1967 in the United Kingdom

1967 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1965 | 1966 | 1967 (1967) | 1968 | 1969

Sport and Music

1967 English cricket season Football England | Scotland 1967 in British music

Events from the year 1967 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Harold Wilson (Labour)

Events

January

• January – UK release of the London-set film Blowup.
• 1 January – England's World Cup winning manager Alf Ramsey receives a knighthood and captain Bobby Moore receives an OBE in the New Year Honours.
• 2 January – Veteran actor Charlie Chaplin opens his last film, A Countess From Hong Kong, in England.
• 7 January–1 July – First showing, on BBC Two, of television series The Forsyte Saga.
• 15 January – The United Kingdom enters the first round of negotiations for EEC membership in Rome.
• 16 January – Italy announces support for the United Kingdom's EEC membership.
• 18 January – Jeremy Thorpe becomes leader of the Liberal Party.
• 23 January – Milton Keynes, a village in north Buckinghamshire, is formally designated as a new town by the government, incorporating nearby towns and villages including Bletchley and Newport Pagnell. Intended to accommodate the overspill population from London – some 50 miles away – it will become Britain's largest new town, with the area's population multiplying during the 1970s and 1980s.^[1][2][3]
• 26 January – Parliament decides to nationalize 90% of the British steel industry.
• 27 January – The USA, Soviet Union and the UK sign the Outer Space Treaty.

February

• 6 February – Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin arrives in the UK for an eight-day visit. He meets The Queen on 9 February.
• 7 February – The British National Front is founded by A. K. Chesterton (by merger of the British National Party and League of Empire Loyalists).^[4]
• 12 February – Police raid 'Redlands', the Sussex home of Rolling Stones musician Keith Richards, following a tip-off from the News of the World. No immediate arrests are made, but Richards, fellow band member Mick Jagger and art dealer Robert Fraser are later charged with possession of drugs.
• 25 February – Britain's second Polaris nuclear submarine, HMS Renown, is launched.
• 27 February – The Dutch government supports British EEC membership.

March

• 1 March – The Queen Elizabeth Hall is opened in London.
• 4 March
  • The first North Sea gas is pumped ashore at Easington, County Durham (Incorrect Easington In Yorkshire as quoted by Wiki)].^[5]
  • Queens Park Rangers become the first Football League Third Division side to win the League Cup at Wembley Stadium defeating West Bromwich Albion 3-2. It is also the first year of a one-match final in the competition, the previous six finals having been two-legged affairs.
• 15 March – Manny Shinwell, 82, resigns as chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
• 18 March – The supertanker Torrey Canyon runs aground in between Land's End and the Scilly Isles.^[5]
• 29–30 March – RAF planes bomb the Torrey Canyon and sink it.^[6]
• 9 July – Alan Ayckbourn's first major success, Relatively Speaking, has its West End opening at the Duke of York's Theatre with Richard Briers, Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.
• 31 March – At the London Astoria, Jimi Hendrix sets fire to his guitar on stage for the first time. He is taken to hospital suffering burns to his hands.

April

• 2 April – A UN delegation arrives in Aden due to approaching independence. They leave 7 April, accusing British authorities of lack of cooperation. The British say the delegation did not contact them.
• 8 April – Puppet on a String performed by Sandie Shaw (music and lyrics by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter) wins the Eurovision Song Contest for the UK.
• 11 April – Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead receives its Old Vic premiere.
• 13 April – Conservatives win the Greater London Council elections.

May

• 2 May – Harold Wilson announces that the United Kingdom has decided to apply for EEC membership
• 5 May
  • Launch of the British-designed satellite Ariel 3, the first to be developed outside the United States or Soviet Union.^[7]
  • The first motorway project of the year is completed when the elevated motorway section of the A57 road is officially opened (by Harold Wilson) to form a by-pass around the south of Manchester city area. The M1 is also being expanded this month from both termini, meaning that there will now be an unbroken motorway link between North London and South Yorkshire.^[8]
• 6 May – Manchester United win the Football League First Division title.^[9]
• 11 May – The United Kingdom and Ireland apply officially for European Economic Community membership.
• 14 May – The Roman Catholic Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is consecrated.
• 20 May – In the first all-London FA Cup final, Tottenham Hotspur defeat Chelsea 2-1 at Wembley Stadium.^[10]
• 24 May – Royal Navy Leander-class frigate HMS Andromeda is launched at Portsmouth Dockyard, the last ship to be built there.
• 25 May
  • Celtic F.C. becomes the first British and Northern European team to reach a European Cup final and also to win it, beating Inter Milan 2-1 in normal time with the winning goal being scored by Steve Chalmers in Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Shadow cabinet Tory MP Enoch Powell describes Britain as the "sick man of Europe" in his latest verbal attack on the Labour government.
• 28 May – Sir Francis Chichester arrives in Plymouth after completing his single-handed sailing voyage around the world in his yacht, Gipsy Moth IV, in nine months and one day.^[11]
• 29 May
  • First Spring Bank Holiday on a fixed date of the last Monday in May, replacing the former Whitsun holiday in England and Wales.^[12]
  • 'Barbeque 67', a music festival, at the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall, Spalding, features Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Pink Floyd and Zoot Money.^[13]

June

• 1 June – The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, one of rock's most acclaimed albums.
• 4 June – Stockport Air Disaster: British Midland flight G-ALHG crashes in Hopes Carr, Stockport, killing 72 passengers and crew.
• 27 June – The first automatic cash machine (voucher-based) is installed in the office of Barclays Bank in Enfield.^[5]
• 29 June – Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is jailed for a year for possession illegal drugs. His bandmate Mick Jagger is sentenced to three months for the same offence.

