Ricky Flint (Michael Sarne) dreams of escaping working-class Bethnal Green, where he works in a cigarette factory and shares a crowded terraced house with his middle-aged parents Matt (Bernard Lee) and Lil, his pregnant sister Betsy (who soon gives birth), and her husband Jim. In order to get the money to leave, Ricky agrees to help local gangster Jack Ellerman rob the cigarette factory, and also gets Jim, a lorry driver hoping to buy an expensive transport licence, to join the plot. Ricky finds himself attracted to Catherine "Cat" Donovan (Rita Tushingham), who has been dating another member of Jack's gang, Charlie Batey. Although Cat agrees to date and even make love with Ricky, she is fiercely independent and refuses to take orders from him or stop seeing Charlie, pointing out that she and Ricky are not engaged so she is free to do as she likes.