Nostalgia for the 1970s is spreading on the left of British politics, with a narrative forming that it was a decade of high growth scarred by an oil crisis of foreign making. In fact, Britain’s 1970s economic meltdown was a home-made crisis with roots firmly planted in the previous decade. While pop culture celebrated "Swinging London", the underlying economy was structurally fragile, setting off a chain reaction of currency crises, inflation, and stagnation. The trouble began in the 1960s, with state run enterprises draining tax resources and militant, powerful trade unions crippling manufacturing competitiveness. Unofficial "wildcat" strikes frequently paralyzed car factories and docks. Unions successfully resisted modernization and protected outdated working practices, leading to dismal productivity. Compounded by underinvestment, British goods became too expensive and unreliable for the global market. This culminated in the 1967 devaluation of the Pound. Harold Wilson’s government exhausted national reserves before slashing the currency's value by 14.3% to $2.40. Because Britain imported its raw materials, this made imports expensive and meant domestically driven inflation was escalating long before the 1973 oil crisis. With real interest rates dropping into negative territory, inflation rose to nearly 10% by 1971. Desperate to escape this trap, Chancellor Anthony Barber launched the 1972 "Barber Boom" - an unsustainable, credit-fueled malinvestment bubble. The government flooded the economy with cheap credit. But instead of driving industrial innovation, it sparked a speculative property bubble and a surge in consumer spending on foreign imports. When the bubble burst, it left the UK with a massive trade deficit and hyperinflation just as the OPEC oil shock hit. In 1976, the IMF stepped in with an emergency USD credit facility. The UK had to accept steep spending cuts and interest rate rises. But problems persisted. By 1979, nationalised industries, like the persistently unprofitable British Steel Corporation and the disastrous British Leyland car manufacturer, accounted for roughly 10% of the UK’s GDP and employed over 2 million people. At the end of the decade, the UK economy had grown at an average of 2.7%. While healthy by today’s standards, this compared highly unfavorably with its international peers. Western European neighbors like West Germany and France enjoyed stable, investment-led growth of 4% to 5% annually, while Britain was trapped in a restrictive "Stop-Go" cycle, cementing its status as the "sick man of Europe." Respite finally arrived with Margaret Thatcher’s embrace of free markets, sound money and individual enterprise. After tough reforms, the UK outgrew both France, Germany and the US in the last half of the 1980s. 1970s was an experiment in union hegemony, strikes, nationalisations and credit fueled boom and bust. The left’s nostalgia is based on misconceptions and outright falsehood. Narratives are powerful. But facts are facts.