Manfield, South Yorkshire, 1984. Out-of-work steelworker-turned- radical revolutionary Joe Starkhill and his band of comrades seize the Town Hall and take the Mayor, her driver, a security guard and a civil servant hostage - declaring the start of a socialist revolution in Britain. But when a faulty phone line prevents them from alerting the local newspaper and TV station, and the police write them off as a hoax, it is only when one of the hostages fails to return home for dinner, that the alarm is raised and Inspector John Machin is dispatched to the Town Hall to investigate - but it's not long before the building is surrounded by the press, police and public, turning Starkhill and the Revolutionaries into a media sensation.