Chronography of Great Britain from 1 January 1900
Click here for
Great Britain to 31 December 1899
Page last
modified 22 October
2023
See also Ireland
See also Economy & Prices
See also Sports and Games
See also Royal Family from 1760
SCOTLAND – Click here for
events up to Act of Union 1707 relating solely to Scottish history.
Demography of Great Britain (United Kingdom)
“As for Britain, it is set in the Sea of Darkness.
It is a considerable island, whose shape is that of the head of an ostrich, and
where there are flourishing towns, high mountains, great rivers and plains.
This country is most fertile; its inhabitants are brave, active and enterprising,
but all is in the grip of perpetual winter." Muhammad Al
Idrisi, 12th century Arab
geographer
For MSOA-based maps of England and Wales, click here.
To order scans of Ordnance Survey 1940-60 maps
annotated with historical changes and dates, e.g. new roads, railway and canal
opening/closure dates, urban growth, coastal erosion, click
here to access map index and order sheets and go to Images of UK Historical changes maps
Nomis datasets, https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/construct/submit.asp?forward=yes&menuopt=201&subcomp=
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, https://www.jrf.org.uk/
Happisburgh village website,
coastal erosion, history and more, http://happisburgh.org.uk/
Box
index:-
23.0.
UK 2016 Brexit Vote
22.0.
Scotland Independence
Referendum 2014
21.0.
Great Train Robbers, 1963-2013
20.5.
Iraq weapons report
aftermath, 2003-04
20.0.
Scottish and Welsh
Devolution, 1997-99
19.0.
New Labour gain power under
Tony Blair 1993-97
18.0.
Dunblane Massacre, ban on
handguns 1996-97
17.8,
James Bulger murder 1993
17.6,
Mrs Thatcher ousted as Tory
Leader; replaced by John Major, 1990
17.4,
The Poll Tax 1987-91
17.2
Formation and end of the Social
Democratic Party, 1987-90
16.0
Greenham Common
anti-nuclear protests 1951-91
15.0
Falklands War 1982
14.0
Urban Riots 1980-81
12.0
SDP Party (Gang of Four) 1981
11.0
Jeremy Thorpe trial, 1977-79
10.0
Mrs Thatcher elected 1979
9.0 Devolution for Scotland and Wales,
1976-79
8.0 Winter of Discontent 1978-79
7.5, Iceland-UK Cod War, 1974-76
7.3, John Stonehouse disappearance,
1974-76
7.2, Heath loses General Election, 11/1974;
replaced as Party ;leader by Mrs Thatcher
7.1, Edward Heath Conservative
Government, toppled by industrial unrest and energy crisis, 1973-74
5.0 UK accession to the European
Economic Community 1971-73
3.0 De Gaulle refuses to admit UK to the
EEC due to links with USA, 1961-63
2.0 End of rationing in Britain 1948 – 1954
0.0 Intensification of UK rationing
post - War, 1946 - 51
-1.0, Britain and the end of World War Two in
Europe, 1944-45
-2.0, Britain and World War Two, 1941-44
-3.0, UK rationing 1940-44
-4.0, UK civil measures 1940-43
-5.0, Britain and World War Two, 1940-41
-6.0, Battle of Britain 1940; German bid to
defeat the RAF failed
-7.0, Britain declares war on Germany.
Early stages of World War Two in the UK, 1939-40
-8.0, Preparations for War, 1937-39
-9.0, Britain re-armament and Fascist
conflicts, 1933-37
-10.0, Jarrow March 1936
-11.0, Postal and telephone developments
1934-37
-12.0, Leisure and Tourism developments
1927-38
19 October 2023, In the UK, Labour
decisively won two by elections, the formerly Tory seats of Tamworth and Mid
Bedfordshire.
5 October 2023, In the Rutherglen and
Hamilton West by election, there was a 24.1% swing to Labour, at the expense of
the Conservatives and SNP, giving Labour a projected ca. 440 seats at a general
election.
27 March 2023, Humza Yousaf was elected new
leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party.
15 February 2023, Nicola Sturgeon,
leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, unexpectedly resigned over
controversy with her gender-recognition reforms.
23 November 2022, The UK Supreme
Court ruled that Nicola Sturgeon, leader of Scotland’s SNP Party, did not
have the authority to call another independence referendum without the consent
of Westminster.
24 October 2022, Rishi Sunak became Tory Prime
Minister, uncontested after Boris Johnson pulled out and Penny Mordaunt
failed to reached the 100 MP backers threshold as set by the Tory Party to
ensure a swift succession.
20 October 2022, UK Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss
resigned after just 44 days in office, saying her manifesto was now
‘undeliverable’, as global economic and political uncertainty continued, with
deep splits in her own Party.
17 September 2022, Ethnic tension
between Hindus and Muslims in Leicester, UK, began to mount after an India vs
Pakistan cricket match which India won. Underlying causes included a rise in
Indian nationalism.
8 September 2022, Queen Elizabeth
II died at Balmoral. Charles became King.
6 September 2022, Liz Truss
became the new UK Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, having defeated
Rishi Sunak
in a poll of Tory Party members.
7 July 2022, UK PM Boris Johnson announced his resignation,
after a large number of resignations from his Cabinet. He faced further sleaze
allegations over his Chief Whip, Christopher Pincher, as well as economic
issues. Boris said he would remain in post until October, when a new leader
would be elected.
23 June 2022, In the UK the
Conservatives were badly beaten in two by elections. They lost Wakefield, a ‘red wall’ seat, back to
Labour, and Honiton, Devon, went to
the Liberal Democrats, having been a safe Tory seat.
6 June 2022, UK PM Boris Johnson won, but
unimpressively, a No Confidence vote by 211 votes to 148; 41% of his MPs voted
against him. He faced issues of Partygate,
and the UK economy was also facing issues such as high inflation, soaring
energy food and fuel process, and supply chain issues.
16 December 2021, The Conservatives
were heavily defeated in the North
Shropshire by-election by the Liberals, in what had been a safe Tory seat
since 1832. The election had been triggered by the dismissal of its incumbent
Tory MP for financial impropriety, but the election was also a protest vote
against the Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself.
24 November 2021, As informal migrant
crossings across the English Channel from northern France to Kent increased markedly over 2020, this day an
underinflated dinghy capsized, drowning 27.
11 November 2021, The number of
migrants crossing the English Channel informally today was 1,185, a new daily
record.
24 September 2021, The UK began to experience petrol shortages
due to a lack of HGV drivers to deliver the fuel to petrol stations.
6 May 2021, Elections were held across the UK. In the
Hartlepool by-election, the Conservatives won the historically-Labour seat.
Scotland elected its Parliament and Wales elected a new Senedd. London elected
a new Assembly, and there were English local council elections., also 12 new
Mayors were elected. The Tories did well in English local council elections,
and made a good showing in mayoral city elections, although they failed to
unseat Siddiq
Khan in London. Conservatives and Labour made inroads in Wales at
the expense of the Nationalists, In Scotland the SNP made small gains against
Labour, but fell just short of an absolute majority there..
31 December 2020, The UK
formally left the European Union, at 11.00pm UK time.
13 November 2020, Peter Sutcliffe,
lorry driver convicted of 13 murders, the Yorkshire
Ripper, died in prison. He had been convicted in 1981, and his sentence
converted to whole life in 2010.
6 April 2020, The UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was admitted to
intensive care with Covid-19.
4 April 2020, Kier Starmer was elected leader of the British
Labour Party, succeeding Jeremy Corbyn (who had lost hugely to the
Tories in December 2019, and was accused of anti-Semitic sympathies).
31 January 2020, The UK began to leave the European Union. A period
of transition, scheduled to end 31 December 2020, began during which trade
relations would be sorted out. Many people suspected this was too little time
to complete these negotiations.
20 December 2019, Boris Johnson, British PM, won a huge majority
of 358 to 234 against for his Bill to complete Brexit on 31 January 2020;
larger than his overall Commons majority of 78. From end January, a transition period is due to begin,
for 11 months until 31 December 2020; however many believed this was too short
and might have to be extended.
12 December 2020, General Election in the UK. Boris Johnson,
incumbent Conservative Prime Minister, won a major victory, gaining 365 seats,
a majority of 78. Boris Johnson now promised to deliver Brexit
by 31 January 2020, with the transition
period extending no longer than 31 December 2020. There was speculation of a
possible trade deal with the USA. Meanwhile Labour did badly, losing many
previously safe seats in the Midlands and North of England, which was
attributed to disaffection amongst blue collar workers in old-industrial areas;
Labour secured 203 seats. However Labour’s vote held up better in London. The
Liberal Democrats did badly, holding just 11 seats, losing seats despite a rise
in their % vote share; their leader, Joe Swinson, lost her seat to the SNP in
Scotland. The SNP did well as the Nationalist vote rose, taking 48 seats. In
Northern Ireland the DUP took 8 seats as Sinn Fein gained ground.
24 September 2019, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that PM Boris
Johnson had acted unlawfully when he prorogued (suspended)
Parliament, ostensibly because of upcoming Party Conferences, but in reality to
avert further debate on Brexit. Parliament returned to sitting the next day.
3 September 2019, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost significant
Parliamentary votes. MPs voted to force him to ask Brussels for an extension on
the Brexit process from 31 October 2019, and not to hold a General election
before this date. 21 Tory MPs rebelled and were expelled from the Conservative
Party by Mr
Johnson, who now led a Government with a minority of 47. Mr Johnson
said if he were compelled by law to ask for an extension (something he earlier
said he would never do), he would also threaten to be so disruptive to the EU
that in fact they would not grant one. Calling an early General Election in
October would, under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, have required two thirds
of MPs to vote for, which Boris Johnson did not get; it would also have
ensured that Parliament was not operating in full at the end of October so even
if Labour won they could not have voted to extend the Brexit deadline or avert
No Deal. However it was possible that the EU, despairing of the never-ending
Brexit process, would decline to offer an extension anyway, with President
Macron of France taking this position.
28 August 2019, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson took the highly
controversial move of announcing that the UK Parliament would be prorogued from
10 September for a crucial 5-week period until 14 October just before the
planned Brexit of 31 October 2019. Opponents of Brexit claimed that this was a
move to suppress any debate in parliament of the Brexit process, and prevent
the passing of a Bill to block a Brexit without a deal being made with the European
Union.
23 July 2019, Boris Johnson was elected new leader of the UK
Conservative Party and Prime Minister, with 66.3% of votes cast. He stood
against Jeremy
Hunt.
24 May 2019, Mrs Theresa May, UK Prime Minister, announced
her resignation, having failed to secure a Brexit deal that could get through
the UK Parliament.
21 March 2019, After lengthy talks between Mrs May, UK Prime Minister, and
the EU, the EU set new dates for Brexit. If Mrs May managed to get her deal
with the EU accepted at a third vote in Parliament, Brexit would take place on
22 May 2019. This would give the UK Parliament time to pass the necessary
legislation. However it was possible that the Speaker, Mr Bercow, would debar a 3rd
vote unless the proposal was ‘significantly different from the proposal that
was heavily defeated two times already; possibly the new schedule would
constitute a ‘difference’. If, however, Mrs May could not get her Deal passed, the UK
was to have until 12 April to ‘say what it wanted’ – which could be anything
from No Deal to postponing or even cancelling Brexit, revoking Article 50.
16 January 2019, The Motion of No Confidence in the UK Government
was defeated by 325 votes to 306.
15 January 2019, The UK House of Commons voted decisively to reject
Conservative PM Theresa
May’s EU Withdrawal Deal, by 423 votes to 202. The Deal was disliked
by those MPs who wanted a harder Brexit and feared that it tied the UK in too
closely to Europe; it was also rejected by those who wanted to delay or eve
cancel Brexit. Immediately after this vote the Labour Opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn,
put down a Motion of No Confidence in the Government.
12 December 2018, Following Theresa May’s failed last minute attempt at
renegotiation with the European Union on 11 December 2018, a leadership
challenge emerged today, with over 48 Conservative MPs voting for a leadership
election within the Party. She won the vote by 200 votes to 117, meaning no
further leadership challenge was possible for at least 12 months.
11 December 2018, UK Prime Minister Theresa May postponed a
Parliamentary vote on her Brexit Deal, which many had derided as giving up too
much to Europe, and quickly met European leaders to try and renegotiate terms.
She failed.
4 March 2018, Soviet double agent Sergei Skripal and his
daughter Yulia were poisoned in the UK city of Salisbury by a nerve gas agent,
likely Novichok, which is Russian in origin.
27 August 2017, A mystery gas cloud drifted in over Beachy Head
from the sea; 233 people were taken to Eastbourne Hospital with eye irritation
and breathing difficulties. The cloud was possibly chlorine from a ship
cleaning out its container tanks.
8 June 2017, UK General Election. Theresa May, Conservative Prime
Minister, had hoped to make large gains, as two years after the 2015 election
which gave the Conservatives a majority of just 6, she was well ahead of Labour
in the opinion polls in April 2017. However during the election campaign she
proposed financial limits on payment for dementia care which would have meant
many older people having to sell their home rather than pass it to their
families. By the time the election was held her opinion poll lead had shrunk to
just 1% to 7%. The results were,
Conservatives 318, loss 18; Labour 261, gain 31; Liberal Democrats 12, gain 3;
SNP 35, loss 19; DUP 10, gain 2; Sinn Feinn 7, gain 3; UKIP 0 (no change) Green
1 (no change), Others 12. Prime Minister
Theresa May
was forced into a coalition with the DUP to maintain majority government; this
could limit her hand on Brexit, since the DUP does not want a hard border with
the Republic of Ireland.
22 May 2017, An Islamist terrorist set off a bomb at a music
concert in Manchester. 22 were killed and 59 injured..
18 April 2017, UK Prime Minister Theresa May called a surprise
snap General Election for 8 June 2017. With opinion polls showing the
Conservatives ahead at 44% against Labour’s 23%, under their unpopular leader Jeremy Corbyn,
the Conservatives stood a hood chance of enhancing their current majority of 17
to perhaps over 100. However Corbyn said he would not stand at this
election, so Labour might have a more electable leader by then.
23.0 UK 2016 Brexit Vote
28 March 2017, Late this
evening, UK Prime Minister Theresa May signed Article 50, triggering the
exit process of the UK from the EU. The letter was
delivered to Donald Tusk (Poland), President of the European Council, on 29
March 2017. The two-year negotiation process was started; however after the
inconclusive UK General Election of 8 June 2017 this timetable was looking
tight.
13 March 2017, Nicola
Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish
Nationalist Party, announced she would campaign for a second referendum on
independence from the UK. This was in response to the imminent triggering of
Article 50 by UK Prime Minister Theresa May, starting the exit process from
the EU.
3 November 2016, Britain’s High
Court ruled that the Prime Minister, Theresa May, could not trigger Article 50 to
leave the EU without Parliamentary approval. This ruling was later upheld by
the Supreme Court. This opened up the possibility of Parliament severely
delaying or even thwarting the Brexit process.
13 July 2016, Theresa May
became Conservative Prime Minister as Cameron resigned. She won with the backing of
some 60% of Tory MPs. Other contenders, including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove
and Andrea
Leadsom, had backed out of the leadership contest. The UK had still
not yet invoked Chapter 50.
26 June 2016 The fallout
from the Brexit vote continued. David Cameron delayed invoking Chapter 50,
which would kickstart a 2-year procedure to negotiate the UK’s withdrawal from
the EU. Cameron expressed a preference for his successor as Tory leader to
undertake these negotiations. Meanwhile EU leaders were pressuring the UK to
invoke Chapter 50 soon. The EU leaders feared further ‘Exit’ referenda in
countries like France, The Netherlands, Denmark, possibly Sweden, in Spain,
Greece, and even Germany and the Czech republic. The Labour leader, Jeremy
Corbyn’s, position seemed precarious as ten of his Cabinet resigned, over his
lacklustre support for the Remain campaign. There was debate within the UK as
to whether the Referendum result was actually binding, especially if a UK
General Election ensued within a few months, which itself would require
legislation to amend the five year rule for such elections. Also by this
afternoon, nearly 3.4 million people had signed a petition asking for a second
Brexit Referendum; some signatures were suspected of coming from outside the
UK.
23 June 2016 The UK voted
51.9% to leave the European Union in the so-called Brexit referendum. David Cameron
resigned as Conservative Prime Minister. The actual figures were, OUT,
17,410,742, IN, 16,141,241, Turnout = 72.2%.
19 February 2016, Prime Minister
David
Cameron concluded negotiations for a deal redefining the
relationship between the UK and the EU. This was a preliminary move before a UK
referendum to be held on whether the UK should leave the EU. On 20 February 2016
the date for this referendum was set for 23 June 2016.
16 June 2016, Jo Cox, 41, MP for Batley and Spen, a
Yorkshire constituency, was killed, shot and stabbed, by Mr Tommy Mair. Mr Mair
supported the far-Right and was against immigration, and perceived Ms Cox
as favouring immigration.
21 August 2015, Britain and Iran re-opened their embassies in each
other’s capitals. This followed a nuclear agreement between Iran and the USA
organised by US
President Obama (but not yet ratified by US Congress).
7 May 2015, General election in the UK. David Cameron won a narrow
majority for the Conservatives with 331 seats. The Scottish Nationalist Party
(SNP) swept the board in Scotland, winning 59 of the 59 seats there; Labour
lost a large number of MPs there, also losing seats to the Conservatives in England;
Labour finished with 232 seats. The Liberal Democrats crashed to just 8 seats,
from 56. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) won 12.6% of the vote but obtained
just one MP, in Clacton; their leader, Nigel Farage, lost his Thanet South seat to
the Conservatives. The UKIP leader Nigel Farage, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg
and the Labour leader Ed Miliband all resigned. The Conservatives
picked up voted from Liberal Democrats and from UKIP supporters afraid of a
Labour-SNP coalition; UKIP came second in over 100 constituencies. Voters may
also have feared a Leftist government creating an economic crisis similar to
that recently suffered by Greece.
4 December 2014, Former leader of the UK Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe,
died aged 85. He became Party Leader in 1967, having been MP for North Devon
since 1959.
29 November 2014, Across Britain, mystery explosions or sonic booms
were heard. There were also reports of an explosion in Manchester, and near
Catterick barracks, where a six-mile stretch of the A1 was closed, but no
damage was to be found. Theories ranged from falling satellite debris to
meteorites to secret MoD experiments.
20 November 2014, In Britain’s Rochester and Strood by-election,
UKIP won its second MP.
9 October 2014, UKIP got its first MP elected in the Clacton
by-election, taking the seat from the Conservatives, as voters concerns about
immigration rose. UKIP also came close to winning another by-election this day
in Heywood & Middleton, Manchester; Labour held the seat by just 617 votes.
22.0 Scotland Independence Referendum 2014
18 September 2014, Referendum in
Scotland on independence from the UK; the vote was 55.4% against independence
(‘No’), .44.6% ‘Yes’, for independence. Had the been vote for independence,
Scotland would have become independent on 24 March 2016.
13 February 2014, George
Osborne, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, warned that an independent Scotland
(see 18 September 2014) would not be able to keep the Pound as a currency.
.26 August 2014, A long
history of child abuse in Rotherham emerged, mostly by Pakistani men
against White girls. As many as 1,400 children may have been abused between
1997 and 2003, some whilst they were in childrens’ homes. Local authorities
were accused of covering up the abuse, for fear of provoking racial discord.
5 August 2014, Baroness Warsi
resigned from Cameron’s UK Conservative Government. She had criticised the UK Government’s
refusal to condemn Israel over the assault on Gaza.
14 March 2014, Anthony Wedgewood Benn, Labour politician, died
aged 88. Against UK membership of the European Union, he was on the left of the
Labour Party, and fought to renounce his hereditary peerage so he could sit in
the Commons as an MP.
21.0 Great
Train Robbers, 1963-2013
18
December 2013, Great Train
Robber Ronald Biggs died aged 84. The
robbery was in 1963.
7
May 2001, Great Train
Robber Ronald Biggs returned to the
UK. He served just 15 months of a
30-year sentence before fleeing to Brazil; escaping extradition by fathering
the baby of a 19-year old stripper.
Partially paralysed by two strokes, Biggs intended to have a last visit
to a British pub before he died; instead he was arrested at Heathrow and sent
to Belmarsh Prison to complete the remainder of his sentence.
30 March 1975. The Great Train Robbers Ronald ‘Buster’
Edwards and James White were released on bail after
serving 9 years in gaol.
1 February 1974. Ronald Biggs, who had escaped from London’s
Wandsworth Prison
n 1965, was arrested in Rio De Janeiro, but extradition was refused. Biggs
had been serving 30 years for his part in the Great Train Robbery.
8 July 1965, Ronald Biggs, who played a part in the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escaped
from Wandsworth Prison. Whilst 2 prisoners distracted the guards in the
exercise yard, accomplices parked a removals van outside the wall and threw a
rope ladder over. Biggs climbed over and they excaped in a getaway car that had
been hoidden inside the van; the van was abandoned.
12 August 1964, Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson escaped from
Winson Green prison, Birmingham. He was recaptured four years later in Canada.
16 April 1964. Twelve members of the Great
Train Robbers were sentenced to a total of 307 years in jail.
20
January 1964. In the UK, the trial of the Great Train Robbers began.
8 August 1963. The Great Train Robbery took place at
Sear’s Crossing, Mentmore, near Cheddington, Bletchley, Buckinghamshire. A gang
of 15 men stole over £2.5million. Their haul was £2.5 million in banknotes
scheduled for destruction. The robbery
was well planned. They used batteries and a light to simulate a red stop signal
for the Glasgow to London mail train. When the train stopped they coshed the
driver, Jack
Mills, decoupled the engine and some of the carriages, and drove
them to Bridego bridge further up the line. Here the loot was loaded onto a
lorry and taken to a farm nearby, which the police quickly found. Charlie Wilson,
the first of the robbers, was arrested and charged later the same month. The
train driver was coshed on the head and died six years later, never fully
regaining his health.
8 April 2013, Mrs Thatcher the former Conservative PM died,
aged 87.
23 January 2013, In the UK, David Cameron, Conservative Party Leader,
promised to hold a Referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European
Union if he won the next General Election.
23 September 2010, The world’s biggest windfarm was inaugurated off
the UK coast at Thanet, Kent.
7 May 2010, UK General
Election; Conservative leader David Cameron formed a coalition with the Liberals.
3 March 2010, Former British Labour Party leader and writer Michael Foot
died, aged 96.
4 December 2009, The UK’s
Ministry of Defence closed its special unit for monitoring UFO sightings,
which had operated for over 50 years.
25 July 2009, The last British veteran of the Western Front in
World War One, Harry
Patch, died aged 111. A week earlier the oldest veteran, Henry Allingham,
had died aged 113.
1 October 2008, The French power company EdF acquired British
Energy plc, which operated 8 of Britain’s 10 nuclear power stations.
27 June 2007, In the UK, Gordon
Brown became Labour Prime Minister as Tony
Blair resigned from the Commons.
11 May 2007, Gordon Brown
announced his bid to be Labour Leader. On 25 June 2007 his succession was agreed
unchallenged at a Labour Party Conference in Manchester. In a contest for the
post of Depiuty Leader, Harriet Harman
won the final round.
10 May 2007, In the UK, former Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his retirement a week
after Labour did badly in the elections.
25 August 2006, The
Office for National Statistics announced that in June 2005 the population of
the UK had reached 60 million.
25 May 2006, The UK Government announced that the pension age would rise, from 65 to 66 in 2024, and to 68 in 2044.
7 February 2006, In Britain, Abu Hamza, radical Muslim cleric, 47, was
jailed for 7 years after being found guilty of inciting murder and terrorism.
7 January 2006, In the UK, Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal
Democratic Party, resigned after admitting he was being treated for alcoholism.
Sir Menzies
Campbell, deputy leader, now became acting leader.
11 December 2005, An oil
storage depot at Buncefield, near Hemel Hempstead, caught fire, at 6.am on
a Sunday morning. Fortunately at this time hardly anyone was around, and there
were only 42 injuries and no fatalities. However there was considerable damage;
the blast was heard 100 miles away, the depot burned for 3 days, sending a
plume of thick black smoke over large areas of southern England.
6 December 2005, David Cameron won the leadership
election for the United Kingdom Conservative Party.
4 July 2005, Violent demonstrations in Gleneagles, Scotland,
against the G8 Summit Meeting there.
5 May 2005, In the UK General Election, New Labour was re-elected but with a
substantially reduced majority.
5 March 2005, The Right Reverend Lord David Sheppard of
Liverpool died (born 6 March 1929).
6 January 2005, Sir Nicholas Scott, Conservative
MP for Paddington (1966-74) and for Chelsea (1974-94), born 5 August 1933,
died.
12 October 2004, A UK report by Adair Turner
warned of a looming pensions crisis, saying over 12 million people were not
saving enough.
9 October 2004, Queen Elizabeth II opened the new Scottish Parliament Building in
Edinburgh.
1 October 2004, UK Labour Party leader and
PM Tony
Blair recovered from a minor heart operation and said he would stand
down during his next term.
20.5 Iraq weapons report aftermath, 2003-04
28 January 2004,
The report by former Appeal Court Judge Lord Hutton into the circumstances of the
apparent suicide of MoD weapons expert David Kelly, on 17 June 2003, was published. Hutton
cleared the UK Government of any wrongdoing and criticised the BBC’s handling
of the claim that the Government
falsified intelligence on Iraqi weapons.
12 August 2003,
BBC journalist Andrew
Gilligan went before the Hutton Enquiry to defend his claim that the
UK Government had ‘sexed up’ an intelligence dossier on Iraq.
18 July 2003. David Kelly, defence expert, was found dead,
reported as ‘suicide’. The issue was over whether Iraq really could have
launched ‘weapons of mass destruction’, assuming it had any, within 45 minutes
or whether New Labour had exaggerated the threat to swing public opinion behind
Tony Blair’s
decision to fully back US President George W Bush in his attack on Iraq.
Kelly
had been named by a government source, potentially ruining his future career.
See 22 May 2003 and 1 August 2003.
18 November 2003, US President Bush visited Prime Minister Tony Blair of the
UK; there were ongoing protests against the US war on Iraq.
6 November 2003, Michael Howard became the new Conservative
Party Chairman.
29 October 2003, Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the
UK Tory Party, was defeated in a no-confidence vote. He resigned and Michael
Howard was elected leader unopposed.
4 September 2003, The Bullring
in Birmingham, Europe’s largest shopping centre, was opened by Sir Albert Bore.
