Shockwave: Turbulance and struggle in the 1970s
Katrina Gaffney looks at the Britain's colonial past and rise of North Sea oil and gas
02 September 2026
A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world?
The turbulent decade of the 1970s was marked by struggle: between workers and industries, newly independent countries and their former colonial masters, post-war social democracy and the fledgling economics of neoliberalism.
During the seventies, UK inflation soared to over 25 percent and the country fell into a deep recession. With trade unions at the peak of their power, workers led national strikes to defend their living standards. After the resulting power shortages, the government mandated a three-day working week to conserve energy. The turbulent decade ended with the election of Margaret Thatcher and the dawn of her new economic order.
In this episode of Shockwave, we’re asking: what can we learn from that decade? Why couldn’t the government contain soaring inflation? And how did the energy crises of the seventies shape the neoliberal turn that followed?
Katrina Gaffney was joined by New Economics Foundation economists Dr Alex Chapman and Jaya Sood, alongside writer and academic Gareth Fearn, to find out.
Music by Maarten Schellekens, Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org/music/maarten-…ike-clockwork/ used under Creative Commons licence: creativecommons.org/licenses/by— nc/4.0/.
