While campaigning for the abolition of slavery, Richard Oastler realises the truth of its growing acceptance; children are now the necessary evil to fuel the furnace of the burgeoning British empire.

With the support of his wife Mary, Oastler dares to attempt to subvert the factory sytem and speak out against the masters for the millions of families forced to enslave their own children to survive.  

But what seems like a simple humanitarian case, becomes a political battle that endangers oastlers life, the industrial revolution and the fate of an empire.