27 July 2003, The results of a
comprehensive sonar survey of Loch Ness were announced. No large animal was
found.
26 June 2003. Denis Thatcher died, leaving his wife, Margaret,
former PM, a widow.
5 January 2003, Roy Jenkins, former Labour Chancellor and leader of the
SDP (Social Democratic Party) in the UK, died.
5 December 2002. Asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq entered
Britain legally from the Sangatte
refugee camp in France. Britain had agreed to accept 1,200 asylum seekers
as part of a deal with France to close the camp near the Channel Tunnel
entrance.
15 November 2002, Myra Hindley, murderer, died (born 1942).
9 August 2002, Peter Neville, British peace
activist, died.
3 May 2002. Barbara Castle,
Labour politician, died aged 92.
30 October 2001. Farmer Tony Martin,
who shot dead a teenage burglar, was cleared of murder.
17 September 2001. John Hume stepped down as leader of the
nationalist SDP (Social Democratic Party).
13 September 2001, Iain Duncan Smith leader of the UK Tory Party.
He was a little-known Eurosceptic from the Right Wing of his Party. He defeated
Kenneth Clarke.
19 July 2001, Lord Archer, Conservative Deputy Chairman and
novelist, was sentenced to four years prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice. See 24 July 1987.
7 July 2001, During race
riots in Bradford,
Yorkshire, the Manningham Labour Club was burnt down.
7 June 2001. In the UK, New Labour won a second term at the elections. Tony Blair won another landslide
victory, with Labour taking 413 seats against 166 for the Tories and 52 for the
Liberal Democrats. Turnout was down to 59%, the lowest since 1918, down on the
71% in 1997.
16 May 2001, John Prescott, Labour Deputy Prime Minister,
tussled with Craig
Evans at an election rally in Rhyll, north Wales.
26 March 2001, In Britain, the Post
Office changed its name to Consignia PLC, but remained wholly government-owned.
31 January 2001, The Scottish Court in The Netherlands convicted
one Libya and acquitted another on charges related to the bombing of a Pan Am
airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland,
in 1988.
27 August 2000. The notorious criminal, Reggie Kray, who was suffering
from bladder cancer, was to be released from prison so that he could spend his
last few weeks at home.
23 August 2000. Sir Richard Branson appeared to have won the
bid to run the National Lottery
after being given a month to satisfy the Lottery Commission’s questions. Both
Sir Richard’s and Camelot’s bids were rejected.
11 July 2000, Robert Runcie, Archbishop of
Canterbury, died.
18 June 2000, At Diver, 58 Chinese
migrants were found suffocated in the back of a lorry, having tried to enter
Britain illegally.
30 May 2000, In Birmingham,
England, demolition of the old Bullring
Centre began.
15 May 2000. The
Eden Project was launched in
Cornwall, at a cost of £79 million, housing thousands of plants from around the
world.
3 May 2000. The trial
of the Lockerbie bomb suspects began.
31 January 2000, Dr Harold Shipman
was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of at least 15 of his
patients, of a total of 365 suspected victims.
1 January 2000, In the UK it became
illegal for retailers to sell in anything but metric units.
11 November 1999, 752 hereditary peers lost their voting
rights in the House of Lords. They had formed a majority of the 1330 House.
However 92 of the hereditaries had a stay of execution, until reforms of the
House of lords were completed.
11 August 1999, A total
eclipse of the Sun was visible in south west England. However the weather was
cloudy.
9 August 1999, Charles Kennedy,
39, was elected as new leader of the Liberal Democrats, succeeding Paddy Ashdown.
26 June 1999. There were
problems at the UK’s Passport Office,
with queues for passports reaching a record 530,000.
16 June 1999, Screaming Lord Sutch
(born 1940), committed suicide.
8 June 1999, Jonathan Aitken,
former British Government Minister, was jailed for perjury.
20.0 Scottish and Welsh Devolution, 1997-99
1 July 1999,
Queen Elizabeth II opened the Scottish Assembly.
26 May 1999,
The
first Welsh Assembly for 600 years opened in Cardiff.
6 May 1999,
Elections to the new Welsh and Scottish Assemblies were
held. A large vote for the Nationalists in both countries prevented Labour from
gaining a majority, and coalition Governments were formed.
18
December 1997, Donald Dewar, Secretary
of State for Scotland, unveiled a Bill to give Scotland its own Parliament.
18 September 1997, Wales voted in
favour of devolution and a National Assembly. The ‘yes’ vote was much narrower than in Scotland, with a majority
of just 6,721 votes in favour.
11 September 1997, Scotland voted
in favour of a devolved Assembly. In
Scotland, 73.4% of those voting favoured a National Assembly, and 63.5%
favoured the Assembly having tax-raising powers.
16 March 1999, The
240-acre Bluewater Shopping centre opened near Dartford, Kent; it was then
Europe’s largest retail and leisure centre. It stood on the site of the former
Blue Circle chalk quarry.
14 October 1998, Labour
announced its intention to remove the 700 year old voting rights of the
hereditary peers in the House of Lords. Of the 1,165 members of the House
of Lords, 476 were committed Tories against 175 for Labour, Amongst the
hereditary peers, there were 304 for the Tories against 18 regular Labour
supporters. In 1999 Labour announced a compromise whereby 91 hereditary peers
could remain in a ‘transition’ House of Lords, whilst a Royal Commission
decided its eventual form.
13 August 1998, UK
authorities warned of a rat invasion,
saying there were 750,000 rat-infested homes in Britain.
31 March 1998, The RAF
withdrew its nuclear bombs from service, leaving submarine-based Trident
missiles as the UK’s only nuclear deterrent.
18 May 1998, In Britain, the New Labour Government announced that the new Minimum
Wage would be £3.60 per hour, coming into force in April 1999.
4 March 1998, The Countryside March was held, as 250,000
people marched through central London to protest at issues facing the UK
countryside. Points of protest included the ban on hunting with dogs and
Government policies on farming.
3 July 1987, Sir Gordon Downey’s
report into the ‘cash for questions’
scandal in the found that two former Conservative ministers, Neil Hamilton
and Tim Smith,
received payment from Mohammed
el Fayed in return for asking questions in the House of
Commons.
20 May 1997, The British intelligence agency MI5 first advertised to recruit
trainee spies, in The Times and The Guardian.
19.0 New
Labour gain power under Tony Blair 1993-97
2
July 1997. Gordon
Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave Labour’s first Budget speech for 18 years.
19
June 1997, Following
the resignation of John Major as Conservative leader, William
Hague, 36, became its youngest
leader since 1783.
3
May 1997. (1)
Tony Blair was officially sworn in as Prime
Minister. Tony’s
father was the son of music hall artists Charles Parsons and Gussie Bridson.
He was illegitimate however, so was adopted by a Glasgow shipyard worker, James Blair.
(2) The former
Deputy Prime Minister, Michael
Heseltine, was admitted to hospital with chest pains days after
the General Election. It was announced that he would not be contesting the
Conservative leadership.
1
May 1997. New Labour won the UK general election, defeating John Major’s Conservative Party. Tony Blair, 43, became the
youngest Prime Minister since 1812, with a majority of 179. Labour won 410
seats against the Conservative’s 169. Labour won 44.4% of the vote; the
Conservatives got 31.4%. The Conservative administration had, at 18 years, been
the longest serving government of the 20th century.
27 February 1997, In Britain a discredited and divided Tory
party lost its Parliamentary majority
with a by-election defeat in Wirral. This was a prelude to their defeat by New
Labour in general elections on 1 May 1997.
12
December 1996, After Labour won the Barnsley East by election, the Conservatives no longer had a majority
in the House of Commons.
3 July 1996, UK PM John Major promised that the Stone of Scone would be returned from Westminster to
Scotland.
2 May 1996, In the UK, the
Conservative’s loss of popularity continued as they won just 28% of the vote at
local government elections.
Conservative
leadership vote
4 July 1995, John Major won the
battle to lead the Conservative Party, beating John Redwood by 218
votes to 89.
22 June 1995, John Major, UK
Conservative Prime Minister, resigned I order to trigger a leadership contest,
in a bid to bolster his authority over
his divided Party. He went on to defeat right-wing Eurosceptic John Redwood, but his Party remained divided.
5 May 1995, The Conservative Party did
badly in local council elections, losing control in 62 councils in England and
Wales, retaining control in just 8, whilst Labour gained 42 to control a total
of 155, and the Liberal Democrats gained 14 to control a total of 44. The
Conservatives had also done badly in the Scottish local council elections of 6
April 1995, failing to gain a single one of 29 unitary authorities there. Prime Minister John Major faced a challenge to his leadership.
12 June 1994, In European Parliamentary
elections, the Tories won only 18 seats to Labour’s 62.
3 June 1993. Prime Minister John Major’s ratings were also falling fast. His popularity rating fell to 21%, the
lowest for ant PM since polling began in the UK in the 1930s.
6 May 1993, In Britain, the
Conservatives did badly in elections. In a by-election, they lost Newbury on a
29% swing to the Liberals. They also did badly in county council elections the
same day.
17 March 1993, In Britain, protests over
Budget plans to impose VAT on domestic fuel, initially at 8%, and at 17.5% from
1995.
18.0 Dunblane
Massacre, ban on handguns 1996-97
11
June 1997, The UK Parliament voted for a total ban on handguns.
16
October 1996. Proposals to ban most handguns in the UK, in the
aftermath of the Dunblane massacre.
13
March 1996. The Dunblane Massacre in Scotland;
16 children and a teacher died. The unstable misfit Thomas Hamilton, 43, entered Dunblane Primary
School and shot a teacher and 16 children in the gym, injured another teacher
and 5 children, then shot and killed himself. This began a debate in the UK and
other countries on banning handguns.
1995,
The Departrment for Education became part of the Department for Education and
Employment.
25 November 1995, Rosemary West,
aged 41, was sentenced to life for killing 10 women and girls, including her
daughter and stepdaughter. Lodgers at their house at 25 Cromwell Street Gloucester had also been murdered. Rosemary’s
husband Fred West,
53, had hanged himself whilst in custody at Winson Green prison, Birmingham, on
1 January 1995.
9 October 1995, Sir Alec Douglas Home,
British Conservative Prime Minister 1963-4, died (born 2 July 1903).
6 August 1995, British licensing laws were relaxed to allow pubs
to open from 12 noon on Sundays onwards.
24 May 1995, Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister 1964-70
and 1974-76, born 11 March 1916, died.
29 April 1995, Tony Blair got the Labour Party to drop Clause 4, which had called for common
ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. In a
modernising move, away from Socialism, the change to a commitment to work for a
just society, dynamic economy, and healthy environment was backed by 65.23% of
votes.
17 March 1995, Ronnie Kray died.
1 January 1995, Fred West, accused of mass murder, hanged
himself inside Winson Green prison, Birmingham.
19 November 1994. First National Lottery draw in the UK. Seven
people shared the UK£ 15.8 million jackpot prize. 25 million people bought
tickets, over half the adult population, raising UK£ 45 million, half of which
went on ‘good causes’.
1 November 1994, Sydney Dernley, Britain’s last surviving executioner, died aged 73.
21 July 1994, Tony Blair was elected leader of the UK Labour
Party. At 41 he was the youngest leader ever. John Prescott
was elected Deputy Leader.
12 May 1994. In the UK, Labour Party leader John Smith died suddenly of a
heart attack, aged 55. On 17 July 1994 Tony
Blair was elected leader of the Party.
24 February 1994, Police in Gloucester began excavating the
property of Frederick
West at 25 Cromwell Street.
He and his wife were arrested on 28 February 1994.
13 January 1994, In London, Westminster Council faced
criticism for gerrymandering election boundaries 1987-89. The Conservative
Government was tarnished by association.
10 January 1994, UK Prime Minister John Major started his ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, calling for a
return to old-fashioned family values.
15 December 1993. The Downing
Street Declaration; the UK committed itself to finding a solution to the
problem of Northern Ireland. Prime Ministers John Major of the UK and John Reynolds
of Ireland discussed the possibility of a future united Ireland.
17.8, James Bulger
murder 1993
24 November 1993. Two 11 year old boys, John Venables
and Robert
Thompson, were found guilty of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger
in Liverpool. Judge
Michael Moreland suggested watching violent video films had
contributed to the boy’s actions. They
were sentenced to ‘indefinite detention’.
1 March 1993, Funeral of two-year-old James Bulger,
abducted from Bootle shopping centre on 12 February 1993 and later murdered by
two youths on a Liverpool railway line; his body was found by the tracks on 16
February 1993. Two boys aged ten from Walton, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables,
were charged with the murder on 20 February 1993. The case provoked a moral
panic about social breakdown in society and ‘loss of values’.
12 February 1993, James Bulger,
two year old toddler, was abducted and murdered by two youths in Liverpool, see
1 March 1993.
12 November 1993, Britain refused to join a worldwide ban on
dumping nuclear waste at sea.
24 October 1993, Jo Grimond,
UK Liberal Party leader, died.
18 October 1993, As part
of UK defence cuts, the privatisation of Devonport and Rosyth naval dockyards
was announced.
2 August 1993. The UK ratified the Maastricht Treaty.
5 July 1993, Following
the breakup of the Soviet Union, major cuts were announced to Britain’s Royal
Navy.
See Russia for
breakup of Soviet Union
21
June 1993.
In Britain, government Minister Michael Heseltine suffered a heart attack.
9
June 1993,
In Britain, Norman
Lamont made a bitter attack on John Major in the Commons.
3
June 1993. Holbeck Hall, Scarborough’s only 4-star hotel, began to
collapse into the sea, with its extensive gardens. The collapse took several days.
27 May 1993. Norman
Lamont
resigned as UK Chancellor; Kenneth Clarke replaced him.
5 May 1993, Asil Nadir, Chairman of Polly Peck, jumped
bail and fled to Cyprus.
4 March 1993, In
Britain, a reform of the Honours System was announced, to give greater reward
for merit.
3 March 1993. Tony Bland, in a vegetative state since
becoming a victim of the Hillsborough
soccer disaster on 15 April 1989, was allowed to die by doctors.
21 February 1993. A poll revealed that nearly 50% of Britons
would emigrate if they could, the
highest since 1948.
19 February 1993, UK Prime
Minister John
Major rejected the idea of a posthumous pardon for First World War
soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion on the grounds that it would be
‘rewriting history’.
9 December 1992. The UK Prime Minister announced to the House of Commons that Prince Charles
and Lady Diana Spencer were to separate.
26 November 1992, In
Britain, the Queen announced she would pay income tax on her private income.
20 November 1992, A fire broke out in the private chapel at
Windsor Castle. The fire burned for 15 hours, causing major damage. The cause was a spotlight left in contact
with a curtain.
10
November 1992, In the UK, an inquiry into the Matrix-Churchill
affair was announced.
24 September 1992. The National Heritage Minister David Mellor
resigned after a sex scandal.
23 July 1992. The UK saw riots in Bristol, Carlisle, Blackburn, Burnley,
and Huddersfield.
62 youths were arrested.
18 July 1992. John
Smith
elected leader of the British Labour Party.
15 July 1992. British MPs gave themselves a 40% rise on their
expenses.
13 July 1992, Britain’s former executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, died.
13 April 1992, Neil Kinnock resigned as leader of the UK
Labour Party, following the Conservative victory of 9 April 1992.
9 April 1992. The Conservatives under John Major won the UK General
Election.
3 September 1991. Riots hit the British cities of Cardiff, Oxford, and Birmingham this week. All occurred on estates
with high unemployment and deprivation. The Cardiff riot was
sparked by a trading dispute between two shops, see 29 August 1991. The Handsworth, Birmingham,
riot occurred after a power failure and black-out. The one in Oxford was after
police cracked down on ‘hotting’ – the racing of stolen cars, on the Blackbird
Leys estate. Later in the month there were more riots in Tyneside, in the
West End of Newcastle.
29 August 1991. A trading
dispute between two shops in Cardiff led to riots.
Mr Abdul
Waheed, owner of a grocery shop on the poor Ely estate, won
an injunction against Mr
Carl Agius, the newsagent next door, preventing him selling
bread and groceries. Mr
Agius put a notice in his shop telling people of this, and
a crowd of mainly white youths petrol-bombed Mr Waheed’s shop. The police claimed the
violence was not racially motivated but had been opportunistic, a hundred of
the rioters had joined in after the pubs closed.
13 August 1991. Britain’s
new Dangerous Dogs Act came into
force.
29 July 1991, Margaret Thatcher
announced that she was to resign as MP
for Finchley after the next General Election, but still intended to play a role
in UK politics.
18 June 1991, Margaret Thatcher,
in a speech in Chicago, warned against a
European Super-State, saying it would be ‘nothing less than a disaster’.
24 April 1991, Gerald Ratner, Managing Director of Ratners,
Britain’s biggest chain of jewellers, announced his goods are ‘crap’ and that his earrings are likely
to last for less time than a Marks and Spencer sandwich. He later said he was
joking.
25 March 1991. Michael Heseltine, Department of the
Environment, announced the creation of the East
Thames Corridor.
17.6, Mrs
Thatcher ousted as Tory Leader; replaced by John Major, 1990
27 November 1990. John Major, at the age of 47,
became the youngest Prime Minister of the 20th century. The other
contenders for Tory leader were Michael Heseltine, aged 57, and Douglas Hurd.
In 1894 Lord
Roseberry was Prime Minister aged 46. Mrs
Thatcher had resigned on 22 November 1990, having failed to win a
first leadership ballot on the Conservative Party on 20 November 1990.
22 November 1990, Mrs Thatcher
resigned as Prime Minister, see 27 November 1990.
20 November 1990, Mrs Thatcher lost a leadership
ballot within the Conservative Party.
14 November 1990, Michael Heseltine announced he would
challenge Mrs Thatcher for office of Prime
Minister.
13 November 1990, Sir Geoffrey Howe made a Commons speech explaining
his resignation as Deputy Prime Minister. This speech helped to oust Mrs
Thatcher as Prime Minister.
1 November 1990, Geoffrey Howe resigned from Mrs Thatcher’s
Cabinet in a dispute over European Monetary Union.
2 October 1990. Mrs Thatcher announced Britain’s entry into
the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).
The Labour opposition leader Mr Neil Kinnock criticised this move.
22 September 1990. The Natural History Museum solved the Piltdown Man hoax. The
anthropologist behind the hoax was Sir Arthur Keith. See 21 November 1953.
1 July 1990, Tom King, UK Defence Secretary, announced an
18% cut in British forces on the Rhine over the next five years, as East-West
relations in Europe improved.
17.4, The Poll Tax
1987-91
26 March 1991, Norman Lamont, Chancellor,
raised VAT to 17.5% to finance a £140 per head cut in the Poll Tax.
21 March 1991. The Poll Tax was ditched as Michael
Heseltine, the Environment Secretary, unveiled a property tax to
replace it.
8 March 1991. The Tories suffered a shock
by-election defeat in Ribble Valley, their tenth safest seat. The Liberals
turned a 19,500 Conservative majority into a Liberal majority of 4,601; Labour
came a poor third. The defeat was blamed
on the unpopularity of the Poll Tax,
flagship of the third Tory administration under Mrs
Thatcher.
6 January 1991. John Major said the Poll Tax will not be abolished.
14 August 1990. In the UK, the Audit
Commission warned that 1 in 5 were avoiding paying the Poll Tax.
9 March 1990. Poll tax riots in Brixton, London.
There were also riots in Lewisham, Hackney, Haringey, Maidenhead, Reading,
Bristol, Plymouth, Gillingham, Norwich, Birmingham, Stockport, Leeds, Bradford,
and many other places. Both Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, and the
Labour leader, Neil
Kinnock, condemned the riots.
1 March 1990. Poll Tax riots
degenerated into violence across Britain. Concerns continued at “mad cow” disease in the UK.
17 November 1987, The UK Government announced
plans for a Community Charge (Poll Tax) to be levied in 1990.
1989, The Representation of the
People Act enfranchised expatriate voters who had left the Uk within the
previuos 20 years, to cast a proxy vote in the UK constituency they last lived
in.
26 October 1989. Mrs Thatcher’s Chancellor, Mr Nigel Lawson,
resigned. Sir
Alan Walters, part-time financial advisor to Mrs Thatcher, had derided the
European Monetary System that Mr Lawson wanted the UK to join as ‘half
baked’, in an article in 1988. This caused a public and embarrassing row between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Lawson.
However on 8 October 1990 Mrs Thatcher reluctantly agreed to her
Chancellor, John
Major, taking the UK into the Exchange
Rate Mechanism. However on ‘Black
Wednesday’ in 1992 the UK was ignominiously forced out of the ERM, along
with the Italian Lira, by currency speculators.
4 October 1989. Millions of fleas were released in the Norfolk
Broads to eat algae clogging up the waterways.
21 June 1989, British police arrested 250 people for celebrating
the Summer solstice at Stonehenge.
1 May 1989, A riot at Risley
Remand Centre began, in protest at conditions there. It ended three days
later with the promise of an enquiry.
18 April 1989, An explosion at Cormorant Alpha oil platform
led to the shutdown of 25% of North Sea oil production
28 March 1989, The remains of the Piper Alpha oil rig were sent to
the bottom of the North Sea.
1988, Britain’s first Jain Temple opened, in Leicester.
1988, The Department for Health
and Social Security (DHSS) was divided.
21 December 1988. Terrorists
blew up a Pan-Am jumbo jet carrying more than 270 passengers over the Scottish
town of Lockerbie. All the
passengers and 17 in Lockerbie itself died in the crash, on the evening of the
21st. The flight was from Frankfurt to the USA via Heathrow. The
bomb had been hidden in a transistor radio in the hold. After a three year
investigation two Libyans, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi
were blamed for the bombing. However the Libyan leader, Colonel Ghadafi, refused to
extradite the two men, so the U.N. imposed sanctions on Libya, under pressure
from America. Eventually the two men were extradited to Holland to face a
year-long trial under Scottish law, under which Megrahi was found guilty and
Fhimah was acquitted.
6 September 1988, 11 year
old Thomas Gregory
from London became the youngest person
to swim the Channel.
17.2 Formation and end of the Social Democratic
Party, 1987-90
1 June 1990, David Owen announced the dissolution of the
SDP, now down to just two MPs.
28 July 1988, Paddy Ashdown was elected leader of the SDP.
3 March 1988, The Liberals and the SDP
merged to form the Social and Liberal Democratic Party.
31 January 1988, The British Social
Democratic Party agreed to merge with the Liberal party, see 3 March 1988.
23 January 1988, The British Liberal Party
voted to accept a merger with the Social Democratic Party (see 3 March 1988)
17
September 1987, In Britain, the Liberal Party Assembly voted for
merger talks with the SDP.
30 August 1987,
In Britain, Dr David Owen
announced the formation of the breakaway ‘continuing SDP’ Party.
6 August 1987,
In Britain, the SDP voted to merge with the Liberal Party. Dr David Owen
resigned as SDP leader.
24 May 1988, Liverpool’s Albert Dock, restored as a business
and leisure centre, was opened by the Prince of Wales.
20 May 1988, British licensing laws were liberalised. The
Licensing Act received Royal Assent, and 65,000
pubs in England and Wales could now open 11am to 11pm Monday to Saturday.
9 February 1988, In Britain, the House of Commons voted to
allow proceedings to be televised.
6 February 1988, A survey in the UK found that out-of-order
phone boxes and Post Office queues were the top irritants of modern
life.
2 February 1988, In London, 2,000 nurses and other health
workers held a one-day strike over pay.
11 October 1987, A sonar survey
of Loch Ness failed to find any trace of the monster.
22 September 1987, In the UK, the Home Secretary
prohibited the sale of semi-automatic rifles.
19 August 1987. Michael Ryan,
27, shot dead 16 people in Hungerford, Berkshire, and injured another 14, then shot himself dead. He
had been depressed by the death of his father. A former paratrooper, he had a
large gun collection.
24 July 1987, Author Jeffery Archer
won a record £500,000 libel damages against The Star newspaper over allegations
that he had paid a prostitute, Monica
Coghlan, £70 for sex. See 19 July 2001.
12 June 1987. Mrs Thatcher
elected Prime Minister with a majority of 101. She was the first PM to achieve a third term for 160 years. The
Conservatives won 375 seats, Labour 229, Alliance 22 and Nationalists 6.
3 April 1987, Myra Hindley
confessed to two more murders, in an attempt to prove her rehabilitation.
24 January 1987, 162
police and 33 demonstrators were injured in clashes outside Rupert Murdoch’s News International
plant in Wapping, east London.
29 December 1986, Harold Macmillan,
Lord Stockton, former Conservative Prime Minister 1957-1963, died, aged 92.
26 October 1986, Jeffery
Archer resigned as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party
after allegations that he had made a payment to a prostitute to leave the UK,
to avoid a scandal.
24 August 1986, Wallis Simpson died.
10 June 1986, Queen Elizabeth II made Bob Geldof a knight, for his
fundraising activities.
9 January 1986, Michael
Heseltine
resigned from Mrs
Thatcher’s Cabinet, claiming she was stifling debate.
1985, The Representation of the
People Act raised the deposit required from electoral candidates from £150 (set
in 1918 to deter frivolous candidates) to £500.
1985, The Crown Prosecution Service was established.
1 October 1985, Rioting in Toxteth, Liverpool.
9 September 1985. Race
riots erupted in Handsworth, Birmingham.
28 January 1985, The case
against the civil servant Clive Ponting, charged with leaking
information about the sinking of the Belgrano,
opened.
23 January 1985. A House of Lords debate was televised live for
the first time.
17 January 1985, British Telecom announced it was to phase
out the famous red telephone boxes.
2 December 1984, The Thatcher government was accused of ‘gross
incompetence’ in Parliament as shares in the newly privatised British Telecom commanded an opening premium of
nearly 90%.
Ban
on Trades Unions at GCHQ Cheltenham
22 November 1984, The Law Lords upheld the Government’s ban on Union
membership at GCHQ Cheltenham.
16 July 1984, The High Court
ruled that the Government’s ban on Trades Unions at GCHQ Cheltenham was legal.
The Lords voted to abolish the Greater London Council (GLC) and other Metropolitan
Authority elections.
25 January 1984, The Government announced
that Trades
Unions would be illegal at GCHQ Cheltenham.
18 August 1984, Clive
Ponting, a civil servant, was charged with an offence under the Official
Secrets Act, relating to information allegedly passed on to an MP about the
circumstances surrounding the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War.
