BBC NEWS | Business | Slideshow: Back to the 1970s?

Rising inflation, soaring oil prices and an economy seemingly grinding to a halt: all characteristics of the economy in 2008. But haven't we been here before?

Back in the 1970s the country was experiencing exactly the same problems, which eventually culminated in the "Winter of Discontent" at the end of the decade.

Lord Bill Morris, then a new trade union official, and Lord Stanley Kalms, the head of the electronics store Dixons, look back on the tumultuous year of 1975 and compare it with today.

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Audio interview by Mark Broad. Produced by Phil Coomes.
Archive photos from the 1970s provided by Getty Images, AFP and The Press Association.