Hard-hitting melodrama about racial tensions in early 1960s England, starring John Mills and Sylvia Sims. Jacko Palmer (John Mills) is a union man who has to confront the prejudices of his members when a black foreman (Earl Cameron) is appointed, and the members threaten to strike. When he discovers that his daughter (Sims) wants to marry Jamaican schoolteacher Peter Lincoln (Johnny Sekka), however, Jacko must confront his own prejudices.

Lancashire bootmaker Henry Horatio Hobson (Charles Laughton) keeps a tight rein on his three daughters, until his eldest, Maggie (Brenda De Banzie), marries his assistant Willie Mossop (John Mills) and sets him up in his own bootmaking firm. To Hobson's consternation, Willie has soon become his father-in-law's main business rival.