10 July 1984, National dock strike in Britain over use of
unauthorised labour.
9 July 1984. A bolt of lightning set fire to the roof of York Minster.
The 700 year old building suffered serious damage to the south transept.
19 October 1985, Coal miners in
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire set up the Union
of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM).
3 March 1985. End of the
12 month miner’s strike which began on 5 March 1984. 153 of Britain’s 174 coal mines went on strike;
some mines in Nottinghamshire and Kent stayed working.. One of the most
powerful images of this strike was the ‘Battle
of Orgreave’ – see 29 May 1984. The result was not only a defeat for the
National Union of Miners but for the whole trades union movement under the Thatcher
government; the miners had failed to secure any agreement on pit closures. A
large number of miners deserted the NUM and set up the Democratic Union of
Mineworkers, after being refused a strike ballot by the NUM leader Arthur Scargill.
The strike was officially estimated, by the Coal Board, to have cost it £1.75
billion. However Mr Scargill put the real cost at over £5 billion, or enough
to keep every pit open and to employ every miner in work for 32 years. The
strike was triggered by a National Coal Board plan to close 20 pits and shed
20,000 miner’s jobs, under the leadership of the American,
Ian McGregor.
The NCB made a 5.2% pay offer to the miners.
25 February 1985, 49% of UK
miners have returned to work, 51% remained on strike.
20 November 1984, The North Wales branch of the NUM voted to
end the strike.
6 November 1984. In Dublin, the High Court froze striking
British coal mineworkers money after a court decision that the strike, now in
its 35th week, was illegal
and that the Union must pay a fine within 14 days or have its assets seized.
31 October 1984 ACAS talks between the National Union of Mineworkers and the National
Coal Board broke down again.
10 October 1984, Arthur Scargill
was fined £1,000, and the NUM £200,000, for contempt of court.
21 September 1984, Violence at
Maltby Colliery, near Rotherham, as the miners
strike went on.
9 September 1984, Ian MacGregor,
Chairman of the National Coal Board, arrived in Edinburgh for talks with Arthur Scargill.
29 May 1984. The ‘Battle
of Orgreave’ occurred during the
Miner’s Strike. 84 people were
arrested and 69 injured (41 police, 28 miners) when 4,000 police held back
7,000 pickets who were trying to prevent coking coal being moved out of
Orgreave to the British Steel works at Scunthorpe. Two convoys of 34 lorries
raced through the picket lines with supplies for the blast furnaces. Mr Arthur
Scargill, leader of the National Union of miners, was blamed for
inflaming the situation. The miner’s strike was then 12 weeks old, having begun
on 5 March 1984. It lasted until 3 March 1985.
9 April 1984, In Derbyshire, over 100 miners
were arrested in violence connected with the miners strike.
15 March 1984. Only 21 of Britain’s 174 coal mines were working as strikes
against the Coal Board’s 5.2% pay offer, and its pit closure programme became
official. The strike was to drag on for
a year.
12 March 1984, 100 UK coal mines were now
on strike. NUM ;leader Arthur Scargill called for a national strike,
but did not fulfil the legal obligation of calling a strike ballot. Some mining
districts such as Nottinghamshire did not fully support the strike.
6 March 1984. Start of the 12 month miner’s strike. See 3 March 1985, and 29 May
1984 – Orgreave. Miners from 100
pits threatened with closure went on strike. The strike had been precipitated
by the decision by the National Coal Board, announced 1 March 1984, to
close Cortonwood Colliery. The NCB
planned to close a total of 21 collieries and make 20,000 employees redundant.
28 March 1983, Ian McGregor became chairman of
the British Coal Board. He disliked Trade Unions and public ownership. He now
began to close uneconomic pits, angering the National Union of Miners (NUM).
2 May 1984, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Liverpool International Garden Festival.
27 April 1984, The UK Government expelled 30 Libyan diplomats.
12 April 1984, The Bill to privatise British Telecom
was passed by the UK parliament. A Bill to privatise BT was put before
Parliament in 1983, but was opposed by the Trades Unions, and was lost to the
General Election of 1983. It was reintroduced soon after the election and
guillotined so as to speed it up.
22 March 1984, British civil servant Sarah Tisdall was jailed for 6
months for leaking to The Guardian that Cruise Missiles were on their way to
Britain.
13 March 1984, In the UK, Mr
Nigel Lawson delivered his first Budget.
10 February 1984, Harold MacMillan was awarded an earldom, on
his 90th birthday. He chose the name of Stockton from his first
constituency in 1924.
13 January 1984, A cooling tower at Fiddlers Ferry power
station, Lancashire, collapsed in high winds. Turbulence caused by the closely
grouped towers was blamed.
16.0 Greenham Common anti-nuclear protests 1951-91
5 March 1991. The last of the Cruise
Missiles were taken from Greenham Common for dismantling in Arizona under the
INF disarmament treaty.
18 January 1985. Protests continued at
Greenham Common USAF base; a protester managed to enter the base.
12 September 1984, The British High Court
granted an injunction against the Greenham Common peace camp.
4 April 1984, Bailiffs evicted women
from the Greenham Common protest site.
3 December 1983, Women peace campaigners
broke into Greenham Common US
airbase.
15 November 1983, The Greenham Common women’s group mounted their first protest against the US cruise
missiles sited there. The first cruise missiles had arrived in the UK on 13
November 1983.
13 November 1983, The first Cruise Missiles
arrived at Greenham Common.
1 April 1983, Thousands of
CND supporters formed a human chain linking Greenham Common to Burghfield, in protest at the installation of
Cruise Missiles.
12 December 1982.
30,000 women formed a human chain around the 14.5 km (9 mile) perimeter fence
of the Greenham Common US airbase in Berkshire to protest at the installation
of 96 Cruise Missiles there.
14 November 1982, In
Britain, 20,000 women surrounded the Greenham Common airbase in a peaceful
protest.
24 October 1981,
150,000 marched from London to Greenham Common in a protest against nuclear
weapons.
21 September 1980,
Anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common.
17 June 1980,
Anti-nuclear protestors gathered at Greenham Common as the US said it would
base Cruise Missiles there, and at Molesworth in Cambridgeshire. Britain was
the first NATO country to accept Cruise Missiles, part of NATO’s response to
the USSR stationing SS-20 rockets in eastern Europe.
18 June 1951.
The US was given permission for an airbase at Greenham Common, Berkshire.
28 November 1983. The Thatcher government announced an end to the
monopoly by opticians on the sale of glasses.
16 October 1983. Cecil Parkinson (see 14 October 1983) was
succeeded by Norman
Tebbit
14 October 1983, British Trade and Industry Secretary Cecil Parkinson
resigned after revelations of adultery with his secretary Sarah Keays emerged.
2 October 1983. Neil Kinnock,
41, became leader of the
British Labour Party. Roy Hattersley was his deputy.
8 September 1983, The UK Government made it obligatory for
NHS hospitals
to allow private contractors to tender for catering, cleaning and laundry
services.
21 June 1093, In Britain, David Owen became leader of the SDP.
13 June 1983. Roy Jenkins resigned as leader of the SDP, to
be replaced by David
Owen.
12 June 1983, Michael
Foot
resigned as leader of the Labour Party.
11 June 1983, British Cabinet reshuffle. Nigel Lawson became Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe became Foreign Secretary, Leon Brittan
became Home Secretary, and Cecil Parkinson became Trade and Industry
Secretary.
10 June 1983. Mrs Thatcher won her second term as Prime Minister.
She gained a majority of 144 seats. The Conservatives won 397 seats, Labour won
209, Nationalists 4, and the Liberal/SDP Alliance won 23 seats. Mr Nigel Lawson became Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The vote was split 42% Conservative, and 28% Labour. Michael Foot
was Labour leader, with a divided and weakened party. The Falkland victory, as well as declining unemployment, assured her
victory.
9 May 1983, Mrs Thatcher called a General Election.
8 January 1983, During a 5-day morale-boosting trip by Mrs Thatcher
to the Falkland
Islands, she spoke to troops aboard the HMS Antrim.
6 January 1983, In a reshuffle of the British Cabinet, Michael
Heseltine became Defence Secretary.
11 October 1982. King Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose was raised at Southsea,
Hampshire, having sunk in 1545. This was
the culmination of 17 years research on the wreck, involving almost 25,000
dives.
27 September 1982, On the opening day of the Labour Party
Conference in Blackpool, delegates voted to exclude the left-wing group Militant Tendency. The
Labour Party began to move to the Right.
22 September 1982, The TUC staged a ‘day of action’ in support of the NHS workers pay claim. UK unemployment rose to 3,343,075 in
September.
15.0 Falklands
War 1982
18 January 1983, Britain, the Franks Report
exonerated the Thatcher Government of any blame for Argentina invading the
Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982.
17 September 1982. The British aircraft
carrier Invincible returned from the
Falklands, with Prince
Andrew on board, to a rapturous welcome at Portsmouth. UK inflation dropped to 8%.
6 July 1982, In Britain, Lord Franks was appointed to
Chair of the Committee of privy Councillors to inbvestigate the background to
the Falklands Invasion.
11 June 1982, The QE2 liner returned to
Southampton, from the Falklands, carrying the survivors from three wrecked
British warships.
1 June 1982. British forces continued their advance in
the Falkland Islands, (see 2 April 1982),
fighting with the Argentineans 12 miles from Port Stanley. The Argentinian forces surrendered on 14
June 1982, the day Port Stanley was recaptured. Total casualties were 254
British and 750 Argentine lives.
See Falkland
Islands for Falklands War
5 April 1982, The British Foreign
Secretary, Lord
Carrington, resigned, as a British invasion fleet left Portsmouth
for the Falklands. On 18 March 1982 an Argentine scrap-metal dealer had
raised the Argentine flag on South Georgia, a sign of intention from Argentina
that was not interpreted correctly by the British Foreign Office. See 1 May 1982.
2 April 1982. Argentina launched an invasion of the Falkland Islands. On 4 April 1982
Argentina seized South Georgia, a
Falklands dependency. British forces set out from the UK on 5 April 1982 and
landed in the Falklands on 21 May 1982. South
Georgia was recaptured on 25 April 1982 with no casualties. See 1 June 1982.
5 September 1982. Douglas Bader, the famous WW2 pilot with two artificial legs,
died. He was born on 21 February 1910.
2 July 1982, Roy Jenkins was elected leader of the SDP.
26 May 1982, Kielder
Water, a large reservoir in Northumbria, opened.
25 March 1982, In Scotland, Roy Jenkins of the SDP won Glasgow
Hillhead in a by-election from the Conservatives.
11 March 1982, Britain announced it was to purchase Trident II
submarine based missiles to replace Polaris.
8 March 1982, R A Butler, UK Conservative politician, died
aged 79.
14 January 1982, Mark Thatcher, son of UK prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, was found alive after getting lost in the Sahara during
the Paris-Dakar car rally.
1981, British Telecom informed
rural parish councils that telephone boxes taking less than £140 per annum
would be taken out.
8 December 1981, Arthur Scargill became leader of the National
Union of Mineworkers. He succeeded Joe Gormley.
26 November 1981, Shirley
Williams became the first SDP (Social Democratic Party) MP, beating
the Tories and Labour inti 2nd and 3rd place at the
Crosby by-election. In 4th place was the Monster Raving Loony Party
candidate, Tarquin
Fin-tim-bin-whim-lin-bus-stop-F’Tang-F’tang-Ole-Biscuitbarrel.
15 October 1981, Norman Tebbit made his famous remark that his
father ‘got on his bike’ to look for
work; the unemployed were angry.
16 September 1981, The British Labour Party, at its Llandudno
Conference, voted for an electoral alliance with the SDP.
27 July 1981, British Telecom was created.
14.0 Urban Riots 1980-81
10 July 1981. Following the riots in Toxteth, riots broke out in other British
cities. Riots in Moss Side (Manchester) and Wood Green (London). Brixton
saw riots on 15 July 1981. Hull, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Reading, Preston and
Chester also saw riots.
5 July 1981. Youth rioted in Toxteth, Liverpool
for a second night running. There were also riots in Brixton and Southall in
London.
2 April 1980. Black youths rioted in the St Paul’s
area of Bristol after a club was raided by the police. 19 police
were injured.
23 May 1981. The Yorkshire Ripper Peter
Sutcliffe, 34 year old lorry driver, was found guilty at the Old
Bailey of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder 7 others, over a period
of four years. He was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years. He had been charged
with murder on 5 January 1981.
20 February 1981, Peter Sutcliffe was charged with
the murder
of 13 women.
5 January 1981. The
Yorkshire Ripper murderer, a lorry driver
called Peter
Sutcliffe, was arrested in Sheffield. He was to be convicted of 13
murders, and in 2010 his sentence was made whole life. He died on 13 November 2020.
25 November 1979. The West Yorkshire Police
Committee raised the price on the head of the Yorkshire Ripper to £20,000.
12.0 SDP Party
(Gang of Four) 1981
16 June 1981, The Liberals formed an
alliance with the SDP.
26 March 1981. The ‘Gang of Four’ (Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley
Williams) launched the UK’s Social Democratic Party (SDP).
25 January 1981. The ‘Gang of Four’, Roy Jenkins,
David Owen, Shirley Williams, and Bill Rodgers, broke away from the British
Labour Party to set up the Social Democratic Party. The SDP was launched on 26 March 1981.
18 February 1981, Mrs Thatcher promised more money for the
miners to avert a strike.
17 February 1981, In south Wales, miners threatened to strike
over pit closures.
10 February 1981, The National Coal Board announced plans to
close 50 pits employing 30,000 miners. The miners called for a national strike.
3
December 1980, Sir Oswald Moseley died in exile
at his home in Paris.
27
November 1980, Four Welsh Nationalist
extremists were jailed for arson attacks on holiday homes.
24
November 1980, British Chancellor Sir
Geoffrey Howe announced £1.06 billion reduction in public spending and a £3
billion increase in taxation.
10 November 1980 Michael Foot, a 67-year-old left winger was
elected leader of the Labour Party. He defated Denis Healey, much to the
surprise and delight of the Tories; Healey had a populist appeal
15 October 1980,
James Callaghan announced his resignation as Labour leader.
10 October 1980, Mrs Thatcher made he famous ‘The Lady’s not for turning’ speech at
the Conservative Party Conference. More liberal or ‘wet’ Tories were concerned
at rising unemployment and welfare spending cuts.
1 October 1980, The British Labour Party, at its Blackpool
Conference, voted for unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the EC,
and mandatory reselection of MPs.
12 June 1980, The holiday camp owner Sir Billy
Butlin died in Jersey
1 April 1980, In Britain, the steel strike ended.
26 March 1980, The UK
government announced the creation of Enterprise Zones.
20 January 1980. In Britain, the Labour Party adopted unilateral disarmament, protectionism, and
anti-Europeanism as its policies. Roy Jenkins began plans to start a new party.
1 January 1980, National steel strike began in the UK.
20 December 1979, In the UK, the
Housing Bill was introduced to Parliament. This
would, from 3 October 1980, give more than 5 million council house tenants the
right to buy their home at a discount.
30 November 1979, In Dublin, Mrs
Thatcher demanded a £1,000 million rebate from the EEC.
20 November 1979. Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen’s
Pictures, lost his knighthood after being exposed as a spy.
5 September 1979, Earl of Mountbatten's Ceremonial Funeral held
in Westminster Abbey
14 August 1979, John Stonehouse was released from prison.
5 August 1979, The Forestry Commission reported the
spread of Dutch Elm Disease, which had already infected 3 million trees.
11.0 Jeremy Thorpe
trial, 1977-79
22 June 1979,
In Britain, Liberal politician Jeremy
Thorpe was cleared of conspiracy to murder homosexual Norman Scott.
25 November 1978. The trial of
Liberal leader Jeremy
Thorpe, accused along with three other men of conspiracy and
incitement to murder a former male model, continued.
4 August 1978. Jeremy Thorpe,
leader of the Liberal Party, was charged with conspiracy to murder Mr Norman Scott.
He was later cleared.
27 October 1977, Jeremy Thorpe
denied any homosexual link with unemployed male model Norman Scott.
7 July 1976. David Steele
was elected leader of the Liberal Party.
10 May 1976. Jeremy Thorpe,
born 29 April 1929, resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, which he had led
since 18 January 1967. David Steele was the new Party leader from 7
July 1976.
10.0 Mrs Thatcher elected 1979
3 May 1979. General
Election. The Conservatives defeated Labour and Mrs Margaret Hilda Thatcher, born 13
October 1925, became Britain’s first
woman Prime Minister. The Conservative election majority was 43 seats. The
Conservatives won 339 seats, Labour won 269 seats, the Liberals 11,
Nationalists 4. Jeremy
Thorpe lost his seat, conclusively ending his political career.
28 March 1979. The UK Labour government of
James
Callaghan collapsed over the Home Rule vote in Parliament, losing
the vote by one vote, and Parliament was dissolved, see 1 March 1979.
22 March 1979. The leader of the
Conservative Opposition, Mrs Thatcher, put down a Motion of
No Confidence in the ruling Labour administration, hoping to force a spring
election.
9.0 Devolution
for Scotland and Wales, 1976-79
1 March 1979, 32.5% of Scottish voters voted in favour of
devolution, short of the 40% required; however a majority of Scots who voted
favoured devolution. The
Welsh vote was overwhelmingly against devolution. This led to the
defeat of the Labour government in a confidence motion, necessitating a General
Election, see 28 March 1979. In a Welsh
referendum, 11.9% of the electorate voted for independence and 46.9% voted
against it.
31 July 1978, The Devolution Acts for Scotland and Wales
received Royal Assent.
16 December 1976, The UK Government announced
that Scotland and Wales were to have referendums on a greater
measure of self-rule. From today, Scots could drink all day, pubs could stay
open from 11am to 11pm.
8.0 Winter of
Discontent 1978-79
14 February 1979, In Britain, trades unions and the Government announced a Valentine’s day
agreement to end the winter of discontent that had started with a 25%
pay claim by the lorry drivers. The settlement of the claim by petrol tanker
drivers merely encouraged other pay claims to breach the Government 5% ‘pay
norm’. Rubbish piled up in the streets, the dead went unburied, hospitals
turned away the sick, food and petrol supplies were disrupted.
12 February 1979, In Britain, over 1,000
schools closed because of shortages of heating oil.
31 January 1979, Industrial disputes led to
uncollected rubbish building up on Britain’s streets.
15 January 1979,
A series of one-day rail strikes hit
Britain.
10 January 1979,
In Britain, Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan
arrived back from a 4-day holiday in the West Indies to face the Winter of
Discontent.
5 January 1979, A lorry driver’s strike
was causing chaos in Britain.
11 November 1978, The TUC refused to endorse
the UK Government’s 5% wage limit.
7 May 1978 Mrs Thatcher,
Conservative Opposition leader, announced that she had no intention of outlawing
the closed shop.
1 May 1978, The first May
Day bank holiday in Britain.
30 March 1978, Charles and Maurice Saatchi were recruited by Mrs Thatcher
to help publicise her policies ahead of the General Election, then expected for
autumn 1978.
12 December 1977, Lady Churchill, widow of Sir Winston Churchill, died.
13 July 1977, The UK Government abandoned the Social Contract with the TUC as wages
rose.
1 April 1977, Hay on Wye declared ‘independence’.
23 March 1977, British Prime Minister James Callaghan and Liberal
leader David
Steel agreed the so-called ‘Lib-Lab pact, to avoid a defeat in a
confidence motion.
19 February 1977, Anthony Crosland, British Foreign Secretary,
died in office. On 21 February 1977 he was succeeded by Dr David Owen.
14 January 1977. Sir Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon and former UK
Conservative Prime Minister 1955 – 1957, died aged 79.
3 January 1977, Britain received an IMF loan of US$ 3.9 billion, the largets in IMF history, good for 2
years. The UK agreed to reduce the budget deficit by raising taxes and cutting Government
spending.
September 1976, The UK was, humiatingly.,
forced to ask the IMF for a loan of
US$ 3.9 billion.
19 November 1976, Sir Basil Spence, designer of the new Coventry
Cathedral,
died in Eye, Suffolk.
21 October 1976, Michael Foot became deputy leader of the
Labour Party.
24 August 1976, In the UK, Denis Howell was appointed
Minister for Drought. Rain fell three days ;later.
29 July 1976. Fire damaged the world’s longest pier, at Southend,
Essex.
25 April 1976. The Post Office in Britain stopped Sunday
collections; these were partly resumed in 1990.
5 April 1976. James Callaghan, born 27 March 1912, succeeded
Harold
Wilson, who had resigned,
as prime minister. Callaghan defeated Michael
Foot in the final ballot for leadership of the Labour Party by 176
votes to 137. Callaghan remained Prime
Minister until the General Election of 1979.
See 4 April 1974.
24 March 1976, Bernard, Viscount Montgomery,
Irish-born
British Army Field Marshall in World War II, died aged 88.
16 March 1976. Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced his retirement from UK
politics. James
Callaghan became new Labour Prime Minister on 5 April 1976. Callaghan, aged 64, had defeated Michael Foot
in the leadership contest by 176 votes to 137.
2 February 1976. The 310 acre National Exhibition Centre was opened by the Queen at
Bickenhill, Birmingham.
29 January 1976, In Britain, male model Norman Scott alleged in court
that he was the homosexual lover of Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe in the 1960s.
24 January 1976. Mrs Thatcher was dubbed the Iron Lady in the Soviet newspaper Red Star after a
speech about the Communist threat.
18 January 1976, British Labour MPs Jim Sillars and John Robertson
launched the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) to campaign for greater devolution for
Scotland.
7.5 Iceland-UK Cod
War, 1974-76
1 June 1976. Britain and Iceland signed
an agreement in Oslo to end the Cod War.
Up to 24 British trawlers would be permitted to fish within the 200-mile
zone claimed by Iceland.
For
events of Cod War see also Iceland 1970s
24 February 1976, Britain sent a fourth
gunboat to Iceland.
10 December 1975, The first shots were fired
in the Cod war between Britain and Iceland.
25 November 1975, The UK Government
authorised the sending of three Royal Navy frigates to protect British trawlers
fishing in disputed waters off Iceland.
25 July 1974, The International Court of
Justice at The Hague ruled that Britain was not bound to observe Iceland’s
unilateral extension of its fishing rights from 12 to 50 miles in 1972.
11 August 1975, British Leyland was taken under UK
Government control.
3 November 1975, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened a
pipeline that was to bring 400,000 barrels of North Sea Oil ashore every day at the Grangemouth refinery. North
Sea Oil had been discovered in the 1960s; the first exploited oilfield was
Ekofisk, tapped from 1969. The global oil crisis of 1974 intensified the need
to develop North Sea resources.
30 October 1975. The Forestry Commission said more than 16
million trees had been destroyed in Britain because of Dutch Elm Disease.
29 October 1975, The Yorkshire
Ripper, Peter
Sutcliffe, committed his first murder, Wilma McCann.
1 August 1975, Britain signed the Helsinki Agreement on
closer co-operation with Europe.
19 June 1975. Lord
Lucan was
found guilty of murdering his nanny, but he was still missing.
5 June 1975. A referendum in the UK showed a 67.2% majority in favour of remaining in the EEC.
17, 378,581 (67.2%) voted for Europe, and 8,470,073 (32.8%) voted no. The only areas in the UK to have a ‘no’
majority were the Shetlands and the Western Isles of Scotland.
24 April 1975, The British Government decided to take a majority
shareholding in British Leyland motor
company.
7.3, John
Stonehouse disappearance, 1974-76
6 August 1976, The UK MP John Stonehouse
began a seven-year sentence for fraud.
18 July 1975. John Stonehouse, former Labour
minister, returned to Britain to face 21 charges of fraud, forgery, and
conspiracy. On 6 August 1976 he was convicted of theft and conspiracy and
sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.
21 March 1975, John Stonehouse, the disappeared
MP, was arrested in Australia for theft, fraud, and deception.
24 November 1974, The MP John Stonehouse
disappeared from as Miami beach; it was assumed he had drowned.
7 November 1974. Lord Lucan, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared
following the murder of his children’s nanny. The nanny had been found
bludgeoned to death on the 6th November, and his estranged wife was
also brutally attacked. Police arrived at Lucan’s flat but he was not there;
his bloodstained car was found in Sussex, and some suspected he had drowned
himself. His body however was never found. Several alleged sightings of him
occurred in the following years. In 2015 his heir, George Bingham, attempted to have him legally
declared dead but the family of the murdered nanny lodged an objection.
15 March 1975, Troops in
Glasgow cleared 70,000 tons of refuse that had built up during the dustmen’s
strike.
20 February 1975,
Britain issued new £10 notes, depicting Florence
Nightingale carrying a lamp.
13 February 1975, The UK miners accepted a pay rise of 35%.
7.2, Heath
loses General Election, 11/1974; replaced as Party ;leader by Mrs Thatcher
11 February 1975, Mrs Thatcher was confirmed as
leader of the UK Conservative Party
4 February 1975. Edward Heath resigned as leader
of the Conservative Party. Mrs Thatcher became the first woman to lead a
political party on 11 February 1975. Aged 49, she was the wife of a wealthy
businessman and the mother of twins. She had defeated 4 other male challengers
for the position of leader of the Conservatives. 146 MPs had voted for her,
against just 79 for her nearest rival, William Whitelaw. Geoffrey Howe, James Prior,
and John
Peyton were far behind.
12 October 1974, Ladbrokes gave odds of 50 to 1 against Mrs Thatcher being the successor
to Edward
Heath.
11 October 1974. Labour won the British
elections with a tiny majority of three seats. Labour won 319 seats,
Conservatives won 277, Liberals 13, Scottish Nationalists 11.
15 January 1975, Britain proposed to nationalise its aircraft
construction industry.
2 January 1975, British hospital consultants started a
work-to-rule over new contracts.
22 November 1974, As anger mounted at the Birmingham pub
bombings, there were calls in the UK for a return of capital punishment and
some attacks on Irish workers in Birmingham.
18 October 1974, A unit in Whitehall; was set up to prepare
for devolution of power to Wales and Scotland.
6 September 1974. Charles Kray, elder brother of the Kray twins,
left Maidstone Prison for 5 days ‘acclimatisation leave’.
26 June 1974, In the UK, Labour and the TUC agreed on the ‘Social Contract’, to restrain pay
claims.
21 June 1974. The destroyer HMS Coventry was launched at
the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead.
