In a small coal-mining village, Bob Fenwick leads a strike over safety standards at the local colliery. Meanwhile, his son David goes off to university with the hope one day to return to help the miners with their working conditions.

Davey Fenwick (Michael Redgrave) leaves his mining village on a university scholarship, intent on returning to better support the miners against the owners. But he falls in love with Jenny (Margaret Lockwood) who gets him to marry her and return home as local schoolteacher before finishing his degree. Davey finds he is ill-at-ease in his role, the more so when he realizes Jenny still loves her former boyfriend. After he finds that his father and the other miners are going to have to continue working on a possibly deadly coal seam, he decides to act.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}