However fond you are of the Bee Gees – or indeed the Dagenham-built Ford Cortina mark 3 – the 1970s are not generally regarded as a vintage era for Britain and British business. Rather, what sticks in the mind is the lights going out during the three-day week of 1974, thanks primarily to the oil crisis of 1973.
That same crisis, of course, also stoked the soaring inflation which pushed the consumer price index to 25% in 1975 and sent interest rates to 15% in 1976 – all culminating with the so-called winter of discontent of 1979, when rubbish piled up in the streets amid a wave of industrial action.
It’s no surprise, then, that today’s economic woes – including an energy crisis, inflation and labour shortages, to name but a few of the present challenges – are being compared to the turmoil of the 1970s. There are, though, key differences.