1 June 1974, A major explosion at the Nypro chemical works at Flixborough, Lincolnshire, killed 29 people. 2,000 houses were damaged and a large cloud
of toxic cyclohexane gas escaped. Cyclohexane was used to manufacture nylon. A
pipe at Nypro had sprung a leak, leading to 40 tons of cyclohexane gas escaping
in about one minute, this gas cloud then ignited.
20 May 1974, The Cornish Parliament, or Stannary, sat for the first time
in 221 years.
8 May 1974, UK nurses began a strike over low pay.
5 April 1974, Richard Crossman, British Labour MP, died aged
66.
1 April 1974. Major
reorganisation of British Local Authorities. Rutland disappeared, and 4 new
counties were created. They were Avon, Cleveland, Humberside, and Cumbria.
6 March 1974. Harold Wilson formed a minority Labour
government. Mr
Denis Winston Healey
became Chancellor of the Exchequer. The UK coal miners were offered a 35% pay
increase, and returned to work. Labour had 301 seats, the Conservatives had
297, the Liberals 14, 9 were held by Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, and 12 to
Northern Ireland.
7.1, Edward Heath Conservative
Government, toppled by industrial unrest and energy crisis, 1973-74
9 March 1974, Britain’s 3-day-week ended. The
three-day week had begun in December 1973 to conserve fuel supplies. Oil
supplies from the Middle East had been disrupted due to an Arab-Israeli war.
4 March 1974, Edward Heath resigned as Prime Minister.
28 February 1974. General Election in the UK. 4 March 1974. Harold Wilson, born 11 March 1916, succeeded Edward Heath as Prime Minister.
There was no overall majority;
Labour gained 301 seats, the Conservatives 296, and the Liberals, 14 seats.
Other parties gained 9 seats. See 13
December 1973, 4 February 1975 and 5 April 1976. Edward Heath had tried to
make a coalition with the Liberals on 7 February 1974 but they refused. The Conservatives gained 225,789 more votes
than Labour did, but fewer seats.
17 February 1974, British Opposition leader Harold Wilson
proposed the ‘Social Contract’ between the Labour Party and the TUC. In return
for wage restraint, Labour would promote social legislation.
10 February 1974, In Britain the National
Union of Miners began an all out strike, calling for a wage rise of 30-40%.
14 January 1974, Talks between British
Prime Minister Edward
Heath and the National Union of Miners leader, Mick McGahey, broke down., On 28
January 1974 Heath
accused the NUM of trying to bring down the government.
1 January 1974, New Year’s Day was a public
holiday for the first time in the UK.
13 December 1973. A three day working week, beginning from 1 January 1974, was
ordered by Edward
Heath’s government because of the Arab oil embargo and the coal miner’s industrial action. See 5
December 1973 and 8 January 1974. Use of electricity for much of industry and
commerce was restricted, and TV had to close down at 10.30 pm. The miners had
rejected a 13% pay offer and staged an overtime ban, and fighting in the Middle
East had massively raised oil prices. Coal supplies to the power stations
dropped by 40%. Disruption to the coal mines, power stations, and railways
forced a General Election, on 28 February 1974, which the Conservatives lost.
Within 1 week 320,000 workers in the Midlands
alone registered as temporary unemployed; nationwide the unemployment total
rose to 1.5 million. However many smaller Black Country companies just carried
on with a normal work week. Officially, five-day working recommenced on 9 March
1974.
4 February 1974, UK coal miners, in an 86%
turnout vote, voted 81% in favour of a national strike.
12 December 1973, On British Railways,
an overtime ban began to disrupt services.
5 December 1973, The UK government announced
a nation-wide speed limit of 50 mph to conserve oil stocks,
see 13 December 1973.
13 November 1973, In the UK, a state of emergency was declared as
miners and power workers went on strike.
12 November 1973, British miners began an
overtime ban in protest at their pay offer.
1 November 1973. The Royal Commission on the constitution
completely rejected the case for separate sovereign parliaments for Scotland and Wales.
20 October 1973, The Dalai Lama first visited Britain.
1 October 1973, Denis
Healey
promised that Labour will tax the rich ‘until
the pips squeak’.
3 September 1973, In the UK, 20 Trade Unions were expelled
from the TUC.
2 August 1973. 46 people died and 80 were injured when fire
swept through the Summerland
amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man. The acrylic sheeting covering the
structure caught fire and melted onto the people below.
1 May 1973, A TUC 1-day strike in protest at pay restraint was
supported by 1.6 million workers.
8 November 1973, The Cod War between Britain
and Iceland ended. For more details see Iceland.
26 May 1973. An
Icelandic gunboat shelled and holed a British trawler.
21 May 1973, A British
warship and an Icelandic frigate played cat and mouse in the first Royal Navy
action of the Cod War. The British frigate Cleopatra
and the Icelandic gunboat Thor were
shadowing each other when the Thor
suddenly turned and chased after a German trawler; the Cleopatra followed. The Thor
suddenly turned and confronted the Cleopatra;
Cleopatra retreated, with Thor in chase. As darkness fell the two
ships were still dodging each other.
18 May 1973, Royal Navy
frigates were sent to protect British trawlers fishing in disputed waters near
Iceland.
24 April 1973, An Icelandic
gunboat opened fire on two British trawlers.
6 December 1972, In Britain, four ‘Angry Brigade’ anarchists
were jailed for conspiracy to cause explosions after a record 111-day trial.
17 September 1972, The
first Asians fleeing Idi Amin
arrived in the UK.
18 July 1972, In the
UK, Reginald Maudling resigned as Home Secretary because of connections to John
Poulson, an architect facing bankruptcy and a police corruption enquiry. He was
succeeded by Robert Carr.
6.0 UK Miner’s
Strike, 1971-72
28 February 1972. The British miners returned
to work, after 7 weeks, after agreeing to a wage increase.
25 February 1972, UK miners voted to return to
work, accepting by a vote of 27 to 1 the pay offer of 18 February 1972.
18 February 1972, British miners were offered a £6 a week pay increase. See 25
February 1972.
16 February 1972, Power cuts lasting up to 9
hours hit Britain as the miners strike
continued.
9 February 1972. Due to the month-long
miner’s strike, Britain declared a state of emergency. A three-day week was
imposed.
9 January 1972, UK miners strike began; the
first miner’s strike since 1926. The UK Government planned coal rationing.
10 June 1971. Joe Gormley was elected
President of the National Union of Miners.
5.0 UK
accession to the European Economic Community 1971-73
8 June 1973, Enoch Powell said people should vote Labour to
protest against Britain joining the EEC.
1 January 1973. Britain, Denmark, and
Ireland joined the EEC, enlarging it from 6 to 9 countries.
5 March 1972, Prime Minister Edward Heath
informed the House of Commons that the United Kingdom had renounced the use of
the five techniques for deep interrogation (hooding, wall-standing, subjection
to noise, ‘relative’ deprivation of food and drink, and sleep deprivation).
22 January 1972. Britain, Denmark,
Norway, and Ireland signed the EEC Treaty – to join January 1973.
Norway later withdrew after a referendum showed a majority of Norwegians were
against membership. See 1 January 1973. As the British Conservative Prime
Minister Edward Heath signed the
Treaty of Brussels, he had ink thrown over him by protestors against the
redevelopment of Covent Garden Market.
See
also European
Union for more events relating to the UK and the development of the EU
11 December 1971, Geoffrey Rippon signed terms with the EEC for the protection of
fishing limits after the UK was to join the EEC; these later turned out not to
protect UK fishing interests.
30 October 1971, An opinion poll
found most of the British electorate opposed membership of the EEC.
28 October 1971. The House of
Commons voted in favour of Britain joining the Common Market with a majority of
112. Votes were 356 for against 244 anti. 69 Labour MPs voted with the
Conservative Government for membership.
13 October 1971, The Conservative Party
Conference voted overwhelmingly for EEC membership.
4 October 1971, The Labour Party Conference
voted overwhelmingly against EEC membership.
7 July 1971, The UK
Government published its terms for entry into the EEC.
21 May 1971. French President Pompidou said the UK could join the EEC.
15 October 1971, The UK passed legislation to curb
immigration.
10 July 1971, Offa's Dyke Path was officially opened by Lord Hunt.
20 June 1971, Britain announced that Soviet space scientist Anatoli
Fedoseyev had been granted political asylum.
15 June 1971, The UK Education Secretary, Mrs Thatcher, said she planned
to end free school milk. The Conservative Government warned it would reduce
financial support for any local council that continued to illegally supply
milk, contrary to the Education (Milk)
Bill. This Bill passed its Commons vote by 281 to 248 against. The Bill was
intended to free up resources to replace older primary schools.
8 March 1971, The British postal strike ended. See 20 January 1971.
24 February 1971, The Immigration Bill was introduced in the
UK; this will end the right of Commonwealth citizens to settle in Britain.
1 February 1971. Licences for radios
abolished in the UK. See 1 November 1922).
20 January 1971, (1) UK postal workers went on strike for a 19.5%
pay claim. See 8 March 1971.
(2) The RAF Red
Arrows aerial display team collided in mid-air, killing four.
2 December 1970, The UK Parliament voted against retaining British
Summer Time over the winter.
26 November 1970. The first year of Edward Heath’s government was
marked by the most days lost to strikes since 1926, the year of the General
Strike. 8.8 million working days were lost.
31 July 1970, The British
Royal Navy ended its long tradition of a daily rum ration for the sailors.
After the British capture of Jamaica in 1655, rum had replaced beer because it
remained sweeter for longer in hot climates. From the late 1700s it was mixed
with lemon juice, to ward off scurvy. Later, lime juice (which contained less
vitamin C) was substituted for the lemon, earning the British sailors the
nickname ‘limeys’.
20 July 1970, British Chancellor Iain Macleod died. On 25 July 1970
Anthony
Barber became Chancellor.
16 July 1970. The first State of emergency in Britain since 1926
was called by Prime Minister Edward
Heath as the dock workers went on
strike. The docks strike lasted until 3 August 1970.
8 July 1970. Roy
Jenkins was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.
18 June 1970. General Election in the UK. Edward Heath
became Conservative Prime Minister. The Conservatives won 330 seats, against
287 for Labour, 6 for the Liberals and 1 Scottish Nationalist, an overall Conservative
majority of 31.
17 June 1970. The UK issued decimal
postage stamps. Stamps were in
denominations of 10p, 20p, and 50p.
14 May 1970, The UK Minister of Housing and Local Government announced
that potash mining would be allowed from beneath the North York Moors National
Park at Boulby, under strict
environmental conditions.
13 March 1970. English schoolgirl Susan Wallace became the first 18 - year old eligible to vote.
See 12 May 1969.
15 February 1970, Lord Dowding, British Air Chief Marshall and
head of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, died aged 87.
15 December 1969. Swansea
received City Status.
16 June 1969, Earl
Alexander of Tunis, British military commander
who led the invasion of Italy in WW2, died.
9 June 1969, Enoch Powell
proposed voluntary repatriation of
immigrants, causing a storm of protest.
12 May 1969. The voting age in Britain was lowered to 18
from 21.
10 May 1969, In the UK, local elections left Labour in control
of only 28 of 342 borough councils in England and Wales.
1 May 1969, Queen Elizabeth II opened the new Ordnance
Survey offices in Southampton.
5 March 1969. The gangland twins Ronald and Roger Kray, 35, were
found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey and given life sentences. The judge
said they should not be released for 30 years.
22 February 1969. President Nixon of the USA arrived in Britain for talks with Prime Minister
Harold Wilson.
1968, The Ironbridge Museum Trust
was founded to preserve the ‘birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’.
30 November 1968. The Trades
Descriptions Act came into force.
16 October 1968, In
Britain, the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices merged.
10 October 1968, Enoch Powell warned that immigration might
‘change the character of England’
27 September 1968, The French again vetoed UK membership of
the EEC.
13 September 1968, British banks announced plans to cease Saturday opening.
3 August 1968, The Countryside Act allowed local
authorities to designate National Parks.
6 May 1968, (1) An opinion poll suggested 74% of Britons supported Enoch Powell’s views on immigration.
(2) The Kray Twins were charged with ten offences including two of
conspiracy to murder.
20 April 1968, Enoch Powell, Conservative MP for south-west Wolverhampton, made his famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech about the
dangers of immigration at a hotel in Birmingham. See 6 May 1968.
9 April 1968, In Britain, the Race Relations Bill was published.
17 March 1968, Violent anti-Vietnam War demonstrations outside
the US Embassy in London. 25,000 Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) marchers
fought with police. The VSC, which wanted a victory for North Vietnam, had been
organised by the Trotskyist International Marxist Group, whose members included
Pat Jordan,
Tariq Ali
and David
Horowitz.
22 February 1968, The UK Government was concerned at the level of
immigration of Asians from East Africa.
16 January 1968, The UK government announced public expenditure
cuts of £700 million. This included postponing a rise in the school-leaving
age, and re-imposing prescription charges. There would also be a withdrawal of
the military from all bases east of Suez, except for Hong Kong.
11 January 1968. Emigration from Britain exceeded immigration by
30,000 in the second quarter on 1967.
19 December 1967. Second
French veto by De Gaulle on British membership of the E.E.C. The pound was
devalued, and Harold
Wilson made his ‘pound in
your pocket’ television speech.
29 November 1967, Roy Jenkins succeeded James Callaghan as Chancellor.
27 November 1967, De Gaulle
vetoed Britain’s entry into the EEC.
2 November 1967, The first Scottish Nationalist Party candidate took
their seat at Westminster. In the
by-election at Hamilton, Winifred Ewing took the seat for the SNP, a
party formed in 1934.
8 October 1967. Clement
Atlee, British Prime Minister 1945-51, died aged 84.
28 July 1967, The UK steel industry was nationalised.
18 July 1967, British
forces were to withdraw from areas east of Suez by the mid-1970s,
1 April 1967. (1) The
Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserves formed.
(2) Britain’s first Ombudsman was created, Sir Edmund
Compton.
30 March 1967, The Torrey Canyon was finally destroyed by
RAF bombing.
18 March 1967. The Torrey
Canyon ran aground on the Seven Stones reef off Lands End. The 975
foot tanker spilled 117,000 tons of
Kuwaiti crude oil that was bound for Milford Haven. Within six days 30,000
tons of oil had escaped producing a 260 square mile slick. Thousands of gallons
of detergent were dumped on the slick, but two days later the tanker broke her
back during a salvage attempt, releasing a further 30,000 tons of oil. On 28
and 29 March the RAF took emergency action, and tried to burn off the oil. They
dumped aviation fuel, high explosive bombs, rockets, and napalm onto the slick.
The six hour bombardment was a success
but by then the oil had fouled 100 miles of Cornish coastline.
18 January 1967. Jeremy Thorpe, born on 29 April 1929, became
leader of the Liberal Party, replacing Joe Grimond. Thorpe
resigned on 10 May 1976.
1 December 1966, Britain’s Post Offices issued the first Christmas Stamps.
23 October 1966, BP announced the discovery of large gas fields in
the North Sea.
22 October 1966. KGB master
spy George Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs, using a home-made rope ladder to
scale the high perimeter wall, He had been serving a 42-year sentence for
espionage meted out in 1962, one year for each of the lives his treachery
was estimated to have cost. On 20 November
1966 he arrived in East Berlin.
21 October 1966. The Aberfan disaster. A coal waste tip collapsed at 9.30am, burying a school in
the Welsh Valleys, shortly after the children had arrived for morning assembly.
It was a half day and by midday the schools would have been empty again for the
half term holiday. 2 million tons of rock and sludge engulfed both the infants
and junior schools. Also engulfed were a row of cottages and a farm; 147
people, 116 of them children, were killed. Aberfan was a close-knit community, and now had just five surviving
children. The National Coal Board was blamed for siting the colliery waste tip
on top of a natural spring; heavy rain had further destabilised the waste heap.
9 October 1966, David Cameron, UK Conservative
Prime Minister 2010 - 2016, was born in Marylebone, London.
23 August 1966, The Cotswolds were designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
21 July 1966, The first
Welsh Nationalist MP, Gwynfor Evans, took
his seat in Parliament after a by-election.
14 July 1966, The
Welsh Nationalists won their first
by-election, at Carmarthen.
23 May 1966. In Britain, a State of Emergency was declared in
response to the Seamen’s strike.
6 May 1966. The Moors
murderers Ian Brady, 28, and Myra Hindley, 24, were found guilty of murder at
Chester Crown Court and jailed for life.
14 April 1966, The South Downs was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
31 March 1966. General Election in the UK. Labour under Harold
Wilson won a landslide victory, gaining a majority of 66. Labour won
363 seats, the Conservatives won 253 seats, and the Liberals won 12.
19 February 1966. A 26 year old man was gassed as he
attempted to cook a dinner for his wife. He had failed to realise that you had
to ignite the gas. The Ministry of Public Works revealed plans to build an
underground cafe, ticket office, and sales room, beneath Stonehenge.
28 October 1965. The Moors Murderers, Ian
Brady and Myra
Hindley, were charged with murdering a 13-year old giel, Lesley Ann Downey,
whose body had been found on the moors
on 15 October 1965.
8 October 1965, Edward Heath
said he would take Britain into the European Community.
21 September 1965, BP
(British Petroleum) became the first company to discover oil in the North Sea.
2 August 1965, A UK White Paper limited immigration from the
Commonwealth.
28 July 1965. Edward Heath, born 9 July 1916, became leader of the Conservative Party.
Sir Alec
Douglas Home had resigned as leader on 22 May 1965. Heath was leader until 1975 when Mrs Thatcher
became Party leader (11 February 1975). Heath received 155 votes against 133 for Reginald
Maudling and 15 for Enoch Powell. At 49 Heath was the youngest leader of
the Conservative Party for a century.
26 July 1965, The Post
Office announced that in future UK telephone numbers would not include letters.
24 May 1965, Westminster announced that Britain was to switch to metric measurements.
23 April 1965. The Pennine Way, 250 miles from Edale
in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm in Roxburghshire, opened. This was the first
long distance footpath in Britain.
24 March 1965. David
Steel became Britain’s youngest MP at the age of 26.
6 March 1965, Herbert Morrison,
UK Labour politician, died aged 77.
2 February 1965, In the
UK, PM Harold
Wilson announced the cancellation of three expensive defence
projects. Two were for aircraft capable of vertical takeoffs and landing, the
Armstrong Whitworth AW.681 was a large military transport plane, and the Hawker
Siddeley P.1154 was supersonic fighter aircraft. The third, the British
Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 was a high-speed attack and reconnaissance jet. Wilson said that
the cost of the research and development for the TSR-2 alone had already
reached £750 million, more than eight times the original forecast, and that
each of the 150 planned TSR-2s would cost £4 million each.
30 January 1965, State funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, see 24
January 1965.
24 January 1965. Sir Winston Churchill died, aged 90,
exactly 70 years after his father died. He was buried in Bladon churchyard,
within sight of Blenheim Palace, his birthplace. He was born, on 30 November 1874,
a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, in Blenheim Palace. His
funeral was on 30 January 1965, when Big Ben was silenced.
1964, The Ministry of Defence was created, from a temporary such organisation
established after World War Two, along with the Admiralty, Air Ministry and War
Office. This copied a process of centralisation as had occurred in the USA.
1964, Britain began the creation
of a national gas distribution grid. The stimulus for this was partly
technical; a large Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal had been huilt at
Canvey island for imports of gas from Algeria; the high calorific value of
Algerian gas meant it had to be ‘reformed’, mixed with leaner manufactured gas,
before it could be distributed to households.
15 October 1964, Labour
won the UK General Election with a majority of 4. Labour had 317 seats
(12,205,814 votes, 44.1%), the Conservatives 304 (12,001,396 votes, 43.4%), and
the Liberals 9 (3,092,878 votes, 11.2%). Harold Wilson was the new Prime Minister,
succeeding Alec
Douglas Home. He inherited a balance of payments deficit of nearly
£700 million. James
Callaghan became Chancellor of the Exchequer.
27 July 1964. Sir Winston Churchill last appeared in the
House of Commons. He died on 24 January 1965.
19 March 1964. Harold Wilson
presented each of The Beatles with a
silver heart as joint winners of the Show Business Personality of 1963 award.
19 October 1963. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Conservative, became Prime Minister. Harold
Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister on 18 October 1963.
10 March 2006, John Profumo, British
politician, died.
10 October 1963, Harold Macmillan announced he would resign as Prime Minister, due to
ill-health and the Profumo Affair;
see 5 June 1963 and 19 October 1963.
26 September 1963, Lord Denning’s
report on the Profumo affair was
published. He said there was no breach of security and government ministers
were not involved in promiscuous behaviour.
5 September 1963. Christine
Keeler, one of the girls at the centre of the Profumo scandal, was arrested and charged with perjury. She was
sentenced to nine months on 6 December 1963. See 5 June 1963.
21 July 1963, In
Britain, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan appointed Lord Denning
to investigate the security aspects of the Profumo affair.
5 June 1963. War
Minister John
Profumo resigned, admitting he misled the Commons about his
relationship with a call girl called Christine Keeler, who had links to a Russian
diplomat. See 5 September 1963.
22 March 1963, In the
British House of Commons, John Profumo, Secretary of State for War,
denied that he had sexual relations with Miss Christine Keeler, an attache of the Soviet
Embassy in London.
31 July 1963, In Britain, Mr A N Wedgwood Benn, who had become 2nd
Viscount Stansgate, renounced his peerage as he was now allowed to do under the
Peerage Act 1963. This made them eligible to become MPs in the House of
Commons. He changed his name to Tony Benn in 1972.
15 April 1963, In Britain, disorder broke out during the last
stages of the Aldermaston March, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND).
6 April 1963, Anglo-US Polaris weapons agreement signed.
17 March 1963. The first of the Tristan da Cunha islanders
returned home from Britain.
14 February 1963 Harold Wilson became leader of the Labour
Party, see 18 January 1963. Other candidates were James Callaghan and George Brown.
See 18 January 1963.
18 January 1963. Hugh Gaitskell, former UK Labour Party leader from 1955 to 1963, died unexpectedly. See 14
February 1963.
3.0 De Gaulle refuses to admit UK to the EEC
due to links with USA, 1961-63
14 January 1963. De Gaulle
vetoed Britain’s membership of the EEC. He said the UK was too close to
the Commonwealth and the USA, and not ‘sufficiently European’.
21 December 1962, The US agreed to sell
Polaris missiles to the UK.
18 December 1962, PM Harold MacMillan of the UK and President
Kennedy of the USA concluded the Nassau Agreement, at Nassau,
Bahamas. This allowed the US navy to
provide Polaris missiles for the Royal Navy, normally operating under NATO
command. This Anglo-US collaboration was resented by General
De Gaulle of France, who saw it as proof that Britain was not
sufficiently European. Within a month De Gaulle had vetoed UK membership of the EEC, see
14 January 1963.
8 November 1961. Negotiations with Britain began in Brussels
to join the Common Market.
17 December 1962, In the UK, a committee on the reform of the
House of Lords recommended that an heir should be allowed to disclaim his
peerage.
22 January 1962. The ‘A6 murder’ trial began. It was to be
the longest murder trial in British legal history, lasting until 17 February 1962,
and ended with the hanging of James Hanratty.
He had murdered Michael
Gregston in a lay-by on the A6.
1 November 1961, The UK,
concerned about rising immigration, planned a Commonwealth Immigration Bill to
limit their numbers. 21,000 Commonwealth citizens migrated to the UK in
1960 but 100,000 were expected for 1961. Number quotas and/or skills
requirements could be imposed. See 2 July 1962.
9 October 1961. Margaret Thatcher
got her first government job, as Parliamentary Secretary
4 October 1961, The Labour Party Conference voted against having
Polaris bases in Britain.
17 September 1961. A large ‘Ban the Bomb’ demonstration in London was ended by the police with
830 arrested, including Vanessa Redgrave. 15,000 had attended the
demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
12 September 1961, The philosopher Bertrand Russell, aged 89, was
arrested and imprisoned for protesting against nuclear weapons.
28 August 1961, The earliest known Roman mosaics were
discovered at Fishbourne.
8 May 1961. George Blake, 38, a former British diplomat,
was jailed for 42 years for spying for Russia.
8 March 1961. The death of the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Born in 1876
in St Helens, Lancashire, he was the grandson of the founder of the Beecham’s pills business.
31 December 1960, National
Service ceased in the UK. The last batch of 18-year olds were called up. Of
the 2,049 who received their call-up cards, 50 would join the RAF at
Cardington, Bedfordshire, the rest went to Aldershot for 2 weeks basic training
and joined the Army.
3 November 1960, Hugh Gaitskell successfully fought off a
challenge for Labour Party leadership by Harold Wilson.
1 November 1960, It
was announced that US Polaris missile submarines were to be based in the Firth
of Clyde.
5 October 1960, The British Labour Party, at its
Scarborough Conference, voted overwhelmingly for unilateral nuclear
disarmament.
27 July 1960, In Britain, Derick Heathcoat Amory retired as Chancellor
of the Exchequer. He was replaced by Selwyn Lloyd, former Foreign Secretary. The Earl of Home
became the new Foreign Secretary.
30 April 1960, Britain abandoned the Blue Streak ,missile programme.
29 March 1960, UK PM Harold MacMillan
reached agreement with US leaders on a nuclear test ban treaty to be put to the
USSR.
20 February 1960, Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, English
archaeologist, died in London.
17 February 1960, The UK Government said it would allow the US
to build a missile early warning system to be built at Fylingdales,
Yorkshire.
For events of
Cod War see also Iceland 1950s, 60s
26 December 1959. The first charity walk was organised, in
aid of the World Refugee Fund, by Kenneth Johnson of Letchworth,
Hertfordshire. The intended route covered 50 miles from Letchworth to Yatesbury
in Wiltshire. 20 men and one woman paid 1 shilling to enter; ten gave up after
13 miles, 3 after 22 miles, 1 after 25 miles, 4 at Princes Risborough, and 3,
including Johnson,
carried on for 50 miles, giving up at Ewelme, Oxfordshire. About £20 was
raised.
25 November 1959, Charles Kennedy, British
politician, was born.
UK General Election. Harold Macmillan
(Conservative) remained in office.
8 October 1959. UK
general election. The Conservatives under Harold MacMillan and his slogan
‘You’ve never had it so good’ won,
and Mrs Thatcher was elected an MP.
The Conservatives won 365 seats, labour won 258, and the Liberals got 6. Macmillan remained Prime Minister.
7 May 1959, An agreement was reached enabling Britain to buy components
of atomic weapons, as opposed to actual nuclear warheads, from the USA.
