A viscoplastic, or yield-stress, liquid occupies the space between two infinite parallel plates. Initially the whole system is at rest. The lower plate is suddenly jerked into motion with given speed or shear stress, while the upper plate is kept fixed. The flow consists of two regions; (1) a lower sheared region bounded above by the yield surface, (2) an upper unyielded region bounded below by the yield surface. The yield surface propagates to the upper plate as time proceeds. We first consider the equivalent one plate problem of flow over a jerked plate, and find similarity solutions and small time asymptotic solutions for prescribed shear and speed cases respectively. These solutions are used as initial solutions for the two plate case. The motion of the yield surface and the time taken for the entire material to yield are investigated. The problems considered here are two dimensional representations of some control devices, for example the light duty clutch, which consists of two corotating, coaxial discs separated by a layer of electrorheological material. In this application it is useful to know the time taken for all the material to yield.