When the Boat Comes In

1919: Jack Ford returns to Gallowshields on Tyneside after service in the Great War. He befriends the Seaton family—parents Bill and Bella, and their children: Jessie, attractive schoolteacher Jessie, Socialist medical student Billy, and black sheep Tom. Billy and Jessie try to involve Jack in the local Labour Party against the Liberal candidate and magistrate, former Major Pinner, who is against votes for women. Pinner not only wins, but makes himself unpopular by trying a shell-shocked war hero who got into a fight whilst confused and scared.

Billy, Tom and old army buddy Matt try to involve Jack in the Labour movement but he seems disinterested. Bella takes in Harry, a young orphan. Father Keenley, the local priest, tells Bella that she could adopt but this would put a strain on resources and it might be better if she allows the boy to be sent on an emigration scheme to Australia.

Times are hard as the miners strike over a pay claim and Tom, now married with a son to keep as well as Mary, who has tuberculosis, borrows money from the seemingly flush Jack. Jack meets Matt's sister Dolly Mather, a war widow with whom he has an affair. Aware that Jack is involved in some sort of scam, Tom threatens to expose them unless Jack counts him in so Jack and Matt take Tom on their nocturnal 'fishing trip', in reality stealing sheep. They have a narrow escape after a run-in with a policeman but Jessie, against Jack's expectations, condones his activities.

Jack visits Sir Horatio Manners, father of his late commanding officer, to gift him a sword. Manners knows this is a ploy for Jack to ingratiate himself but is regardless impressed by his guile and offers him a job at his new factory, supervising non-Union workers. This angers Jessie, who sees Jack as betraying his kind but they reconcile after Jack rescues Tom, in need of money and working as a 'black-leg', from being beaten up by his striking colleagues.

As the strike continues, Bill approaches an old friend, regarding the location of a mine shut down fifty years earlier. Tom pursues two children who have stolen leeks from his allotment but, on discovering that their mother is a war widow with no pension, makes a gift of leeks to them. Billy decides to quit his studies and, while Bill initially offers no opposition, he belittles the lad in the hopes that he will change his mind. The three Seaton men work on the shallow pit that Bill begins to dig under the floorboards — and eventually, Tom holds up a lump of coal in triumph.

The strike ends with no concessions won by the colliers. Jack triumphs at the factory and Manners suggests that he could do better than Jessie. Jessie goes on a date with the older, formal Arthur Ashton, who proposes, though she turns him down. Matt tells Jack that Dolly is pregnant and so he agrees to marry her. Bill, injured at the pit, is offered a payment by the mining company but at the expense of admitting his own liability. Jack bitterly opposes this and holds out for a better settlement, winning Jessie's admiration.