High-res version here.

1. Labour call in the International Monetary fund (IMF), marking the end of the post-war setttlement and the beginning of rising inequality. This came despite several years of the TUC agreeing to hold down pay.

2. Workers respond with a wave of strikes, many of them unofficial. These culminate in the ‘Winter of discontent’ in 1978/9.

3. Thatcher’s Tory government smashes the workers’ movement, leading to a dramatic fall in strike days and a corresponding rise in inequality.

SOURCES: Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Income and Inequality spreadsheet complied from ONS data. Gini coefficient measures inequality, where 100 = one person owns everything and 0 = perfect equality. Worldwide, Gini coefficients range from approximately 23 (Sweden) to 70 (Namibia) although not every country has been assessed.