When Hamer Radshaw, a young man from a Northern England country mill town, commits to help the poverty-stricken workers in his area, he takes as his Excalibur a sword passed down to him by his grandfather from the Battle of Peterloo, where it had been used against workers. As an idealistic champion of the oppressed, he rises to power as a Labour Party (UK) Member of parliament, but is seduced by the trappings of power and finds himself the type of politician he originally despised.