husband (a pudding-faced Daniel Mays) is turning sour. A Ford worker, too, he’s lost both his pay packet and his wife’s undivided attention. Rita has supporters in her corner, though, including the sympathetic Albert and, most significantly, Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle (a splendidly steely Miranda Richardson).

Also cheering from the sidelines is Lisa (Rosamund Pike), the highly educated wife of one of the Ford bosses (Rupert Graves). She’s here to remind those who don’t watch Mad Men that the plight of women in the 1960s cut across class barriers.

The other strikers have their resolve tested as well. Aspiring model Sandra (Jaime Winstone, looking like Lulu imitating Twiggy) is lured across the picket line to pose for a sexy Ford ad. Connie, meanwhile, finds her loyalty torn between the cause and the demands of her mentally unstable husband (Roger Lloyd Pack), a veteran haunted by his experiences in the Second World War.

That last subplot is the only time the film dips into a dark corner. Cole, who directed the similarly crowd-pleasing Calendar Girls, prefers to make sunny little movies. That’s fine, but we could still use a little depth here. We never really get a sense of what’s at stake for these women. There is something heroic in poor workers with families risking their livelihood over a matter of principle, but the movie doesn’t fully communicate that. And it only pays lip service to the emotions that accompany a controversial strike, from the uncertainty and bitterness to the camaraderie and exhilaration.

The women take their protest to the City of London in a scene from Made in Dagenham. (Maple Pictures)The film is, however, uniformly well acted by a first-rate supporting cast. Richardson, James and Pike are all in top form, and there are sharply drawn little character sketches from a stiff-necked Graves, Kenneth Cranham as a fusty union negotiator and rising star Andrea Riseborough (Never Let Me Go) as Brenda, Rita’s cheeky young co-worker. My favourite, though, is the inimitable Hoskins as shrewd but gentle Albert. His explanation of why he believes in women’s rights is delivered with a quiet sincerity that makes it unexpectedly moving.

The picture provides a cornucopia of ’60s nostalgia that does for working-class Britain what An Education did for the middle class. Older viewers will relish the period specifications, from the bouffants and beehives, miniskirts and hot pants, to the David Arnold score with its cavalcade of oldies – including Jimmy Cliff’s You Can Get It If You Really Want and Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. (Although, curiously, he doesn’t use the Rolling Stones’ Factory Girl, released in 1968.)

But Made in Dagenham’s appeal ultimately rests on the slender shoulders of Hawkins. In her breakthrough role in Mike Leigh’s comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, the actress played a young woman whose chirpy optimism belied her sensitivity and intelligence. Here, as the fictional Rita, she’s the proverbial dark horse whose shy and self-effacing nature hides a strong sense of justice and fair play.

It’s a more conventional character in a much less original film, but Hawkins still brings to it her singular charm — she’s the gamine as a no-nonsense working-class lass. And she has a magnificent moment when Rita confronts her whining husband with a bracing speech about equality. For a brief moment, we’re not in a feel-good flick anymore, but a kitchen-sink version of Ibsen. It makes you hungry to see her in a role of more substance.

Made in Dagenham opens in Toronto on Nov. 26 and in Montreal and Vancouver on Dec. 17.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.