7 January 1959, Peter Thorneycroft, British Chancellor, and Enoch Powell
and Nigel
Birch, resigned from the UK Government because they did not think it
was doing enough to fight inflation. Harold Macmillan,
the Prime Minister, left London for a goodwill tour of the British
Commonwealth.
7 August 1958. The Litter
Act came into force in Britain.
24 July 1958. The first
life peerages were awarded in Britain, under the Life Peerages Act.
4 April 1958, The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
held its first protest march this
Good Friday. Members marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Atomic Weapons
Research Establishment at Aldermaston,
arriving on 7 April 1958. 600 members completed the 50-mile march and 12,000
attended the final rally.
29 March 1958, Sir William Burrell,
Scottish shipping merchant and philanthropist, died aged 96.
6 March 1958, The TUC
and the Labour party called for H-Bomb tests to stop.
17 February 1958, The
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, CND, was launched by Bertrand Russell
and Canon John
Collins.
6 August 1957. Despite
the Conservative PM, Harold MacMillan,
stating that ‘most of us have never had
it so good’, last month, 2,000
people were emigrating from Britain every week, for the USA or Commonwealth
countries like Canada and Australia.
Many were professionals or science and medical graduates.
23 July 1957, In Britain, violence broke out on picket lines as
a national bus strike took effect.
20 July 1957, Conservative
PM Harold Macmillan said that ‘most of our people have never had it so
good’.
6 June 1957, In Britain the Rent Act received Royal Assent, This removed many controls on
rents. Labour MPs protested.
14 May 1957, Petrol
rationing in the UK, caused by the Suez
Crisis, ended.
4 April 1957. Britain announced that compulsory National Service, 2 years long for all reaching 18,
would end in 1960.
3 April 1957, The UK Labour
Party called for H-Bomb tests to stop.
9 January 1957. Anthony Eden, aged 59, resigned as Prime
Minister, on grounds of ill-health, in the wake of the Suez Crisis. On 10 January 1957 Harold
Macmillan became Prime Minister. Rab Butler was deputy PM but had
also supported the Suez adventure and there would have been a back-bench revolt
if Butler
had become PM. A bitterly disappointed Butler received the consolation prize of
becoming Home Secretary under Macmillan,
and Peter
Thorneycroft became the new Chancellor. Macmillan
dismissed Labour calls for a general election by the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell,
and busied himself with mending relationships with the US under the recently
elected President
Eisenhower.
22 December 1956. Britain and France withdrew their forces from Egypt, under intense pressure from the USA. The
Suez Crisis had caused a run on Sterling, and the US would not halt this
without a withdrawal.
23 November 1956. As the Suez
Crisis deepened, petrol rationing
began in the UK, and driving tests were suspended.
15 November 1956. UN emergency forces arrived in Suez, and
began to clear the Canal of wrecked ships on 27 December 1956. UN forces began
taking over from the British, under strong pressure from the USA. The British
PM, Anthony
Eden, was suffering from psychological strain caused by the unanticipated world hostility to his Suez
adventure, and flew to Jamaica on 23 November 1957 to rest.
1 November 1956. Ernie (Electronic Random Number Indicating
Equipment) was born as Premium Bonds
first went on sale in Britain.
31 October 1956. France and Britain bombed Egyptian airfields
in the Suez Crisis. The speed of
events – Egypt was only given 12 hours to withdraw from the Canal – suggested
to US
President Eisenhower that the whole operation was staged to maintain
Anglo-French influence in Suez. See Israel
(1956)
For Suez Crisis 1956 see Egypt
16 October 1956, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and Foreign
Secretary Selwyn
Lloyd visited Paris and met with French Minister Guy Mollet
and Foreign Minister Christian Pineau to discuss joint action
against Egypt.
25 September 1956, Transatlantic telephone cable between the
UK and the USA became operational.
1 April 1956, The first US U-2 spy planes arrived at RAF
Lakenheath.
23 March 1956, Foundation stone of Coventry Cathedral
laid by Queen Elizabeth II. The
Cathedral was consecrated on 25 May 1962. The former 14th century
cathedral along with the city’s mediaeval centre had been destroyed in an
11-hour Luftwaffe blitz on 14 November 1940 when over 1,000 died.
7 December 1955. Clement Attlee, aged 72, resigned as leader of
the UK Labour Party; Hugh Gaitskell was elected as leader by a wide
margin. Gaitskell
died in 1963 and Labour did not come to power again until 1964, with Harold Wilson
as leader. Attlee
entered the House of Lords as First Earl Attlee, until his death in 1969.
12 October 1955, The Soviet Navy made a goodwill visit to
Portsmouth, UK, and the British Royal Navy made a goodwill visit to Leningrad
(St Petersburg), Russia.
21 September 1955, The UK annexed Rockall, to prevent the USSR using it as a base to spy on British
missile tests.
3 August 1955, Duncan Sandys, UK Housing Minister, instructed local authorities to set up
Green Belts similar to London’s around other major towns and cities. The
idea was to stop food producing farmland being lost to urbanisation, and to
stop unsightly ‘ribbon development’ along main roads. Where possible, urban development was to be
by ‘infilling’. This month, denim jeans
became fashionable in the UK.
4 July 1955. British dock strike ended after 1 month.
14 June 1955, Rail workers called off the strike which began on
29/ May 1955.
31 May 1955, In Britain, troops went on stand-by as the effects
of the rail and docks strikes worsened.
29 May 1955, Rail strike began in Britain.
26 May 1955, The Conservatives
won the General Election, with a majority of 59. They won 345 seats to Labour’s
277. The Liberals won just 6 seats.
24 May 1955, Docks strike began in Britain.
5 April 1955. Sir Winston Churchill, aged 80, resigned as
Prime Minister. He suffered s stroke in 1953. Anthony Eden succeeded him. Harold Macmillan became Eden’s new Foreign Secretary.
25 February 1955, Britain’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal was completed.
2.0 End of
rationing in Britain 1948 – 1954 (See also other country timelines for rationing there)
3
July 1954. Food rationing ended in Britain; all goods were now off rations. Smithfield Market,
London, opened at midnight instead of 6am to cope with the demand for beef.
5 February 1953, The UK Food Minister, Gwilym
Lloyd-George, declared an end to the rationing of sweets and
chocolate. Domestic purchases of sugar, however, stayed on-rations until
September 1953. Toffee apples were in greatest demand, followed by nougat and
liquorice strips. Sweets had been briefly de-rationed in 1949 but demand had
outstripped supply, prompting re-rationing after 2 months.
5 October 1952, In the UK, tea came
off-ration. However meat, bacon, sugar, butter, margarine, cooking fats, eggs,
cheese, were still rationed. All British food rationing ended on 3 July 1954.
21 February 1952. Identity cards were abolished in Britain.
10 July 1950. Soap rationing ended in Britain.
24 April 1949. Sweets and chocolates came off
rations in Britain. Clothes
rationing, which began on 2 June 1941, ceased on 15 March 1949. All food rationing ended on 3 July 1954. Identity cards were abolished in
Britain on 21 February 1952.
15 March 1949, Clothes
rationing ended in Britain.
9 September 1948 Footwear rationing ended in the UK.
31 December 1954, Harold MacMillan, British Conservative Housing
Minister, announced that a record number of houses, 354,000, had been built
during 1954.
4 November 1954, Two by-elections in the UK, Sutton and
Cheam and Morpeth. Both seats were retained by the incumbent Party,
Conservative and Labour respectively.
2 November 1954, A dock workers' strike in the UK ended.
20 October 1954, A docks strike reduced Britain’s trade by
half.
18 October 1954, In Britain, Winston Churchill reshuffled his
Cabinet, with Harold
Macmillan becoming Minister of Defence.
7 October 1954, Seebohn Rowntree, English social reformer,
died aged 83.
3 July 1954. Plans for a new steelworks at Motherwell,
Scotland, were announced.
1 July 1954. 90% of rabbits
in southern Britain were infected with myxomatosis. Farmers were happy since rabbits destroyed crops worth
£50 million each year; scientists worried about upsetting the balance of
nature.
7 June 1954, Alan Turing, mathematician who broke the Nazi codes during World
War Two, committed suicide. After his conviction for homosexuality on 31 March 1952
he had opted for chemical ‘treatment’ rather than prison; this consisted of
oestrogen injections, which made him put on weight and grow breasts.
14 April 1954, Aneurin Bevan resigned from the Labour Cabinet in protest at British Government support for the re-arming of Germany, so
soon after World War Two.
3 April 1954, Oxford won the 100th boat race.
1 December 1953, Harold Macmillan boasted that 301,000 new homes have been built in
Britain during the Conservatives second year in office.
21 November 1953. The discovery of the Piltdown Man skull on 18 December 1912 in Sussex by Charles Dawson
was revealed to be a hoax, see 22
September 1990.
6 May 1953. Tony Blair,
UK Prime Minister 1997 - 2007, was born.
24 April 1953. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Winston Churchill.
23 February 1953, An
amnesty was granted to WW II deserters.
1 January 1953, ‘Bomber’ Harris, head of Bomber Command
responsible for the bombing of Dresden,
was knighted.
23 October 1952. The
Claerwen Dam, on the River Claerwen in mid-Wales, was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth
II. Construction work had begun on 18 August 1946 when the Mayor of
Birmingham set off the first charge of dynamite.
Birmingham had begun to be threatened by a water
shortage from the 1890s, and the nearest supply was in mid-Wales. An Act of
Parliament was passed in 1892 authorising the construction of three dams on the
River Elan and three more on the River Claerwen. The Elan reservoirs were built first, and then satisfied the demand of
Birmingham, which then had a population of half a million, and most had to
carry their water in a bucket from an outside tap. But by 1946 Birmingham had
over a million people, and more of these had a sink and a bathroom, and there
had been a severe drought in 1937. By 1940 city planners determined to
build the Claerwen reservoirs too, as soon as the War was over. The largest
dam, designed by Sir William Halcrow, was to be 184 feet high and 1,166 feet
long. Behind would be a lake four miles long and holding ten billion gallons of
water. Birmingham could not have all the water; places as far as Hereford also
relied on the water from here, so enough had to be let through for this. During
construction, accommodation had to be built on site for over 200 men, with
housing, canteen, stores, and offices. The building work was held up by
terrible weather during the late 1940s; blizzards, interspersed with floods and
droughts, finally completed in 1952.
21 September 1952, Sir Montague Burton, British multiple tailor,
knighted in 1931, died in Leeds.
11 July 1952, Figures from the 1951 Census showed that one household in three lacked a bath,
and one in twenty had no piped water.
21 April 1952, Stafford Cripps, British Labour politician,
died aged 62.
31 March 1952, Alan Turing, the computing expert who led the
effort to break the German Enigma codes in World War Two, was convicted of being party to
gross indecency, meaning homosexuality.
3 February 1952, In England, 283 people died in gale force
winds and high tides causing major floods on the east coast. Thousands were
made homeless.
10 January 1952, The USA reached agreement with the UK over
air bases in Britain.
28 November 1952, The UK Government
confirmed the order setting up the North
York Moors National Park.
20 November 1951, Snowdonia in Wales was designated a National Park.
15 August 1951. Dartmoor was designated a National Park.
28 December 1950. In the
UK, the Peak District was designated as
the first National Park.
1935, 300 acres of land around Snowdon were gifted to
the Nation. This was to be the start of Snowdonia
National Park.
27 October 1951, In Britain, Winston Churchill formed a
Conservative Government, with Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary and R A (Rab)
Butler as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
25 October 1951. Margaret Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher, became the
youngest person, at age 26, to stand in a general election. She lost. However the Conservatives won 321 seats against
295 for Labour, 6 for the Liberals, and 3 for other parties. The Conservatives
had the majority of seats yet Labour had won more of the votes cast. Winston Churchill succeeded Clement Attlee as
Prime Minister. The Conservative s promised to de-nationalise steel and road
haulage, but wuold leave other nationalised industries alone.
29 August 1951, Sydney Chapman, British economist and civil
servant, died (born 1871)
24 July 1951, The Tyne pedestrian and cycle tunnel, Newcastle, opened.
It was Britain’s first purpose-built cycle tunnel, opened as part of the
Festival of Britain celebrations, and cost £833,000 to construct.
25 May 1951. British diplomats Burgess (1910 – 1963) and MacLean
(1913 – 1983) were first reported missing. They had defected to Moscow.
They had been recruited by the Soviets whilst working at MI5 during the 1930s.
14 April 1951. Ernest Bevin, Labour
politician and Trade Unionist, died.
11 April 1951. The Stone of Scone (Stone of Destiny) was recovered
at Forfar three months after its
theft from Westminster. It returned to Westminster on 13 April 1951. Scottish Nationalists had stolen it
from Westminster Abbey on 25 December 1950.
3 April 1951, Brendan Barber, English Trades Union leader,
was born
1 April 1951, A survey of 12.4 million dwellings in Britain revealed that
1.9 million had three rooms or less, that 4.8 million had no fixed bath, and
that almost 2.8 million lacked exclusive use of a toilet. 4.7 million, 38%, had
been built before 1891, and 2.5 million dated from before 1851.
1 January 1951, The UK steel industry was nationalised.
25 December 1950. Scottish Nationalists stole the Stone of Scone from
Westminster Abbey, see 11 April 1951. The
Stone is a piece of sandstone marked with a Latin cross; according to legend it
was the stone Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel where he saw visions of angels.
In around 700 BC the Stone was taken to Ireland where it was set on the Hill of
Tara, the crowning place of Irish kings. Invading Celtic Scots took the Stone
to Scotland. In 1259 the English under King Edward I removed the Stone to
Westminster. In 1997, when Scotland got its own Parliament, the Stone was
formally returned to Edinburgh.
11/1950, Over five years after
World War Two ended, the Women’s Land
Army in Britain was finally disbanded.
19 October 1950. Hugh Gaitskell
became UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He replaced Sir Stafford
Cripps who had retired in health grounds.
2 October 1950. Legal aid became available in Britain.
24 May 1950, Field Marshall Lord Archibald Wavell, British
military commander (born 1883) died.
4 April 1950, At Liverpool, the liner Franconia was found to be full of smuggled nylon stockings with a black market value of £80,000.
28 February 1950. Clement Attlee formed a new Labour Government
in the UK.
23 February 1950. The first General Election in the UK where the results were televised. Clement Attlee,
Labour prime Minister, narrowly won for Labour, which had just a majority
over the Conservatives and Liberals combined. The result was Labour 315 seats,
Conservative 298, Liberal 9, others 3. Voter turnout was 84%. 319 out of 475
Liberal candidates lost their deposits.
19 December 1949, Britain
passed the National Parks Act.
29 November 1949, The
Parliament Act was passed in the UK, restricting the Lords delaying abilities.
The House of Lords had rejected this Bill but it still became law as MPs had
voted for it three times.
6 August 1949, John Haugh, the ‘acid bath murderer’ was executed.
1 May 1949. In the UK, the gas industry was nationalised.
1 April 1949, The National
Parks Bill was approved by the UK Parliament. 12 National Parks were created, covering
9% of the area of England and Wales;
none were created in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
1 December 1948. National Service
in Britain was increased from 12
to 18 months.
1 July 1948. The first Oxfam shop opened in the UK.
29 June 1948, London dock workers voted
to end their 16-day strike and go back to work rather than face the
government's threat to invoke its broad emergency powers.
23 June 1948, The UK Government called
in soldiers to begin unloading food supplies tied up in the 10-day dockworker's
strike.
23 May 1948. The Empire Windrush sailed from Jamaica with
the first West Indian migrants, to alleviate Britain’s severe labour shortage.
15 March 1948. The UK
Civil Service was closed to Fascists and Communists regarding
posts vital to State Security.
6 February 1948, UK MPs voted to make the SATS and WAAF permanent.
They were to be known as the Women’s Royal Army Corps and the Women’s Royal Air
Force.
14 December 1947, Stanley Baldwin, British Conservative politician, three times Prime Minister, who became
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, died.
13 November 1947. Chancellor Hugh Dalton resigned after
admitting passing tax details to a reporter minutes before the Budget speech.
31 October 1947, Sidney Webb, British economist, socialist and
reformer, died aged 88.
4 October 1947, Ann Widdecombe,
British politician, was born.
30 September 1947, The UK
Government asked women to wear shorter skirts, to save cloth.
29 September 1947, Sir Stafford
Cripps was appointed by PM Attlee, as Minister of Economic Affairs. He
went on to replace Hugh Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer
following Dalton’s
resignation on 13 November 1947. Sir Cripps was a keen advocate of austerity,
as the UK made efforts to cut back on imports from outside the Sterling Area.
17 September 1947, Tessa Jowell,
UK politician, was born.
14 September 1947, Baldwin retired in May 1937 and was made Earl Baldwin of
Bewdley. He died on 14 September 1947.
27 August 1947. The UK Government announced cuts to deal with an economic crisis.
7 February 1947. The Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell, startled the House of
Commons by announcing that Britain’s power stations were running out of coal,
as very cold snowy weather paralysed the rail system. Four weeks of
intermittent power cuts followed, with two million workers suspended. Greyhound
racing, TV and magazine production were halted.
8 January 1947. In Britain, a shortage of coal caused closures of steel works. There were also food shortages because of the hauliers’
strike. Troops were called in to move
supplies.
1 January 1947. Britain’s coal industry was nationalised under the Coal industry Nationalisation Act, 1946.
The National Coal Board (NCB) was set up, to control 1,647 mines, 100,000
miners homes and over a million acres of land. The NCB was chaired by Lord Hyndley.
1946, Britain passed the Distribution
of Industry Act, incetivising industrialists to relocate production to
areas of high unemployment.
27 December 1946, In Britain, 12 cotton mills closed today
and much industry in the Midlands went on a 4-day week as a fuel shortage deepened. Meanwhile a world food shortage, compounded by a
global shipping shortage, and, for the UK, a lack of foreign exchange, caused UK rations to be cut. In February 1946
butter, margarine and cooking fat rations were reduced from 8 to 7 ounces per
person per week. In May 1946 bread,
previously un-rationed, came on-ration.
18 December 1946. Labour
MPs triumphantly sang The Red Flag as the House of Commons voted to nationalise
the railways, road haulage, and ports. This was under Clement Attlee’s Labour
Government. The Bank of England had already been nationalised and, despite the UK’s
economic problems, civil aviation, broadcasting, road transport and steel woild
soon follow. Attlee
also proposed independence for Burma and India.
11 November 1946. Stevenage, Hertfordshire, became the first ‘New
Town’ to be designated in Britain.
6 November 1946. In the UK, the National Health Act came into
force.
8 July 1946. Margaret Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher, was elected president of
the Oxford University Conservatives.
6 July 1946, The Young
Conservatives political organisation was founded in Britain.
2 April 1946. The Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst was
founded. The Woolwich Academy was merged
with Sandhurst.
31 March 1946, General Gort, British commander of the British Expeditionary Force
that entered France in 1939 and retreated again in 1940, died.
5 March 1946. Winston Churchill referred to an “Iron
Curtain” descending across Europe, in a speech at Fulton, USA. The first public acknowledgement that the
Cold War had begun. See 12 March 1947.
28 February 1946, Robin Cook,
British politician, was born.
0.0 Intensification of UK rationing post -
War, 1946 - 51
27 January 1951 In Britain, meat rations
were reduced to their lowest level yet, the equivalent of 4 ounces of rump
steak a week.
10 November 1947, Strachey
admitted to the House of Commons that because of food shortages and rationing,
the average daily Calorie intake per head was down to 2,700, as opposed to a
British Medical Association recommendation of 3,386 made in July 1933.
30 June 1947. In the UK, food rations
were cut further in the midst of an economic crisis.
9 April 1947, The
first food packages from the USA for Britain arrived at Liverpool. They were sent by
the charity organisation CARE (Co-operative for Remittance to Europe) and
intended for unemployed widows who had children to look after.
22 January 1947. The meat
ration in Britain was reduced,
again, to 1 shilling (5p) worth weekly.
31 December 1946, In
Britain, people were eating horsemeat as the food, fuel and transport crisis
continued.
7 February 1946. In response to world food shortages, UK
food rations were reduced.
14 February 1946, The British Labour Government stated it
would nationalise the Bank of England.
22 January 1946, UK pit owners protested at plans to nationalise the coal industry.
30 December 1945, The SS Tilapia docked in Bristol with the first cargo of bananas to enter the UK
since the War, since 11/1940, when the UK Government banned all fruit
imports except oranges.
5 November 1945, In Britain, the dock strike ended.
4 October 1945, Dock workers went on strike in Britain.
12 April 1945. The Scottish Nationalists won their first by-election, gaining a seat
from Labour at Motherwell. However Labour regained the seat at the General Election
a few months later.
26 March 1945. David Lloyd George, British Liberal Prime Minister from 1916 to
1922, died in Llanystundwy, near Criccieth, north Wales, aged 82.
-1.0, Britain
and the end of World War Two in Europe, 1944-45
7 October 1945, The first British PoWs
from the Far East returned.
12 September 1945, An estimate of War
casualties reckoned that Britain had lost 420,000 members of the armed forces;
the US had lost 292,000, and the USSR, 13 million. German loss of military men
was put at 3.9 million, Japan’s at 2.6 million. British civilian casualties
from air raids were set at 60,000, with 860,000 severely injured.
26 August 1945, Sir Arthur Harris, Commander in
Chief of RAF Bomber Command, announced his resignation.
25 August 1945, UK PM Clement Attlee warned that
Britain faced a long period of peacetime austerity because the US had abruptly
terminated Lend-Lease 4 days earlier without warning or consulting the UK. President
Truman said he was bound by law to do this now hostilities had ceased.
Many UK commodities would be reserved for export only and food rationing might
get worse. The US said Britain could get a new loan from the US but this did
not impress Whitehall.
26 July 1945. Clement Attlee’s Labour Government
came to power with a huge majority of 173 seats. The result was Labour, 412
seats, Conservative 213 seats, and Liberals 12 seats. Clement Attlee was born
in Putney, London, on 3 January 1883. The former government of Winston
Churchill was defeated. Churchill’s warning that ‘no Socialist system
can be established without some form of political police or gestapo’ did the
Conservatives more harm than Labour, as voters thought it ridiculous to compare
politicians like Attlee and Bevan to Hitler. However
the new Labour Government now faced severe economic problems. £4 billion of
British foreign investments had gone, exports were half the 1938 level,
industry was damaged and run-down, and 700,000 houses in London alone were bomb
damaged. Then there were the Labour commitments to a Welfare State, free
healthcare, and the nationalisation of major industries. Politically the USA and USSR emerged as superpowers, but Britain had
lost its premier standing in the world forever.
7 July 1945, Trains
carried a record 102,889 holidaymakers to Blackpool. UK beaches had been off
limits to civilians since the War began in 1939. In 1948 the Holidays With Pay
Act increased the holiday trade even more.
5 July 1945, UK
General Election. The results were delayed three weeks to allow for postal
votes cast overseas by members of the armed forces.
18 June 1945, The first
demobilisations began in Britain (see 22 September 1944).
9 May 1945, The German occupation of the Channel Islands ended. The German commander of the Channel Islands, Vice-Admiral
Huffmeier, had threatened to fight on but his 10,000 men ignored him
and surrendered without a shot being fired. The ordinary people had come close
to starvation, subsisting on stewed rabbits and cabbage. As late as 7 May 1945
the German occupiers had been issuing orders to improve coastal fortifications.
8 May 1945. VE Day. The Second World War officially ended in
Europe, at one minute past midnight. Field
Marshall Keitel signed the final capitulation. The
Channel Islands remained under Nazi occupation till the following day, 9 May 1945.
Street parties were held all over Britain.
23 April 1945, Blackout restrictions removed in Britain.
20 April 1945, Britain estimated its civilian casualties from the war at 146,760.
Civilian casualties in London
amounted to 80,307. In Greater
Manchester 684
people died in the bombing, and an additional 2,364 were injured.
See
France/Germany for main events of World War Two
3 December 1944, The Home Guard was formally disbanded
in London as King George VI witnessed its
final parade. Britons were jubilant that this symbolised imminent victory in
the War. The Black-Out was replaced by the Dim-Out as the Luftwaffe was no longer a credible threat. However British
strikes rose, particularly in the coal mines. Coal miners pay was relatively
low compared to other occupations, and conditions were poor.
-2.0, Britain
and World War Two, 1941-44
27 November 1944. Between 3,500 and 4,000 tons of high
explosives went off in a cavern beneath Staffordshire, killing 68 people. The explosion was heard as far away as Geneva. The
former gypsum mine at Hanbury was
used by the RAF to defuse bombs that had failed to drop from planes raiding
Germany. Against strict rules, an operative used a steel screwdriver, causing a
spark.
22 September 1944, In
Britain details of demobilisation were released to the public. Class B ‘demob’
covered builders and others with skills greatly needed for post-war
reconstruction; these had priority of demob, but could be recalled to the military
if they entered another trade. Class A covered everyone else. They would be
released from military service on a scheme that equated years of age to years
of military service at 6:1. This meant a 40 year old with 1 year’s military
service had the same demob priority as a 22 year old with 3 year’s military
service. The first demobilisations in the UK were on 18 June 1945.
6 June 1944. D – Day. Allied forces landed in
Normandy. Operation Overlord
was the biggest sea-borne invasion in history. It was delayed 24 hours due to
bad weather.
15 May 1944. In St Pauls School, London, the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944 were
planned using a huge map of the area. 8 divisions, 5 seaborne and 3 airborne, were to be
landed in the first 48 hours. The Germans had 60 divisions defending the coast
of the Netherlands, Belgium and France. An elaborate deception was mounted to
make Germany think Calais was the landing point with fake radio traffic,
misleading reports from Nazi agents who had been ‘turned’ to serve the Allies, and a phantom army with wooden tanks
stationed in south-east England. In May 1944 Montgomery received a decode of a
message from Field Marshall Rommel to Hitler saying that Allied bombing of
railways in northern France was disrupting his efforts to defend the Calais
area from an Allied invasion.
14 May 1944, The last attempted air raid on Bristol. 91 bombers
took part but most failed even to find the city; a few small bombs were dropped
in the suburbs.
6 May 1944, Rehearsals for the D-Day landings were held at
Slapton Sands, Devon.
8 March 1944, 9,000 Welsh miners went on
strike over pay differentials; the government met their demands.
18 January 1944, The first batch of UK conscripts to be sent down the mines, nicknamed
‘Bevin Boys’, began their training.
