The third of Mitchell's gripping, gritty and enjoyable inter-war north-east novels based upon the scripts of the BBC's hit fifty-one TV episode epic 'When the Boat Comes In". Broadcast from 1976 until 1981 they starred James Bolam as Jack Ford. This third novel tells the story of Jack as the Organising Secretary of the Fitters' Union where he is on the ladder that can take him out of the grime of the shipyards and into a bright and prosperous future. But where there are ladders there can also be snakes, and some think that Jack is betraying his working class roots. Struggles with Jessie Ashton's advances, Sir Hory Manners his employer, Les Mallow and the concerns of Dolly, his wife, complicate his life but never defeat him. Set in the fictitious north-east town of Gallowshields, authentic and realistic in description and atmosphere to the extreme, they reflect James Mitchell's childhood and working-life in a South-Shields far removed from the rosy and sought after area it is becoming today.