Description: A political tale of the oppression of ordinary people in the area across history. It begins with short vignettes of peasantry in the rural area around 1381 facing the evils of the tax collector from Barking Abbey and its glutinous Abbess. Little has changed for the local population under the thumb of the gentry in the Georgian era. The action then swings to 1957 with more elaborate stories for the featured characters but class divisions remain. A sight impaired widower and war veteran is forced from his rented rooms. The financial manoeuvrings of a city capitalist force job losses at a factory and trade unions struggle for worker's rights. A schoolboy struggles to achieve an academic scholarship, and a suitor is thwarted in attempts at romance by his beloved's boss. Along the way there are many views of Woodford Bridge Road, Ilford Station, the Little Theatre, Ilford Football Ground, Central Library and the council chamber of the Town Hall. The schoolboy is set a test to write an account of the main local industries which leads to fascinating shots inside a radio and television factory (Plesseys), a sweet factory, the film company, Ilford Limited, the Ampro film projectors factory, and Kelvin Hughes Marine equipment factory. The thwarted couple's journeys to work on a cramped commuter train provides views from the moving train as it travels into London and brief scenes of the train pulling into Liverpool Street Station. The film ends with a colour dream sequence in which a man fantasises on the Ilford 'of the future'. A future, in his mind, consisting of open motorways with Citroen cars, helicopters, delta winged jet planes, high rise housing in tower blocks, streamlined trains, modernist homes filled with conveniences, free shops, multi-racial schools, international sports at Fairlop Stadium, ultra clean factories making circuit boards, and a working day that ends at 3 o'clock.