See
France/Germany for main events of World War Two
20 November 1943. Oswald Moseley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, was
released from gaol on grounds of ill-health. The UK Labour Party protested.
31 October 1942, The Germans bombed Canterbury
in retaliation for the bombing of Cologne.
22 October 1942, German planes dropped high explosives and incendiaries on Appleby-Frodingham steelworks, Scunthorpe,
injuring 15 employees.
4 October 1942, A small British air raid on Sark.
2 July 1942, Churchill, having been criticised for his leadership
following German victories in North Africa, easily won a vote of confidence in
the House of Commons, by 476 to 25 votes with 30 abstentions.
1 July 1942. The charity, Oxford Famine Relief (Oxfam)
was formed, see 1 July 1948.
5 May 1942, The first of the ‘Baedeker raids’; the Germans used Baedeker guidebooks
to guide them to targets in British towns and cities.
3 May 1942, Heavy
German air raid on Exeter. 30 acres of the city were destroyed, 156 killed and
593 injured.
29 April 1942. York was bombed by the Luftwaffe. 79 were killed.
24 April 1942, The Germans bombed Exeter,
in revenge for the raid on Lubeck on 28 March 1942.
6 May 1941, The
Luftwaffe bombed the town of Greenock, Scotland.
1 May 1941,
The first of seven consecutive nights of bombing raids on Liverpool began
16 April 1941,
Belfast was bombed by the Luftwaffe.
11 April 1941.
Major German air
raid on Coventry.
13 March 1941,
Heavy German air raid on Clydebank, 1,100 killed
19 February
1941, Start of a
devastating 48-hour air raid on Swansea.
230 were killed and over 400 injured as 41 acres of the city and its docks were destroyed by the
|Luftwaffe. Previously it had been hoped that Swansea was too far west to be at
risk of air raids.
15 January 1941, Heavy air raid by 126 bombers on Avonmouth Docks,
Bristol.
-3.0, UK rationing 1940-44
1944, Food distribution was
‘zoned’ in Britain to save on transport costs, so that Mars Bars were now only
available in the south of the country.
22 December 1943.
The UK government announced there were only enough turkeys left for one in ten
families.
1942, The Oxford Marmalade
factory near Oxford, UK, was requisitioned by the Government, so that no more
of this food was made until after World War Two. Oxford Marmalde was a
thick-cut orange marmalade originally marketed by Frank Cooper from 1908.
31 July 1942,
Driving for pleasure was banned in Britain.
26 July 1942, In
Britain, sweets were rationed.
17 March 1942, In
the UK, coal, electricity and gas were to be rationed.
1 March 1942, Skirts were being made several centimetres shorter to
save material. A woman’s winter tweed coat sold for £4 3s 11d. Men’s shirt
tails were also 5 centimetres shorter.
18 February 1942. The British public were urged to take fewer baths and to only use five
inches of water when they did.
9 February 1942. Soap rationing began in Britain.
4 July 1941. In the UK, coal rationing
began.
2 June 1941. Clothes rationing was introduced in
Britain, and not lifted until 15 March 1949.
60 clothes coupons were allowed a year; for all except baby clothes; a dress
cost 11 coupons, a man’s suit, 26.
8 January 1940. Sugar, butter, ham and bacon were rationed
in Britain. Bacon, butter and ham were limited to 4 oz (110 g) per person
per week, and sugar to 12 oz (330 g) . The UK had not seen food rationing since
1918. This was about half the pre-War consumption for middle-class families.
However poor families seldom consumed this much meat anyway, so butchers found
themselves with a surplus of these meats. The Ministry of Food then doubled the
rations.
See France/Germany World
War Two for main events of World War Two
-4.0, UK civil measures 1940-43
2 December 1943, Britain was running out of manpower.
The number of registered unemployed, 1,250,000 in 1939, was now just 60,000,
and the conscription age was now from 18 to 51. Conscription of women had also
been extended upwards from those in their 20s to those in their 50s, although
they could choose between armed forces or factory work.
6/1943, In
Britain, 65,000 members of the Women’s Land Army were now producing 70% of the
nation’s food.
3 May 1943. The UK
government made part-time war work compulsory for women aged 18 to 45.
7 April 1943. Keynes
published his plan for the post-war recovery of Britain.
21 February 1943, Britons
celebrated ‘;Red Army Day’ to congratulate the Russians on their success at Stalingrad.
6 March 1942, A
controversial political cartoon by Philip Zec appeared in the Daily Mirror, showing a seaman clinging
to the remains of a ship in rough seas with the caption, "The price of
petrol has been increased by one penny – Official." Winston Churchill interpreted
the cartoon as ‘defeatist’ and considered banning the Daily Mirror from publication.
5 December 1941, A civilian gas mask exercise was held in
Plymouth. At 3pm all civilians were supposed to don their gas masks for 15
minutes; many did not comply.
4 December 1941, In Britain, unmarried women in their 20s were now being called up to
perform non combat support work for the military, such as factory work, fire
services and policing. For men, the call-up age was extended down to 18 and up
to 49.
18 August 1941, Britain
set up a national fire service.
26 March 1941, Britain passed
the National Service Bill, making
civil defence duties compulsory.
17 March 1941. The UK Labour
Minister, Ernest Bevin, called for women to fill vital jobs.
1
February 1941. The Air Training Corps, the junior
arm of the Royal Air Force, was formed.
21
January 1941, In
Britain the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker was banned.
14
January 1941, King George V signed a royal
warrant authorising the formation of the Reconnaissance Corps.
31
December 1940. Fire-watching became compulsory in
wartime Britain.
19
December 1940, The British Purchasing Commission
placed an order with the US for U$750 million of military equipment, including
12,000 aircraft.
29 March 1943. British Prime Minister John Major was born.
28 March 1942. Neil Kinnock, Labour leader, was born in Tredegar, south Wales.
1941, Woolton Pie, a vegetable pie designed to
eke out meagre meat rations, was publicised by the UK Government. It was named
after FJ
Marquis (1883-1964), 1st Earl of Woolton, then Minisyter
for Food.
27 February 1941, Jeremy (Paddy) Ashdown,
Liberal leader, was born.
10 November 1940, Screaming Lord
Sutch, British politician, was born.
8 January 1941. Lord Baden Powell, British soldier and Boer
War hero, also founder of the Boy Scouts in 1908, died aged 83.
9 November 1940. The former British Prime Minister
(1937-1940), Neville Chamberlain,
died of cancer, at Heckfield, near Reading.
-5.0, Britain and
World War Two, 1940-41
17 May 1941, Rudolf Hess was brought to the Tower of London
by train from Scotland.
10 May 1941. Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s deputy,
parachuted into Scotland
to try and negotiate a peace settlement
but was arrested and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. He landed
at Eaglesham. After the war, Hess was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty
of war crimes.
17 February 1941, The British ship SS Gairsoppa
was torpedoed and sunk 300 miles southwest of Ireland. She had been carrying
110 tons of silver, in the form of 2,792 bars, to boost Britain’s funds as War
costs mounted.
31 December 1940. Fire-watching became compulsory in wartime
Britain. Air raid casualties in Britian for December were 3,793 killed and
5,244 injured
22 December 1940, The heaviest raids of the Manchester Blitz
began. Over the next two days a total of 654 people were killed and over 2,000
injured.
20 December 1940, Heavy German bombing raid on Liverpool.
12 December 1940, Heavy
bombing of Sheffield; a further raid followed on 15 December 1940. The weather
was clear with a full moon; massive fires from the city’s steelworks further
illuminated the city. 600 people were killed and a further 1,500 injured;
40,000 were made homeless.
24 November 1940, The first
large scale air raid on Bristol, by 135 bombers.
14 November 1940. Coventry Cathedral was destroyed by German
bombing. Over
1,000 civilians died in the raid, of a population of 250,000. 449
Luftwaffe bombers dropped 503 tons of bombs and 881 incendiaries.
4 November 1940, Night air
raid on London.
3 November 1940, German
aircraft losses over England to date amounted to 2.433 planes
27 October 1940, A German
bomb fell on Scunthorpe, killing 11.
25 October 1940, Air raid
on Birmingham.
19 October 1940, British
destroyer Venetia struck a mine and sank in the Thames Estuary.
11 October 1940, German
air raids on London and Liverpool.
7 October 1940, German
air raids on London, Liverpool and Wales.
30 September 1940, The last
Luftwaffe major daylight bombing raid on England; London and te aircraft
factory at Yeovil were hit. However the Luftwaffe lost 43 aircraft against 16
for the RAF. These losses convince the Luftwaffe to switch to night time
attacks.
23 September 1940. The Red Cross was instituted. This was
the highest British civilian award for acts of courage. The George
Medal was also instituted.
18 September 1940, German
air raids in SE England and Merseyside.
See
France/Germany World War Two for main events of World War Two
-6.0, Battle of Britain 1940; German bid to
defeat the RAF failed.
17 September 1940. Hitler
ordered the indefinite postponing of the invasion of Britain, after the
Luftwaffe had failed to establish command of the air over Britain.
15 September 1940, The Battle of Britain ended with victory to
the Allies. 1,733 German planes were
destroyed as against 915 lost by the RAF. It began on 8 August 1940. The Nazis
had given up hope of achieving air superiority and invading Britain. The RAF had also destroyed much of the
shipping that was to carry German troops to England.
1 September 1940, Biggin
Hill aerodrome in Kent was heavily damaged by a German bombing raid.
28 August 1940, Heavy
German bombing raid on Liverpool
25 August 1940. First
British air raid on Berlin.
17 August 1940, Germany began a blockade of British waters.
14 August 1940, German
air raids on Dover, Southampton and Hastings.
13 August 1940, German
air raids on the Thames Estuary and Southampton.
12 August 1940, (1) Dover
was hit by German shells, the first bombardment of the War here.
(2) An Aliens Order banned foreigners from al of
Cornwall and Devon and most of Somerset, without police permission, they also
needed leave to use telescopes cameras or maps. Residents had to tell the
police if an alien visited them in the protected areas.
11
August 1940, Further German air raids on
Weymouth and Portland radar stations.
8 August 1940. Battle of Britain began. See 31
October 1940. German aircraft had already made raids on Britain; on 10 July 1940
the Cornish port of Falmouth was attacked by 63 Junkers 88s. However it was on this day that mass
attacks of over 1,000 German aircraft began. Hermann Goering was confident of
victory. Until 30 August 1940 German air attacks were mainly on British
shipping and coastal towns, and German air losses exceeded those sustained by
the RAF. But between 30 August 1940 and 6 September 1940 the Luftwaffe switched
its attacks to airfields in southern Britain. The RAF lost 20% of its fighter
planes and at one stage only 2 airfields in southern Britain were operational.
In one week 185 RAF fighter planes were destroyed. There was a real possibility that the Luftwaffe could destroy the RAF.
However on 24 August 1940 a German pilot accidentally dropped his bombs on
London, and Churchill
ordered revenge raids on Berlin. This angered Hitler and he ordered Goering
to switch the Luftwaffe’s raids to London, which faced continual bombing until
2 November 1940. The Luftwaffe faced the
problem that if their aircraft were shot down, the pilot was captured as a POW;
however if a British plane was shot down, over Britain, the pilot could return
to the fighting. Pilots were much harder to replace, with all their training,
than an aircraft was to build. Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that ‘never in the field of human conflict has so
much been owed by so many to so few’.
-7.0, Britain declares war on Germany. Early
stages of World War Two in the UK, 1939-40
7 August 1940. First German air raid on Exeter.
31 July 1940. Hitler gave orders for a massive air offence against
Britain (see 8 August 1940).
23 July 1940, Britain’s :Local Defence Volunteers were
renamed as the Home Guard. The one million strong force, containing many
World War One veterans, would have been the Resistance had Hitler invaded.
13 July 1940. Hitler
declined an offer by Italy to assist in the invasion of Britain.
10 July 1940. The
British Union of Fascists was banned.
30 June 1940. German troops occupied Guernsey and
Alderney, Channel Islands, after the defeat of the French.
20 June 1940. The first
Australian and New Zealand troops arrived in Britain.
5 June 1940. The UK
government outlawed strikes.
31 May 1940. Britain arrested Sir
Oswald Moseley, leader of the British fascists. He was
interned at Brixton Prison. 24 May 1940, Middlesborough became the first British industrial town to be
bombed by Germany.
14 May 1940. Local
Defence Volunteers, later called the Home
Guard, was formed in Britain as a makeshift protection against Nazi
invasion.
11 May 1940, Winston
Churchill became head of the Wartime Coalition Government.
10 May 1940. Neville
Chamberlain, born 18 March 1869,
resigned as Prime Minister in favour of Winston Churchill, who was born
on 30 November 1874. Chamberlain died on 9 November 1940.
9 May 1940, German
bombs fell near Canterbury.
16 March 1940, The first
British civilians were killed by a German bomb, in the Shetlands.
4 March 1940, In
Britain, the Home Office announced that women would not be asked to work more
than 60 hours a week in British factories, and youths under 16 would not be
required to work more than 48. In World War I, women were frequently working up
to 70 hours a week.
13 February 1940, The
British Governemnt took partial control of the railways. The private railway
companies had been unprofitable in recent years. Rail fares were now
government-controlled but the companies would be guaranteed against bankruptcy.
6 February 1940, In
Britain the Government launched a ‘careless
talk costs lives’ campaign.
3 February 1940, At
Whitby a Heinkel He111 bomber became the first German plane shot down over
England.
31 January 1940, In
Britain, large numbers of schoolchildren evacuated from the cities (whilst
their parents remained at home) had returned home. Homesickness, and an attempt
to charge the parents of these children 6 shillings a week, were the main
factors for the return.
20 January 1940, Churchill
called for the neutral nations of Europe to join the Allies, and condemnd the
Soviet invasion of Finland.
18 January 1940. Nazi
saboteurs were blamed for an explosion at an arms factory in Essex which killed
18.
14 January 1940, The
British Government announced that it was to arm all merchant shipping vessels.
1 January 1940. In Britain, 2 million 19 to 27 year olds
were called up.
6 December 1939, Churchill
reported British shipping losses as averaging 1 ship per 750 sailings.
16 October 1939, German
air raid on the Firth of Forth, causing naval casualties.
14 October 1939, The
Royal Navy battleship Royal Oak was torpedoed and sunk by a German
U-boat in Scapa Flow, with the loss of 810 lives.
6 October 1939. Britain
and France rejected Hitler's peace bid.
30 September 1939. Identity cards were issued in Britain.
10 September 1939. The British Expeditionary force arrived in
Cherbourg, France. Four divisions, comprising 158,000 men and 25,000
vehicles crossed the Channel with no interference from U-boats or the
Luiftwaffe.
The Dunkirk evacuation was completed on 4 June 1940.
4 September 1939. The
British liner Athenia sank the day
after being torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. 93
lives were lost. She had sailed from Liverpool on 2 September 1939 on her way
to Montreal, and was informed about the outbreak of war at 11.am on the 3rd.
She sank with the loss of 19 crew and 93 passengers. This was the start of the
Battle of the Atlantic. The last ship sunk was the British Avondale Park on 7 May 1945. The German fleet was attacked by the
RAF.
2 September 1939. Men aged
18-41 were conscripted in Britain under the National Service Bill.
See
France/Germany for main events of World War Two
1 September 1939. Germany invaded Poland. Without a
declaration of war, 1.25 million German troops invaded Poland under Operation
Fall Weiss (White Plan) as the Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish rail system and
its airforce. Some 60,000 Poles were killed, 200,000 wounded, and 700,000
taken prisoner. Germany here eschewed the static trench warfare of World War
One, and the English language acquired a new word – blitzkrieg, meaning
lightning war. Warsaw is bombed at 6.am. On
11.am. 3 September 1939 Britain declared war on Germany because of this invasion. For the first
time in history the King went to Downing Street rather than the Prime Minister
going to the Palace, because Neville Chamberlain needed to stay near his phone.
On the same day, 3/9, New Zealand,
Australia, and France, at 5.pm. also declared war on Germany. See 28 March 1939.
30 August 1939. The great evacuation of children from
British cities began, to avoid anticipated German bombing. In September
1939, 827,000 children and 535,000 pregnant women were sent to rural areas.
‘Billeters’ were paid 10s 6d for the first child and 8s 6d for each subsequent
child, per week.
25 August 1939, Britain
signed an assistance pact with Poland.
9 July 1939, In
Britain, Churchill
proposed a military alliance with Russia.
26 June 1939. The first National Serviceman, Private
Rupert Alexander, number 10000001, signed up with the Middlesex Regiment. The
Military Training (Conscription) Act had received Royal Assent on 26 May 1939.
1 July 1940. The practice of informal marriages at Gretna Green was abolished by Statute.
1939, Citizen’s Advice Bureaux were established across the UK. By 1990
the UK had over 600 of them. They were originally set up to help solve family
problems in wartime, when the husband was likely away on te Front and the
children were evacuated to the countryside.
-8.0, Preparations
for War, 1937-39
23 November 1939, The deadline for British
households to register for their ration books for bacon, butter and sugar
rations. Delays were caused at shops because many customers had failed to write
their name and address in the ration book.
9 September 1939, In response to the War,
Britain re-established a Ministry of Food.
21 August 1939. Civil Defence started in
Britain.
1 August 1939, The UK Government
announced that if war broke out, petrol would immediately be rationed. This did
not encourage people to travel on holiday, despite assurances by some hoteliers
that bookings cancelled because of a national Emergency need not be paid for.
6/1939, In Britain, as hostilities loomed in Europe, the
Women’s Land Army was reconstituted.
1 June 1939, The British naval submarine Thetis
sank whilst on trials in Liverpool Bay, with the loss of 99 lives. She was
later raised and put back into service as HMS Thunderbolt.
31 May 1939, Britain interned Oswald Moseley
and other fascists as the Government consolidated emergency powers.
25 May 1939, An Anglo-Polish treaty was signed in London.
19 May 1939, The TUC decided not to oppose the UK Government’s conscription plans.
27 April 1939. Britain
announced that men aged 20 would be conscripted. This was the first time conscription had been used
since World War One. 6 months military service was required from men reaching
age 20.
31 March 1939. The British Prime Minister,
Neville
Chamberlain, pledged to defend Poland,
if attacked by Germany; so did France.
21 December 1938, The UK
Government allocated £200,000 to the building of air-raid shelters.
1 December 1938, Britain started a National Register for war service.
1 November 1938, In Britain, Balloon Command was formed, under Fighter Command, to
establish barrage balloon protection for 12 cities including Bristol and
Cardiff. Experiments with barrage balloons had been carried out by the Germans
back in 1917; the Allies also used them to protect Venice in 1918. The idea was to hoist a
‘barrage’ of cables to prevent bomber aircraft diving low, so their accuracy
was impaired. With the balloons, they could still dive but could not pull out
afterwards without hitting a cable and crashing. The balloon wincher faced
danger from lightning bolts, and from the static electric charge built up on
the wincher, especially in wet weather. An operator had to jump away from the
winch when leaving to avoid electrical conductance between his body and the
winch and earth.
30 September 1938, Chamberlain told a crowd “I believe it is peace in our time”
and waved the agreement he had made with Hitler at Munich, bearing Hitler’s
signature. Chamberlain said “How horrible,
fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on
gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of
whom we know nothing”.
28 September 1938, The British navy was mobilised.
9 September 1938, The Auxiliary Territorial
Service (ATS), the women’s branch of the Army, was formed by Royal Warrant.
See
France/Germany for main events of World War Two
15 July 1938, The UK Government ordered
1,000 Spitfire fighters.
9 July 1938. Gas masks were issued to the British
population, in anticipation of war with Germany. 35 million of them were
ordered by the British Government.
9 June 1938, The British Government ordered 400
warplanes from the USA.
30 March 1938, The UK Government
announced it was to spend £11 million on new RAF airfields.
24 March 1938, The British Prime
Minister, Chamberlain,
announced that Britain would not oppose the German occupation of
Czechoslovakia, in the interests of peace. However Britain would fight for
France and Belgium.
14 March 1938, British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain made a speech in the House of Commons on the Austrian
situation, saying the government "emphatically" disapproved of
Germany's deed but that "nothing could have prevented this action by
Germany unless we and others with us had been prepared to use force to prevent
it."
21 February 1938. Churchill led a protest against Chamberlain’s
policy of appeasement.
20 February 1938. Anthony Eden resigned as British
Foreign Secretary. He was unable to support the policy of appeasement of the
Prime Minister Chamberlain,
who had held talks with Mussolini.
3 January 1938. In the UK, the government
announced that all schoolchildren would be issued with gas masks.
16 November 1937, MPs in Westminster voted
in favour of constructing air-raid shelters in towns and cities.
5 November 1937. The Air Raid Precautions
Bill was introduced in the Commons. Passed on 16 November 1937, it allowed the
construction of air raid shelters in UK towns and cities. Winston Churchill said they were
‘indispensable’ but Labour opposed them, saying they would mean a big increase
in the rates.
10 September 1937, The TUC voted in favour of
re-armament.
13 September 1938, John Smith,
leader of the UK Labour Party 1992-94, was born in Dalmally, Argyllshire.
2 July 1938, David
Owen, British politician and first leader of the Social Democratic Party, was
born in Plympton, Devon.
16 May 1938, The WVS (Women’s
Voluntary Service) was started in Britain by the Marchioness of Reading. It
became ‘Royal’ in 1966.
3 May 1938.
King George VI
opened the Glasgow exhibition.
31 March 1938, David Steel,
Liberal Party leader, was born.
11 January 1938, Arthur
Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, was born.
9 November 1937. Ramsay MacDonald, British Labour
Prime Minister in 1924, died at sea whilst on a cruise for his health.
28 May 1937. Mr Stanley Baldwin resigned as Prime Minister and
was succeeded by Mr Chamberlain. A
government of National Unity was formed in Britain. Born on 3 August 1867, Mr Baldwin
was the son of a west Midlands industrialist and was elected Conservative MP
for Bewdley in 1906. He became Prime Minister in May 1923. He had faced many
crises, such as the 1926 General Strike. In 1935 he replaced Ramsay
MacDonald as Prime Minister, and faced criticism over his foreign
policy. Mr
Baldwin appeared to belittle the growing threat of Nazi Germany and
he failed to intervene in the Spanish Civil War. After the abdication crisis
and subsequent coronation of George VI in May 1937, Baldwin retired and was granted
the title 1st Earl of Bewdley. Mr
Stanley Baldwin’s last act as Prime Minister was to raise the salaries
of MPs from £400 a year to £600 and to give the Leader of the Opposition a
salary.
16 March 1937, British statesman Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain
died.
14 January 1937. First ever Gallup opinion poll in Britain,
conducted by Sir
Henry Durant.
-9.0, Britain re-armament and Fascist
conflicts, 1933-37
10 October 1937, In
Liverpool, Oswald
Moseley was knocked out by a stone as he prepared to address a
rally.
10 January 1937, The UK Government banned volunteers from
fighting for the anti-Franco forces in Spain, introducing a two-year prison
sentence for the offence.
1 January 1937. Britain
banned political uniforms under the Public Order Act, so sounding the
death-knell for Oswald Mosley’s British
Union of Fascists.
4 October 1936, Oswald
Moseley’s fascists clashed with local anti-fascists in Cable Street,
east London.
14 July 1936, Britain started producing gas
masks.
30 April 1936, The
UK Government announced plans to build 38 warships.
14 July 1935, In Britain the
Peace Pledge Union was formed, after a meeting at the Albert Hall, to oppose
re-armament and war.
8 May 1935, The UK Cabinet heard that it was
estimated that the RAF was inferior to
the Luftwaffe by 370 aircraft and that in order to reach parity the RAF must
have 3,800 aircraft by April 1937—an extra 1,400 on the existing air programme.
It was learnt that Germany was easily able to outbuild this revised programme
as well. On 21 May 1935, the Cabinet agreed to expanding the home defence
force of the RAF to 1,512 aircraft (840 bombers and 420 fighters).
22 May 1935, The day
after Hitler
had made a speech claiming that German rearmament offered no threat to peace, Attlee
asserted that Hitler's
speech gave "a chance to call a halt in the armaments race". However
Britain announced plans to treble the size of the RAF in the next two years, to
make it equal to Germany’s.
9 May 1935, The British government ordered aircraft
manufacturers to increase their production to the fullest capacity and not to
fill any foreign orders for aircraft without the Air Ministry's approval.
4 March 1935, The UK Government
published a White paper on defence. The emphasis was on defence rather than
attack, with increases planned for all three armed services but especially the
air force. Germany was blamed for raising the threat of war.
19 July 1934. The UK government
announced that the RAF would receive another 500 planes.
21 January 1934. The British Union of Fascists, led by Sir Oswald
Moseley, held its biggest rally ever in Birmingham. Moseley called for a fascist dictatorship
in Britain.
15 October 1933, Moseley’s Fascist supporters were stoned in Manchester.
24 May 1933. In
Britain, the TUC called for a boycott of
Germany to protest against Hitler, who became Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
1 October 1932, The British Union of Fascists
was founded.
30 April 1931, Moseley’s New Party
candidate split the vote in a by-election in Ashton Under Lyne, letting in the Conservative candidate.
28 February 1931, Oswald Moseley formed
the 'New Party' in Britain after leaving
the Labour Party.
-10.0, Jarrow March 1936
5 November 1936, A
special train took the Jarrow Marchers back home again from London. They
received a hero’s welcome, and the news that their unemployment benefit had
been cut as they had made themselves unavailable for work.
1 November 1936, Baldwin refused to meet the Jarrow Marchers.
5 October 1936. The Jarrow March, of 200
unemployed ship workers, started from Jarrow, Tyneside, towards London; their
petition had 11,000 signatures. Jarrow
had an unemployment rate of 67%. The march was led by Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson.
Jarrow had an unemployment rate of 67%. The marchers reached London on 1
November 1936, where Ellen Wilkinson presented a petition of 11,572
signatures so the Government. See 5 November 1936.
18 March 1935, Large protest marches in
South Wales and Sheffield against the UK’s means test laid down by the
Unemployment Assistance Board. The tests were intrusive, requiring some to sell
furniture and assistance was reduced if other family members lived in.
30 October 1932. Hunger marchers,
protesting at unemployment, clashed on the streets of London with police.
27 October 1936. Mrs Wallace Simpson divorced her
second husband Ernest,
becoming free to marry King Edward VIII, see 13 November 1936.
6 October 1936. The British Labour Party refused to
affiliate with the Communists.
-11.0, Postal
and telephone developments 1932-37
1 July 1937. The 999 emergency service came into operation in Britain, the first
such service in the world. The idea of setting up a joint number for the emergency services came
after five people died in a fire in Wimpole Street, London. The fireman came
late as the witness to the fire could not get through to the switchboard; at
that time a call to the emergency services received no more priority than any
other call. With the new system a light lit up on a map showing where the
call had been made from and a klaxon sounded at the operator centre. The number
111 was suggested but rejected at it might have led to many false calls. The
first 999 call was made seven days after the system was set up and resulted in
police arresting a burglar at the house of a Mr Stanley Beard in Hampstead.
24 July 1936. The Speaking Clock was introduced by the GPO at the suggestion of Eugene Wender
of Hampstead, London. It was known as TIM from the phone dial letters.
24 July 1935. Greetings
telegrams were introduced by the GPO. If they were in a gold envelope they cost
an extra 3d.
20 November 1934, Plans for numbered postal districts in British
towns were introduced.
18 April 1932,
Business reply-paid enveloped were introduced by the GPO in Britain.
5 June 1936, Sir Samuel Hoare, who had resigned as Foreign
Secretary in December over the Hoare–Laval Pact fiasco, returned to Stanley
Baldwin's cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty to replace the
retiring Viscount
Monsell.
22 May 1936, In Britain, J H Thomas, Colonial Secretary, resigned over
his leakage of Budget information.
14 May 1936, Viscount Allenby, British Army Commander in
Palestine in World
War One, died.
22 December 1935. In the UK, Anthony Eden was appointed Foreign Secretary.
8 October 1935. Clement
Attlee was appointed stopgap leader of the Labour Party.
7 June 1935. Stanley Baldwin became British Prime Minister.
Ramsay
McDonald retired.
19 May 1935. T.E. (Thomas Edward) Lawrence, or Lawrence of
Arabia, died six days after a motorcycle accident in a country lane
in Moreton, Dorset; he swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles, and crashed. Colonel Lawrence was sent to Saudi Arabia to gain information about an Arab revolt
in the Arabian desert. Lawrence realised this revolt could be used to disrupt
the Turkish war effort. He persuaded the
British Army in Egypt to supply guns, armoured cars, and even aircraft. With
these, Lawrence led the Arabs on strategic attacks on railways and captured the
town of Aqaba. The Arabs then supported the British advance in Palestine. Lawrence was furious when after the War,
the Arabs were not given independence.
-12.0, Leisure and Tourism developments 1927-38
1 August 1938, The 1938 Holidays With Pay Act increased the number of British workers
entitled to paid holiday from 3 million to 11 million. Holiday entitlement was
usually one week. Resorts such as Blackpool
had boomed with charabancs bringing in crowds
of vacationers, and in 1937 a Butlins holiday camp opened at Skegness.
21
January 1935, Snowdonia,
Wales, was designated a national
park.
14 November 1932. Book tokens were sold in Britain for
the first time.
24 April 1932.
Thousands of ramblers established public access rights in the Peak District
with a mass trespass of 500 walkers on Kinder Scout, the highest hill in the Peak District. The event
turned into a riot and 4 walkers and the leader Benny Rothman was arrested, and
spent 4 months in jail after sentencing at Derby Assizes. There was a new
fashion for outdoor pursuits, and just 1,212 acres of the 150,000 acres of
moorland, close to the big cities of Manchester, Sheffield and Derby, were open
top the public. Benny
Rothman died aged 90 in 2002.
10 June 1931, Chester
Zoo opened.
23 May 1931. Whipsnade
Zoo in Bedfordshire opened.
1 November 1929, The Pony Club movement was founded in Britain.
2 October 1929, Britain set up a committee
to consider the establishing of National Parks.
21 April 1927. The National Museum of Wales opened in Cardiff.
7 March 1934, John
Campbell Aberdeen, British politician, died (born 3 August 1847).
7 September 1933, Sir Edward Grey (born 25 April 1862), Liberal
MP for Berwick on Tweed from 1885 and UK Foreign Secretary 1905-1916, died at
Fallodon. He attempted to avert war in 1914 through negotiations with Germany.
23 August 1933. The King and Queen opened the new Civic Hall at Leeds.
21 May 1933. Britain signed a ten-year non-aggression pact with Italy, France, and
Germany.
19 April 1933. The UK banned trade with the USSR. See 18
April 1933.
21 March 1933 Michael Heseltine, British Conservative politician, was born.
28 December 1932, Roy Hattersley, British Labour Deputy Prime Minister, was born.
25 October 1932. George
Lansbury was elected leader
of the British Labour Party.
6 April 1932, The British Ministry of Health urged local
authorities to clear their slum areas.
22 March 1932, Sir Arthur Cecil Tyrrell Beck, British Liberal
Party politician, died (born 3 December 1878).
11 March 1932, Nigel Lawson, British Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born.
11 December 1931. The Statute
of Westminster, recognising the independence of the British Commonwealth,
became law.
27 October 1931. General
election held in the UK. A landslide victory by the National Government; Ramsay Mc
Donald continued to be Prime Minister. McDonald won 554 seats (470
of them Conservative) against 46 for Labour.
Austerity
measures 1931-2
25 October 1932. UK policemen’s pay was cut
by 10%.
15 September 1931, The British Royal Navy
mutinied at Invergordon over servicemen’s pay cuts.
10 September 1931, Street riots in London and
Glasgow in response to the Government’s economic measures.
9 September 1931, In Britain, as the
economic crisis deepened, Chancellor Snowden announced a 10% pay cut for
all Government employees.
24 August 1931, Ramsay McDonald
formed a National Government, following the collapse of the UK’s Labour
Government. Most Labour MPs opposed it, but it was generally supported by the
Liberals and Conservatives.
6 July 1931, The 1931
Census showed Britain’s population almost static since the last census, at 44.8
million. However there had been a drift to the south, and London now had
8 million people, a rise of almost 10% since 1921.
29 March 1931, Norman Tebbit, British Conservative politician and chairman of the Party, was born.
27 October 1930, The London Naval Treaty was ratified.
29 August 1930, (1) The
inhabitants of St Kilda were
evacuated by the British Government. The 36 islanders, from the only village of
Hirta, were relocated on the Morvern
Peninsula, Argyll. The population of St Kilda had halved in a generation.
Formal school
education had only arrived on St Kilda in 1884.
(2) The Reverend William
Spooner, originator of spoonerisms, died.
27 July 1930, Shirley Williams, British politician who
co-founded the Social Democratic Party, was born, the daughter of Vera Brittain.
19 March 1930, Arthur James Balfour, British Conservative
Prime Minister from 1902-06, died aged 81.
15 January 1930, Ramsay Mac Donald advocated that the world powers
abolish battleships.
4 December 1929, The House of Lords voted 43 to 21 against
the UK resuming diplomatic relations with the USSR.
1 October 1929, Britain resumed diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.
29 July 1929, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, had talks with
his Soviet counterpart about restoring Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations.
30 May 1929. UK General Election. Labour secured its first Parliamentary majority – see 22 January 1924.
The Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald,
running Britain’s second Labour government, appointed Margaret Bondfield as Britain’s first woman minister. She was
Minister of Labour, a key post, given the lengthening dole queues Britain faced.
Labour won 288 seats, the Conservatives 260.
21 May 1929, Lord Roseberry, British Liberal Prime
Minister, died.
29 April 1929, The future Liberal
Party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, was
born.
20 April 1928, Archaeologist Gerard Stanley Hawkins was born in Norfolk,
England,
15 February 1928. (1) Herbert Harry Asquith, Liberal
Prime Minister in the UK from 1908 to 1916, died.
(2) The Oxford
English Dictionary was completed after 70 years of work.
29 January 1928, General Earl Haig, WW I Commander and founder
of the British Legion, died in London. He was buried at Dryburgh Abbey.
31 December 1927, In Britain the Electricity Supply Act provided for the setting up of a Central
Electricity Board, which was to create a uniform national supply via a national
grid. At the time, there were many small
competing power companies, delaying the spread of electrification, and only about 10% of UK homes could run the new
electrical gadgets such as vacuum cleaners.
22 November 1927, 200
unemployed Welsh miners marched to London, but Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to meet them.
5 October 1927. The
Labour Party voted to nationalise the coal
mines at its party conference at Blackpool.
8 September 1927, In
Edinburgh, the Trades Union Congress
voted to cut ties with Soviet trades unions.
14 July 1927, The Prince of Wales opened the Scottish National
War Memorial in Edinburgh, It now contains the names of over 100,000 Scots who
died in both World Wars.
23 June 1927. Britain passed the Trades Disputes Act, making sympathetic strikes illegal. This was a
consequence of the General Strike,
to support the miners, which began on 3 May 1926.
20 November 1926. The Commonwealth was born out of the British
Empire. Britain decided that the self-governing dominions of Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, and Newfoundland should have equal status with
Britain as members of a ‘commonwealth of nations’. Ireland also became
independent. The status of India was unchanged.
19 November 1926. British
striking miners returned to work, after a six-month strike, agreeing to
work longer hours in return for no pay cut.
12 May 1926. Striking
miners in Britain resolved to carry on alone, after the TUC called off a
general strike in support. 10 May 1926. Striking UK miners grew angry as the army moved food from the docks by
rail (see 1 May 1926). The Flying Scotsman was derailed in Northumberland,
partly because the volunteer driver refused to heed warnings that the track
ahead had been lifted. No serious injuries were caused, but the miners
responsible got prison sentences of up to eight years.
8 May 1926, The naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough was born.
3 May 1926, The General
Strike began in Britain.
1 May 1926. In Britain, a coal strike began over proposed
pay cuts and longer working hours by the mine owners, faced with a slump in the
coal trade (see 25 July 1925). The miners were locked out, and voted
overwhelmingly for strike action. The first General Strike In British history began on 4 May 1926 when the TUC
(Trades Union Congress) voted to back the striking miners. There were
worries about a Communist revolution in Britain. On 11 May 1926 the
engineering and shipworkers unions called their men out on strike, but at this
time negotiations were going on to end the strike. The TUC agreed to government
terms but the miners did not. The TUC called off the General Strike on 12 May 1926
leaving the miners on their own. Many trains were run by volunteers, especially
undergraduates and rail enthusiasts, and troops took over the unloading of food
at London’s docks (see 10 May 1926). Students also drove lorries, trams, and
buses, the illegality of this being ignored. On 23 June 1927 the Trades Disputes Act was passed,
outlawing sympathetic strikes. The Trade Union movement suffered a setback;
membership had been falling from a peak of 8.3 million in 1920 to 5.3 million
in 1926, and further fell to 4.3 million by 1933. See 12 May 1926.
6 March 1926. Fire destroyed the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at
Stratford on Avon. Only a blackened shell was left.
25 November 1925, In Britain, 12 Communists arrested in
October 1925 were jailed for sedition.
13 October 1925, The future Conservative
leader, Margaret Thatcher, was born as Margaret Roberts. She was born in Grantham, the daughter of a
grocer. She was Prime Minister 1979-90.
12 August 1925. Norris and Ross McWhirter, the British twins
who founded the Guinness Book of Records, were born. After the Bible, it is the
best selling book in the world (2002). Ross McWhirter was murdered by the IRA.
7 August 1925. The Summer
Time Act in the UK was made permanent.
5 August 1925, The first public
meeting of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh
Nationalist Party. Founder-member Saunders
Lewis planned a wholly-Welsh-speaking summer school at Machynlleth to open
in August 1926.
22 May 1925, Sir John French, British General who led the
British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium, died.
12 May 1925, Alfred, Lord Milner, British statesman, died
aged 71.
9 April 1925, Tom Jackson, British union leader, was born.
3 April 1925, Anthony Wedgewood Benn, British Labour politician, was born.
20 March 1925, Lord Curzon, British statesman, died aged 66.
13 March 1925, British MPs approved the Summer Time Bill, making annual daylight saving time permanent,.
2 December 1924, The UK and Germany signed a trade pact.
21 November 1924, The new Conservative Government of Britain
repudiated a treaty made by the previous Labour administration with the USSR.
6 November 1924. The new Conservative Prime Minister of Britain,
Stanley
Baldwin, appointed Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
9 October 1924. Britain’s
minority Labour government fell after a vote of censure in the Commons; the
vote was 364 against the Government, 198 in favour. On 29 October 1924 the
Conservatives won a large victory following a scare over the ‘Zinoviev letter’. This was a forged letter allegedly from Moscow, urging a Communist
revolution in Britain. A General Election was held on 30 October 1924 and
the result was 413 seats to the Conservatives, against 151 for Labour and 40
for the Liberals. Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister.
7 October 1924, The
British Labour Party banned Communists from becoming members.
January
1924 General Elections; Labour win
23 January 1924, Ramsay McDonald formed Britain’s
first Labour Government (without an overall majority). Philip Snowden became Chancellor
of the Exchequer.
22 January 1924. The Labour Party won 288 seats against the
Conservatives 266, but had no overall majority as the Liberals held 59. Ramsay
MacDonald became Britain’s first
Labour Prime Minister, succeeding
the Conservative, Stanley Baldwin. See also 26 July 1945. The
first Labour government in Britain was elected. King George V sent for Ramsay
MacDonald (born 12 October 1866) following the Conservative defeat
on a censure motion in the Commons the previous day. The state of the Commons
was then, previous to the election, Conservative 259 seats, Labour 191, and
Liberals 159. Labour secured its first UK Parliamentary majority on 30 May 1929.
The new Labour government was to prioritise
unemployment; slum clearance and house building would also be tackled.
8 December 1923. In the UK 8 women were now MPs. The British
general election resulted in a hung Parliament. The Conservatives, standing on
a platform of protectionist tariffs to reduce unemployment, lost seats,
finishing with 258 seats. Labour had 191 seats, and the Liberal had 159 seats.
30 October 1923, Andrew Bonar-Law, Canadian-born UK Prime Minister, died.
22 May 1923. Stanley Baldwin became Conservative Prime
Minister after the resignation Andrew Bonar
Law of due to illness. Baldwin was to serve as PM for three
terms. See 23 October 1922.
11 April 1923, In Britain, the Conservative Government suffered a
Commons defeat, by 145 votes to 138, on a motion on ex-servicemen.
21 November 1922. Ramsay MacDonald was elected leader of the
Labour Party.
November 1922
General Elections; Conservative win
16 November 1922. In Britain, the
Tories under Bonar
Law won the General Election with a majority of 77. The
Conservatives got 345 seats. Labour won
142 to become the main opposition party for the first time, and the
Liberals had 117 seats.
26 October 1922, King George V
dissolved parliament and called new
elections for November 15.
23 October 1922, A Bonar Law became UK Conservative Prime Minister, succeeding Austin
Chamberlain. He resigned 22
May 1923 due to illness (died 30 October 1923), and was replaced by Stanley Baldwin
on 22 May 1923, becoming the shortest term of office in the 20th
century.
20 May 1923, Bonar Law, UK Prime Minister,
resigned due to illness.
19 October 1922, At the Carlton Club Meeting, in Britain, the
Tories decided to quit the coalition with the Liberals.
1 August 1922, Britain distributed the Balfour Note to the rest of the Allies, stating that Britain would
only attempt to recover from its European debtors the same amount as the US was
seeking to recover from Britain as a War Loan. This placed the burden of moral responsibility for war damages squarely
on the USA.
14 May 1922, William Abraham, British Labour politician
from south Wales (born 1842) died.
26 February 1922, Britain and France concluded a 20-year
alliance.
13 February 1922, Francis Pym,
British politician, was born.
4 January 1922, 80 acres
of Hartlepool devastated by a major fire.
1921, The British Medical
Association estimated that a family of five needed to spend 22s 6 ½ d on food
to eat healthily; however Unemployment Benefit was just 29s 3d a week, and the
poorest slum accommodation still cost 6s a week to rent.
11 November 1921, The British legion held its first Poppy Day.
23 August 1921. The
1921 Census of Britain showed the population had increased by almost 2 million
to 42,767,530. 7.4 million of these lived in London.
War losses affected the total, but the loss due to emigration was greater.
Women exceeded men by 2 million, much the same as in 1911.
29 June 1921, Lady Randolph Churchill, American mother of Winston
Churchill, died.
22 June 1921, The British Labour Party decided against
affiliating with the Communists.
12 June 1921. Last Sunday deliveries by British postmen.
14 May 1921. The British
Legion was founded in London by Earl Haig. It was renamed the Royal British Legion in 1971.
15 April 1921, Less than
a day before it was due to begin, a rail and transport workers strike in support
of the striking coalminers was called off. The miners had been locked out of
the pits since 1 April 1921. The miners wanted higher wages, and wage equality
across the country; the pit owners wanted to reduce wages. The owners proposed
a compromise of continuing with present wages, but this was rejected by the
miner’s executive this day by a majority of one vote. The miners called this
day ‘Black Friday’.
1 April 1921. In
Britain, a coal strike began; a state of emergency was proclaimed. Coal
rationing began on 3 April 1921. However the strike became a lockout, and the
coal miner's traditional allies, the railway and transport unions, failed to
support them. The miners had to return on humiliating terms, including a wages
cut. The strike was settled on 4 July 1921, after the UK government promised to
subsidise the coal industry. Wage reductions in other industries followed and
neither Lloyd George or any other politician ever again had the chance to make
Britain 'a land fit for heroes'.
21 March 1921. Austen Chamberlain succeeded Andrew Bonar
Law as Conservative leader (who had resigned due to ill-health).
17 March 1921. In Britain, Andrew Bonar Law resigned leadership of the
Conservative Party.
12 February 1921, In Britain, Winston Churchill was appointed
Colonial Secretary.
8 January 1921, Lloyd George became the first Prime Minister to occupy Chequers, the house near Wendover
given to the nation by Lord Lee of Fareham.
1 January 1921, The Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute, or
NAAFI, was founded in Britain.
11 November 1920, The Labour politician Roy
Jenkins was born at Abersychan.
18 October 1920. Britain's miners walked out over a claim for
2 shillings (10p) more a week, work did not resume until 3 November 1920.
1 August 1920, The Communist Party of Great Britain was
founded.
30 April 1920. Britain abolished conscription.
6 January 1920, Walter Cunliffe, British banker (born 4
December 1855), died at Epsom.
11/1919, A year after World War One ended, the Women’s Land Army was disbanded.
27 October 1919, Lord Curzon succeeded A J Balfour as British Foreign
Secretary.
10 October 1919, British teachers,
their salaries still at pre war levels, asked for a doubling of their pay.
10 September 1919, The TUC favoured nationalising the coal industry.
3 August 1919, Riots in Liverpool during the policemen’s strike.
19 July 1919, Allied victory in the Great War was celebrated with
parades and banquets, three weeks after the Treaty of Versailles had been
signed. However many British demobbed servicemen felt aggrieved at this, being
unemployed and without the ‘Homes for Heroes’ they had been promised. There
were civil disturbances in several towns, which escalated into a full riot in Luton,
where a crowd burnt down the Town Hall, where a feast had been prepared for
local dignitaries. The Mayor was forced to flee the town.
23 June 1919, The British Government recommended nationalising the coal mines.
21 June 1919. German sailors
unexpectedly scuttled the captive German fleet, 72 warships, at Scapa Flow.
31 January 1919, In Glasgow, a sheriff was hit by a bottle as he
read the Riot Act; 40 were injured in clashes with police.
7 January 1919, Labour began to act as the official
opposition in the UK House of Lords.
31 December 1918, The British War Cabinet met for the last
time.
28 December 1918. Lloyd George’s coalition was re-elected to
government. Lloyd
George had the support of 478 MPs; the Opposition had 229 MPs, of
whom 63 were Labour.
20 November 1918, The Germans
surrendered their submarines at Harwich.
19 November 1918, The UK
government revealed that the War had cost 767,000 deaths and some 2.3 million
injured.
11 November 1918. Armistice Day. World War One ended. Fighting ceased on the Western Front, and
Austro-Hungary signed an armistice with the Allies. See 29 September 1918. Church
bells rang out across Britain in celebration. The Allies had not expected
such a sudden collapse of Germany; in September 1918 they were planning
campaigns for 1919. However General Ludendorff was shaken by the sudden Allied
advance (see 8 August 1918) and begged Kaiser Wilhelm to seek an armistice
immediately. The Armistice was signed in Marshal Foch’s railway carriage, near
Compiegne. Warsaw became the capital of a restored Polish State. The armistice
required Germany to relinquish 5,000 heavy guns, 30,000 machine guns, 2,000
aircraft, all U-boats, 5,000 locomotives,
150,000 wagons and 5,000 lorries. The surface fleet was to be interned
(see 21 November 1918), the Allies were to occupy the Rhineland, and the
blockade of German ports would continue. World War One cost 9 million lives,
with a further 27 million injured. Britain alone had lost 750,000 men, and a
further 200,000 from the Empire, with another 1.5 million seriously injured.
The War had cost the Allies an estimated US$ 126 billion, and the Central
Powers a further US$ 60 billion. Britons
now celebrated, and wages rose, although higher food prices eroded some of
those gains. Women, at least those over 30, finally had the vote, and smoking,
gambling and movies boomed, with Charlie Chaplin as movie star. The US was the greatest beneficiary of the War. US
losses amounted to 53,000 men, a small number compared to 8,500,000 casualties
of the European combatants. US industry had become more efficient, and key
sectors such as chemicals had learned to do without Europe; the US aviation
industry had been transformed. Economically, The US had needed European capital
before 1914; by 1918 Europe owed the US some US$ 10,000 million.
See France-Germany
for main events of World War One
15 September 1918, Mr C Chubb gave Stonehenge to the nation.
1 July 1918, A catastrophic
explosion at the Chilwell munitions
plant near Nottingham killed 134
workers. The women who worked there making nitrogen-based explosives were known
as ‘Canary Girls’, because the chemicals turned their skin yellow and hair
green. The blast was heard 30 miles away, but news of it was suppressed. The
Chilwell factory had produced 19 million shells, half of those used by British
forces during the First World War. Of the 7,000 surviving workers, all but 12
were back working at Chilwell the day after.
18 June 1918, The UK Government
asked for a further War Loan of £500 million. General rationing in the UK began
on 19 June 1918.
19 April 1918, Alfred Milner became British War Secretary.
7 March 1918, Bonar Law asked the UK Commons for another War Loan of £600 million.
25 February 1918. Rationing
of meat, butter, and margarine began in London and the Home Counties.
6 February 1918. A deposit of £150 was required from UK
Parliamentary candidates.
30 January 1918, The
Commons rejected the Lords’ proposal for proportional representation.
23 January 1918, The UK Government ordered restaurants to
have two ‘meatless’ days a week.
19 January 1918, The training ship Warspite was destroyed by fire.
17 January 1918, Sir Keith Joseph, British politician, was
born.
1 January 1918, Sugar
rationing began in Britain.
31 December 1917, During the
year 1917 German submarines sank 6,500,000 tons of Allied shipping whilst only
2,700,000 tons was built. In April 1917 Britain had only two months’ worth of
food stocks. However with US destroyer patrols searching for German submarines,
escorted transatlantic convoys and the mining of the seas between Scotland and
Norway, Allied losses were dramatically reduced and after April 1918 never
exceeded 200,000 tons a month.
5 October 1917. Sir Arthur Lee donated Chequers to the nation as a country retreat for British Prime
Ministers.
14 September 1917. German
submarine shelled Scarborough.
2 September 1917, Major
German night time air raid on Dover.
30 August 1917. Denis Healey, British Labour politician, was born.
28 July 1917, The formation of
the Royal Tank Corps in the British
Army was authorised.
17 July 1917. Churchill returned to UK government as Minister for Munitions.
5 July 1917, Joe Gormley, President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM),
was born.
19 June 1917, All German titles
and names are renounced by the British
Royal Family, who adopted the name Windsor.
The old name had been Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
13 June 1917, Large
German air raid on Folkestone, Shorncliffe and other Kent towns. 95 died and
260 were injured.
12 May 1917. The British army
began to accept men aged 41-50.
26 April 1917. German naval raid on Ramsgate.
18 March 1917. Ramsgate
and Broadstairs shelled from the sea.
February 1917, In Britain the Women’s Land
Army (WLA) was set up, to boost domestic food production whilst the men
were away fighting in the trenches. The UK Government promoted a ‘voluntary
rationing’ scheme. By 1918 the WLA
had 20,000 volunteers, doing dairy work, ploughing, and tree felling.
26 January 1917, A violent storm breached sea defences at
the English village of Hallsands, leading to all but one of the houses becoming
uninhabitable.
7 December 1916. In Britain, David Lloyd George succeeded Herbert Asquith
as Prime Minister (see 8 April 1908). A Coalition government led by the Liberals was formed.
5 December 1916, An
explosion at the Barnbow munitions factory, Leeds, killed 35 women. The
incident was censored and went unreported at the time. War production resumed
within a week, with wages on £12 a week, equivalent to over £1,000 a week in
2015.
28 November 1916, First
German aeroplane raids on London.
Military Tanks
15 September 1916. Tanks went into battle for the first time, for the
British Army at the battle of Flers on the
Somme. They were invented by Sir Ernest Swinton, weighed 30
tons, and travelled at 4mph. It was hoped they would break the stalemate of
trench warfare. Some German soldiers
fled, thinking the Devil had come. The tank forces achieved their objective but
infantry reserves could not arrive in time to consolidate the successes.
29 January 1916. Military tanks were trialled at Hatfield,
Hertfordshire.
26 July 1916, The US protested at a British blacklist banning
trade with some 30 US firms.
9 July 1916. British Prime Minister (1970-74) Edward Heath, was born in Broadstairs, Kent.
25 May 1916, Britain extended
compulsory military conscription from single men (Military Service Act, given
Royal Assent on 27 January 1916) to married men too (a second Military Service
Act).
21 May 1916, Daylight saving
time began in Britain. It was introduced by William Willett, to save coal
stocks by reducing the demand for electric lighting.
17 May 1916. The Daylight
Saving Act was passed. Clocks went forward in Britain for the first time on 21
May 1916, causing some confusion. See 7 August 1925.
16 May 1916, French diplomat Francois-Georges Picot and British
diplomat Mark
Sykes began a secret correspondence to decide how the Middle East
would be divided up after World War One (see also 30 October 1917). The Western
Powers had already decided that the Ottoman Empire was too vast and too corrupt
to be allowed to survive. Britain would claim Jordan, most of Iraq, and the
port city of Haifa. France would take SE
Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Palestine would be jointly
administered between Britain and France. Russia would be granted the city of
Constantinople and several Armenian-dominated regions. In fact the Russian
Revolution of 1917 and further diplomatic developments meant that not all these
provisions became reality, but the Sykes-Picot agreement set the scene for many
of the issues of the Middle East during the 20th century.
2 April 1916, A large explosion occurred at the Uplees
explosives factory, Kent, which was producing armaments for World War One. 116
men and boys were killed.
11 March 1916. British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was born in Huddersfield,
Yorkshire.
Britain
faces unanticipated issues during the War
29 September 1916, The British Government
asked people to observe a ‘meatless day’ to prevent food price rises.
10 March 1916, The UK War Office urged women to be less extravagant in their dress. From now until the end of the war there
would be no imports of spirits, pianos, or motors.
23 February 1916, The British Government urged well-off families to release their
servants for ‘more useful purposes’.
6 January 1916, The Commons voted in favour of conscription
by 403 votes to 103, although the Home Secretary Sir John Simon resigned over the
issue. Single men were to be conscripted first; armed service became compulsory
for single men aged between 18 and 41. Many
British soldiers had been killed in the War, and volunteering rates had dropped
off sharply.
1915, The Women's Institute was formed in 1915 to revitalise rural
communities and encourage women to become more involved in producing food
during the First World War.
13 November 1915. Churchill
resigned from the cabinet over the Dardanelles.
See
France-Germany for main events of World War One
9 November 1915, British war casualties now totalled 510,000.
12 October 1915. The British nurse, Edith Cavell, was executed by a German firing
squad in Brussels for helping Allied prisoners escape over the Dutch frontier;
she had given medical attention to both Allied and German casualties
equally. The Brussels authorities had ordered her execution, which was opposed
by the Kaiser and the German High Command as a political mistake, carried
out quickly by the German occupation regime in Belgium before Berlin was
informed. Her death aroused patriotic fervour in Britain against Germany.
25 May 1915. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith of Britain formed a wartime
Liberal-Conservative coalition, replacing the former Liberal Government; Asquith
remained Prime Minister. The Liberal
Government had been shaken by the scandal of British troops in the front line
facing a shortage of high explosive shells.
26 September 1915. Kier Hardie, founder of the Labour Party,
died.
15 July 1915. 200,000 Welsh miners went on strike for more pay.
Wartime
curbs on civil liberties
24 January 1916. Conscription started in
Britain. It was for single men aged 19-30.
13 October 1915, The British Government banned ‘treating’ – buying drinks for another –
in an effort to curb drunkenness amongst factory workers.
16 July 1915, In Britain the National Registration Act made it compulsory for men
eligible for military service to register.
14 May 1915, Britain
began internment of enemy aliens.
13 May 1915, In
Britain, street violence against those suspected of being ‘aliens’ increased
following the sinking of the Lusitania
on 7 May 1915.
1 May 1915, Widespread
resentment by British workers at alcohol
sales restrictions.
30 March 1915, In Britain King George V offered to give up alcohol as an example to the munitions
workers.
1 February 1915,
British passport holders were required to carry photographs, not just written
descriptions.
27 November 1914, The UK passed the Defence of
the Realm Act (DORA), enabling the government to requisition factories and
censor the press. Further restrictions were imposed as the War progressed.
10 May 1915. Denis Thatcher, wife of Margaret, British Prime Minister,
was born.
26 February 1915. Clydeside armament workers went on strike for more
pay.
30 January 1915, John Profumo, British Cabinet Minister
involved in the Profumo Affair with Christine
Keeler and a Russian attaché, was born.
Build up to
World War One in Britain
26 November 1914, At Sheerness, Kent, the
HMS Bulwark exploded, killing 700 people.
3 October 1914, The first national flag
day was held in England, in aid of the Belgian Relief Fund.
11 August 1914. Young men in Britain formed long queues outside army recruiting
offices, anxious not to miss the war,
which was expected to be over by Christmas. Farm boys, city workers, peers,
and dustmen left their jobs ‘to serve King and country’. Schoolboys gave false
ages and friends join up together to fight together on the front. War was seen not only as a patriotic duty
but as a break from a humdrum existence. However Sir Edward Grey, the
Foreign Secretary, was more realistic. He said ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit
again in our lifetime’.
9 August 1914. The first British troops arrived in
France. The British Expeditionary Force was landed from 9th to 17th
August at Boulogne.
4 August 1914. Britain declared war on Germany for violating the Treaty of London. President
Wilson declared the USA neutral. That morning, Germany began the invasion of Belgium (see 2 August 1914, and 6 August 1914). The Austrian ultimatum to
Serbia brought Russia in as Serbia’s ally, and Germany entered as Austria’s
ally. Britain might well have stayed
neutral had Germany not invaded Belgium in an attempt to outflank France.
Germany began mining Danish waters and requested Denmark to mine the Great
Belt. Denmark, believing Germany would mine it anyway, said it would do so. Britain believed the war would be over by
Christmas.
See
France-Germany for main events of World War One
2 August 1914. Britain mobilised the Royal Navy after
Germany declared war on Russia..
The British Cabinet had finally agreed that a German presence in French Channel ports could not be tolerated, and
so France must be helped against Germany (see 9 August 1914), although at the
end of July most of the Cabinet had been for non-intervention in Europe.
1 January 1914, Lloyd George called the arms build-up in western Europe ‘organised insanity’.
22/ July 1912. To counter the growing
German naval threat, the British Admiralty recalled warships from the
Mediterranean to begin patrols in the North Sea.
9 October 1911,
The King George V, Britain’s biggest battleship to date, was launched.
21 July 1911, Lloyd George,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, warned Germany not to threaten British interests
in the western Mediterranean, or Gibraltar.
See 1 July 1911. Germany denied
such ambitions, but Britain began preparing for war with Germany.
9 March 1911,
The British Government announced that five more battleships were to be built.
2 February 1910,
The British army was concerned about a possible shortage of horses if war
should break out with Germany.
2 July 1914, Joseph Chamberlain, British politician, died.
4 June 1914, In Britain, railway workers and miners came out on
strike in support of builders and other workers already on strike.
15 May 1914, The Commons rejected the idea of Home Rule for
Scotland.
10 May 1914, In Britain, the Liberal Unionist Party united with
the Conservatives.
30 March 1914. 100,000 miners in Yorkshire went on strike.
1913, Almost 4 million
holidaymakers had visited Blackpool this year, up from nearly 2 million in 1893
and 850,000 in 1873.
7 November 1913. Box Hill, Surrey, was formally given to the
nation.
26 October 1913, Hugh Scanlon, British trade unionist, was
born.
14 October 1913, Britain’s
worst coal mining disaster occurred at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd,
Glamorgan, when 439 died in a pit explosion. The blast was heard 11 miles away
in Cardiff.
31 July 1913, Lloyd George said the Lords should be abolished.
23 June 1913, Michael Foot, UK Labour Party Leader, was
born.
3 January 1913, James Hamilton Abercorn, British politician
(born 24 August 1838) died.
1912, The
D Notice committee was founedto ‘guide’ the press on matters concerning national
security.
18 December 1912. The Piltdown Man was discovered in
Sussex. It was claimed to be the fossilised skull and other remains of the
earliest known European man. On 21 November 1953 it was revealed as a hoax, the skull was that of an orang-utan.
22 November 1912, The wives of striking Welsh coal miners
in joined their husbands in rioting
against the police, during the 1912 National Coal Strike.
21 September 1912, Ian McGregor, chairman of British Steel and
British Coal, was born.
24 July 1912, Emma Cons, British social worker and
philanthropist, died at Hever, Kent (born 4 March 1838 in London).
21 July 1912, UK, Second
reading of the Franchise Bill, giving all men over 21 the vote.
26 June 1912, The first Alexandra Day.
16 June 1912. Enoch Powell
was born in Stechford, Birmingham.
26 May 1912, The UK was paralysed by a transport strike.
10 April 1912, Troops were called out to quell riots in Wigan.
27 March 1912. British Labour leader and Prime Minister
1976-1979, James Callaghan, was born
in Portsmouth.
15 February 1912, An attempt by the British Labour Party to
institute a Minimum Wage was
defeated in the House of Commons.
13 November 1911. Bonar Law became leader of the Tory Party,
succeeding Arthur
James Balfour.
9 November 1911, A squadron of soldiers, the 18th
Hussars, with rifles, patrolled the streets of Tonypandy, south Wales, after
clashes between striking miners and the police, in which the police had been
stoned.
8 November 1911, Arthur Balfour, Conservative leader, resigned.
23 October 1911. Winston Churchill
was appointed First Lord of the
Admiralty.
6 October 1911. Barbara Castle,
British Labour politician, was born.
6 September 1911. The British TUC condemned the use of troops
in strikes.
18 August 1911. In the UK, the
Official Secrets Bill got Royal Assent. This made it a criminal offence for government
departments to disclose certain categories of information.
17-19 August 1911. Railway strike in the UK. Armed troops were
called out to assist the police in safeguarding the nation’s food supplies.
Food convoys left main railway goods junctions under heavy guard.
14 August 1911, South Wales miners ended their strike after
14 months.
13 August 1911, Rioting broke out in Liverpool after Tom Mann
and other trade unionists held mass meetings near St George’s Hall.
8 August 1911. Violence
flared in Liverpool’s streets as a
nationwide strike continued. The strike by railwaymen,
dockers, and other transport workers threatened a
nationwide famine, and warships stood by to help merchant ships off Liverpool
to unload. 50,000 troops stood by in Liverpool.
20 July 1911, 20 rioters in Wales shot dead by troops.
19 July 1911, The Liver Building in Liverpool was opened.
23 June 1911. Coronation of King George V.
22 June 1911, Liverpool’s Liver Clock, called ‘Great George’,
began showing the time.
15 May 1911, King George V
and his cousin the Kaiser reasserted their friendship.
3 May 1911, In Britain, Lloyd George introduced a National Health
Insurance Bill.
7 April 1911, The House of Commons gave a second reading to a
Bill giving copyright during an author’s lifetime and for 50 years after their
death.
6 February 1911. The Labour Party elected Ramsay
MacDonald as its leader, replacing Kier Hardie.
20 December 1910. Liberals
and Tories tied in the UK general election. Liberals and Conservatives got
272 seats each (from 397 Liberal MPs). The Liberals under Herbert Asquith remained in
power with the backing of 42 Labour MPs and 84 Irish Nationalists. The Tories
lost support because their blocking of the Budget landed Britain with a £10
million debt. If the House of Lords still blocked the Budget, Asquith
threatened to create 300 new peers to ensure it passed, a measure reluctantly
agreed to by King
George V. Reform of the powers of the House of Lords has now become
a major political issue. This issue sidelined Liberal policies for home rule
for Wales and Scotland. In the event, World War One also delayed home rule for
Ireland.
28 November 1910, In Britain, Parliament was dissolved with a
General Election scheduled for early December. The Liberals gained just two
seats.
29 October 1910, A J Ayer, British philosopher, was born (died
1989).
10 May 1910, In Britain the House of Commons resolved that the
House of Lords should have no power to veto money Bills, limited power to
postpone other Bills, and that the maximum lifetime of a Parliament should be
reduced from seven to five years.
27 April 1910, In Britain the ‘People’s Budget’ was passed
again by the Commons; after three hours
of debate it was also passed by the Lords, and received Royal Assent.
4 April 1910, The first Commons reading of a Bill to abolish the Lords’ power of veto.
11 March 1910, A dam burst in The Rhondda, Wales, sweeping away
500 children; 494 were rescued.
21 February 1910, Douglas Bader, World War Two fighter pilot and
squadron leader, was born in London.
Continued
defence worries over Germany
15 January 1910. UK General Election. German
rearmament, the power of the Lords,and Irish Home Rule were major issues.
The Liberals won with a reduced majority of 275 seats, against Labour with 40,
the Irish nationalists with 82, and the Unionists with 273 seats.issue.
1909, The security
agencies MI5 and MI6 were founded in Britain.
21 March 1909, Reginald
McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty, caused dismay in the House of
Commons when he stated that the UK Government had underestimated Admiral von
Tirpitz’s programme to expand the German navy.
8 February 1909, The UK
Government announced that six more Dreadnought battleships were to be built for
the Navy.
7 November 1908, The British Navy launched
its biggest battleship to date, the HMS Collingwood.
16 October 1908, A new harbour at Dover was opened as part
of a national system of defence.
11 August 1908, King Edward VII of Britain met Kaiser Wilhelm of
Germany at Friedrichshof, Germany. The main point of contention was the
increasing size of the German Navy.
1 April 1908, The Territorial Army was officially
founded, as the Territorial Force, by Lord Haldane.
26 October 1907, The UK’s Territorial Army was conceived by the
Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane.
28 February 1907, Britain’s Royal Navy
ordered three more Dreadnought warships.
30 November 1909, The House of Lords threw out a Budget by
Liberal Chancellor Lloyd George they considered too left-wing. Prime Minister
Herbert Asquith now faced a General Election. The controversial Budget proposed
taxing the highest 10,000 earners with incomes over £5,000 a year in Britain an
extra 6d in the £ income tax, over and above the rate of 1 shilling 2d in the £
paid by all earners above £2,000 a year, a rise from 1 shilling in the £.
Unearned income was also to be taxed at 1s 2d in the £. Death duties were to be
doubled. The tax money would fund rearmament and old age pensions. The Tories
described the Budget as a tax on the propertied classes. On 3 December 1909
King Edward VII dissolved Parliament, and taxes on alcohol, tobacco and cars
were suspended as no Budget had been passed. For half a century it had been accepted
that the unelected Lords could not veto a money Bill from the elected Commons,
but the Tories argued this Bill had too many non-financial measures to come
under this rule.
5 November 1909, The first
Woolworth store opened in Britain, in Lord Street, Liverpool.
9 October 1909, Donald Coggan, 101st Archbishop of Canterbury,
was born.
30 July 1909, Northcote Parkinson,
British author, historian and journalist, best known for stating Parkinson’s Law that work expands to fill the time available,
was born.
6 June 1909, Isaiah Berlin,
Russian-British political philosopher, was born.
28 November 1908, The
Court of Appeal in Britain ruled that Unions could not use their funds for
political purposes. Many Labour MPs depended on sponsorship by the Unions.
26 November 1908, Charles (Lord) Forte, hotelier, was born. He opened Newport Pagnell services on the M1
in 1959, and died in 2007.
6 November 1908, A cotton workers strike in Lancashire ended
after seven weeks with the workers accepting a pay cut.
5 November 1908, The Cullinan Diamond was cut for Queen
Alexandra, Britain.
25 October 1908, Lewis Campbell, British classical scholar
(born 3 September 1830) died.
12 September 1908, Winston Churchill married Clementine Hosier.
15 August 1908, Winston Churchill announced his engagement to Clementine
Hosier.
7 September 1908, Frederick Blayes, English classical scholar,
died in Southsea (born Hampton Court Green 29 September 1818).
2 June 1908, Sir Redvers Buller, British General, died
(born 1839).
30 May 1908, Bernard Fitz Alan Howard, 16th Duke of
Norfolk, British statesman, was born.
11 May 1908, The foundation stone of the Liver Building,
Liverpool, was laid.
12 April 1908, Herbert Asquith was appointed Prime Minister,
replacing Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who had resighned through ill-health.
David Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer.
5 April 1908, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, English Prime
Minister, resigned due to ill health (born 7 September 1836).
1 March 1908, John Adrian, 1st Marquess of Linlithgow, died.
22 January 1908, The British Labour Party decided to adopt Socialism.
6 January 1908, 2,000 textile workers went on strike in
Oldham, Lancashire.
6 October 1907, Henry Brampton, English judge, died in London
(born in Hitchin 14 September 1817)
5 September 1907, King Edward of Britain met the Russian Foreign
Minister, Alexander
Izvolski, at Marienbad (now, Czech Republic), to strengthen mutual
relations.
31 August 1907, The UK and Russia agreed an entente,
defining spheres of influence in Persia, Tibet, and Afghanistan. There was an implicit agreement that Britain
would not allow Russia to control the Bosporus, and the entente opened up the
London money markets to Russia, allowing it to recover from the Japanese defeat
of 1904/5. France was also part of this agreement, forming a Triple Entente to contain the newly
unified Prussian-dominated Germany.
14 June 1907, The UK Government announced a Bill to curb the House of Lords.
19 May 1907, Sir Benjamin Baker, British engineer, died in
Pangbourne, Berkshire (born 1840).
2 May 1907, King Edward VII of Britain met the French
President in Paris.
24 April 1907, Winston Churchill, Colonial Under-Secretary,
was made a Privy Councillor.
25 March 1907, The British Government killed off a Channel Tunnel
Bill.
9 March 1907, John Alexander Dowie, Scottish evangelist and
faith healer (born 25 May 1847 in Edinborgh, Scotland) died in Chicago,
Illinois.
23 January 1907, In the UK, Lloyd George advocated reducing the power of the House of Lords.
19 January 1907, Captain Henry Singleton Pennell, English
soldier who received the Victoria Cross, died.
30 November 1906, The Prince of Wales opened the new Cotton Exchange in Liverpool.
21 November 1906, In Glasgow, a man died when 200,000 gallons
of hot whisky burst out of vats.
30 October 1906, Gathorne Cranbrook, British statesman, died
(born 1 October 1814)
14 October 1906, Sir Richard Tangye, British industrial
machinery manufacturer, died (born 24 November 1833 in Redruth, Cornwall)
2 October 1906, John Humphreys Whitfield, British scholar of
Italian language & literature, was born in Wednesbury, England (died 1995).
8 March 1906. The British government stated that the British Empire covered 11.5 million square
miles, one fifth of the world’s land area, and had a population of 400 million,
a quarter of the world total. The Empire had grown by a third in the last 25 years.
12 January 1906. The Liberals won a landslide victory in the British
general elections. Labour under Keir Hardie also made gains. The
Liberals had 399 seats, up from 184 in the 1900 election. The Conservatives
retained 156 seats, down from 402. Labour gained 29 seats; a secret
Liberal-Labour pact gave the Labour candidate a free run against the Tories in
key constituencies. Labour’s share of the vote was just 4.8%, but this was
treble their 1900 share. In December
1905 the new Liberal Government got the Trades Disputes Bill passed by the
(Conservative-dominated) House of Lords, reversing the House of Lords ruling in
the Taff Vale case (1901), which had meant trades unions were liable for losses
to the employer caused by strikes.
10 January 1906, Britain and France began
closer co-operation on military and defence issues.,
4 December 1905, British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour resigned.
25 October 1905, Lord Roseberry called for a future Liberal Government to challenge the power of the House of Lords.
22 July 1905, Ralph Lingen, British civil
servant, died.
19 April 1905. A judge decided the public
had no right of way to Stonehenge.
31 March 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany arrived in Tangier, Morocco, to
give a speech in favour of Moroccan independence. This was intended to humiliate France, who saw Morocco as their own
protectorate, and to test the closeness of the Franco-British entente.
Germany intended to subsequently ‘grant France limited control in Morocco’, a
move supposed to bring France closer to Germany and away from Britain. However Germany was surprised by the
forcefulness with which British Foreign Secretary Sir
Edward Grey backed France; Germany was further isolated from France,
Britain and hence Russia too. This event paved
the way for the Agadir crisis of 1911.
Concerns over poverty
1904, Child malnutrition in the
poorest parts of Britain was attributed to a decline in breast feeding. In turn
some of this was due to mothers working, but more was due to chronic ill-health
of the mothers making them incapable of breast feeding.
1902, A survey found that in the
poorest parts of Leeds, England, 60% of the children had bad teeth and half had
rickets.
Demographic
concerns
11 September 1905,
Figures were released showing rural lunacy on the rise; this was attributed to
the tedium of living in the countryside.
1 July 1905, The Colonial
Office considered a plan to relocate Britain’s ‘surplus population’ in various
parts of the Empire.
1904, Construction work on
Letchworth New Town began.
15 December 1904, In London,
British politician Joseph Chamberlain called for curbs on
immigration; he said they were responsible for crime and disease.
7 July 1903, Britain’s falling birth-rate would result in a halt to population
growth in 18 years.
26 February 1903. In the UK, a Commons Debate called for curbs on immigration.
Rising
British Protetcionism; concerns about Germany, increased ties with France
10 February 1906, Britain launched the revolutionary new battleship Dreadnought. She made every other warship obsolete,
outgunning and outranging them all. Her new steam turbine propulsion made her
much faster than older ships. This marked the start of a keen naval arms
race between Britain and Germany. Germany now realised that the latest class
of battleships were too big to pass through the Kiel Canal. The
Russo-Japanese War demonstrated the need for such battleship innovation, as naval battles were now fought at long
range, using torpedoes, and torpedo boats therefore had to be destroyed at a
distance with accurate long-range artillery.
19 September 1905, Britain and
Germany held simultaneous war manoeuvres.
1 March 1905, Britain
announced that spending on the navy was to increase by 350%..
For Dogger Bank Incident,
October 1904, see Russia
28 August 1904. A treaty
was concluded in London whereby France would
allow the British freedom of action in Egypt in
return for the British allowing the French a free hand in Morocco. For many
years the nominally independent Sultanate of Morocco had been losing power as
it became increasingly dependent on French, Spanish, and German business and
subsidies for financial security. In October 1904 the French also concluded a
secret treaty with the Spanish. This disturbed Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany
who saw his country being squeezed out of North Africa. Wilhelm II therefore landed at
Tangier on 31 March 1905. The sultan sided with the Germans and serious
friction with the French resulted. On 161/1906 the Algecieras Conference was held. German claims were backed by Austria
whilst French claims were backed by Britain. Germany failed to curb France’s
privileged position in Morocco. See 8 April 1904.
12 July 1904, Britain and Germany signed
a five-year treaty, to resolve disputes through arbitration rather than by
military means.
8 April 1904. Entente Cordiale set up between Britain and France. Each country recognised the other’s
colonial interests. France agreed not to
interfere in Egypt and England agreed not to
interfere in Morocco. Germany, which also wanted control in Morocco, felt
threatened by this entente. Britain had become unpopular with many
countries after the Boer War, and needed friends; relations with France had
been strained since the Fashoda
incident in 1898. Now both Britain and France felt anxious over the rise of the German economy and military
might, especially its navy. The entente meant Britain’s navy could concentrate
on defending the North Sea whilst France’s monitored the Mediterranean.
See 28 August 2904.
1 February 1904, Britain agreed with France
to remain neutral if there was war between Russia and Japan.
29 January 1904, The Esher Committee (see 7 November 1903) submitted preliminary
recommendations on improving the British military. These included, an Army
Council to reorganise the Army, also a Defence Council overseen by the Prime Minister to oversee the
wider aims of UK defence. This later became known as the Committee of Imperial
Defence.
7 November 1903, In the wake of the Boer War,
Britain appointed the three-man Esher
Committee to improve the British military.
6 July 1903, French President Emile Loubet, and Theophile Delcasse,
visited London to begin the Entente Cordiale.
6 March 1903, In response to the growing German navy, construction began on a huge
new British naval base at Rosyth.
4 March 1903, King Edward VII of Britain
concluded a visit to Paris, during which Anglo-French relations were
strengthened.
8 November 1902, The Kaiser arrived in London on a
12-day State Visit to try and improve Anglo-German relations.
18 December 1902, In London, the Committee
of Imperial Defence held its first meeting.
30 June 1902, At the Colonial Conference
in London, a principle of Imperial Preference was agreed; that Britain and the
colonies should set preferential tariffs for each other’s goods.
24 May 1902, Empire Day was celebrated for the first time (Queen Victoria’s birthday).
27 October 1901, Negotiations on an
Anglo-German alliance broke down, after the British Colonial Secretary, Joseph
Chamberlain, made an anti-German speech in Edinburgh.
1 August 1901, The Commons voted an extra £12.5 million for naval and war budgets.
15 May 1901, The British Admiralty decided to build three large battleships.
17 August 1904, In the UK, the Postmaster General reported that
postcard usage increased by 25% in 1903.
9 December 1903, The Glasgow East End
Industrial Exhibition opened in Duke Street, Glasgow, Scotland. It ran until 9
April 1904, attracting 908,897 visitors. The opening ceremony, led by Alexander Bruce,
6th Lord Balfour of Burleigh, was followed by a choral concert given by the Royal
Marines.
24 November 1903, Sir John Maple, British business magnate,
died.
22 August 1903. Lord Salisbury, four times Conservative Prime
Minister, died, aged 73.
10 July 1903, Kenneth Clarke, UK Conservative politician,
was born (died 1983).
3 September 1902, The Trades Unions Congress voted in London to
back independent Labour Parliamentary candidates rather than rely on local
alliances with Liberals.
12 July 1902. (1) Arthur Balfour
(Conservative) succeeded Lord Salisbury
as Tory Prime Minister.
(2) Kitchener returned to a heroes’
welcome in London.
Funeral of
Queen Victoria
4 February 1901, Queen Victoria was buried at
Windsor, next to Albert.
22 January 1901. Queen
Victoria died, at of a cerebral haemorrhage
Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, aged 81; the longest reigning and longest
lived monarch of Britain. Accession of King Edward VII to the British throne. His
coronation was on 9 August 1902. King Edward VII was born on 9 November 1840,
and was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Crowned at 60
years of age, he proved a popular monarch who gave his name to the Edwardian era. He was made Prince of
Wales by his mother when only one month old. His free and easy social life made
him a prominent figure in society and he was involved in several scandals. His coronation was elaborate
and was a departure from the rather dour
image of the monarchy in the latter part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Edward VII
is remembered as a popular man who tried to ensure peace in Europe, touring
European capitals in a diplomatic role. An estimated 500,000 watched the funeral. procession of Queen Victoria as
it travelled through the silent streets of London, on 2 February 1901.
The funeral took place at Windsor.
31 December 1900, At Stonehenge, Stone No. 21 and its lintel fell
down.
17 October 1900, Lord Salisbury’s
Tory government was re-elected, in
the British General Election. Tory
popularity was high after the Boer War victory.
See South Africa
for events of Boer War
25 June 1900, Earl Louis Mountbatten, military commander and last Viceroy of
India, was born at Frogmore House, Windsor.
22 May 1900, William Lindley, English engineer, died (born
7 September 1808).
27 February 1900, The
British Labour Party was formed by the Trades Unions, along with the Fabians. Ramsay
MacDonald was its secretary; he later became its leader and Prime
Minister.
Click here for events, Great Britain, to 31 December 1899