July

• 1 July – The first scheduled colour television broadcasts from six transmitters covering the main population centres in England begin on BBC2 for certain programmes,^[5] the first being live coverage from the Wimbledon Championships.^[14] A full colour service (other than news programmes) begins on BBC2 on 2 December.^[14]
• 4 July – Parliament decriminalizes male homosexuality in England and Wales with the Sexual Offences Act.
• 7 July – In the last amateur Wimbledon tennis tournament, Australian John Newcombe beats German Wilhelm P. Bungert to win the Gentlemen's Singles championship. The next day, American Billie Jean King beats Briton Ann Haydon Jones to win the Ladies' Singles championship. The matches are also the first to be broadcast in colour.
• 13 July – English road racing cyclist Tom Simpson dies of exhaustion on the slopes of Mont Ventoux during the 13th stage of the Tour de France.
• 18 July – The UK government announces the closing of its military bases in Malaysia and Singapore. Australia and the United States do not approve.
• 27 July – The Welsh Language Act allows the use of Welsh in legal proceedings and official documents in Wales.
• 28 July – The British steel industry is nationalised.^[5]
• July – Astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish become the first to observe a pulsar.^[15]

August

• 3 August – The inquiry into the Aberfan Disaster blames the National Coal Board for the collapse of coal which claimed the lives of 164 people in South Wales in October last year.
• 5 August – Pink Floyd releases their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
• 8 August – Dunsop Valley enters the UK Weather Records with the Highest 90-min total rainfall at 117 mm. As of August 2010 this record remains.
• 14 August – The UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal.
• 17 August – Jimmy Hill, manager of the Coventry City side who have been promoted to the Football League First Division for the first time in their history, announces that he is leaving management to concentrate on a television career.
• 28 August
  • First Late Summer Holiday on a fixed date of the last Monday in August, replacing the former August Bank Holiday on the first Monday in England and Wales.^[12]
  • Herbert Bowden is appointed chairman of the Independent Television Authority.

September

• 4 September – The inquest into the death of murdered playwright Joe Orton establishes that he was beaten to death by his lover Kenneth Halliwell, who later committed suicide.
• 9 September - Former prime minister Clement Attlee, 84, is hospitalised with an illness reported only as a "minor condition".^[16]
• 10 September – In Gibraltar, only 44 out of 12,182 voters support union with Spain.
• 20 September – The QE2 is launched at Clydebank by Elizabeth II, using the same pair of gold scissors used by her mother and grandmother to launch the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary respectively.^[17]
• 21 September – The Conservatives capture Cambridge and Walthamstow from Labour in by-elections.
• 27 September – The RMS Queen Mary arrives in Southampton at the end of her last transatlantic voyage.^[5]
• 29 September – Cult television series The Prisoner first broadcast in the UK on ITV.^[18]
• 30 September – BBC Radio 1 is launched.^[5]

October

• 5 October – A Court in Brighton is the first in the UK to decide a case by majority verdict (10 to 2) of the jury.^[5]
• 10 October – Simon Gray's first stage play, Wise Child, opens at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Alec Guinness, Gordon Jackson, Simon Ward and Cleo Sylvestre.^[19]
• 11 October – Prime Minister Harold Wilson wins a libel action against rock group The Move in the High Court after they depict him in the nude in promotional material for their record Flowers in the Rain.^[20]
• 25 October – The Abortion Act, passes in Parliament, legalising abortion on a number of grounds (with effect from 1968).
• 30 October – British troops and Chinese demonstrators clash on the border of China and Hong Kong during the Hong Kong Riots.
• October – St Pancras railway station in London is made a Grade I listed building, regarded as a landmark in the appreciation of Victorian architecture.^[21]

November

• 2 November – Winnie Ewing wins the Hamilton by-election, the first success for the Scottish National Party in an election for the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• 5 November – A Sunday evening express train from Hastings to London derails in the Hither Green rail crash, killing 49 people.^[22]
• 7 November – Boxer Henry Cooper becomes the first to win three Lonsdale Belts outright.^[5]
• 18 November – Movement of animals is banned in England and Wales due to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.^[23]
• 19 November – The UK pound is devalued from 1 GBP = 2.80 USD to 1 GBP = 2.40 USD. Prime minister Harold Wilson defends this decision, assuring voters that it will tackle the "root cause" of the nation's economic problems.^[24]
• 27 November – Charles de Gaulle vetoes British entry into the European Economic Community again.^[25]
• 28 November – Horse racing events are called off due to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.^[26]
• 30 November – British troops leave Aden, which they have occupied since 1839, enabling formation of the new republic of Yemen.

December

• 1 December – Tony O'Connor becomes the first black headmaster of a British school, in Warley, near Birmingham, Worcestershire.
• 5 December – The Beatles open the Apple Shop in London.
• 10 December – Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, George Porter and the German Manfred Eigen win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equlibrium by means of very short pulses of energy".^[27]
• 11 December – The Concorde supersonic aircraft is unveiled in Toulouse, France.
• 12 December – Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, 25, wins a High Court appeal against a nine-month prison sentence for possessing and using cannabis. He is instead fined £1,000 and put on probation for three years.^[28]
• 22 December – BBC Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute, chaired by Nicholas Parsons, first transmitted. It will still be running more than forty years later.

Undated

• First stage of Cumbernauld town centre, the main shopping centre for the New town of Cumbernauld, Scotland, is completed, widely accepted as the UK's first shopping mall and the world's first multi-level covered town centre.^[29]
• Parker Morris Standards become mandatory for all housing built in New Towns.
• The Passport Office moves to Newport and the Land Registry to Swansea, both in South Wales, as part of an effort to move government offices into the regions.
• Reliance Controls factory, Swindon, the last design by Team 4 (Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and their respective wives), considered the first example of High-tech architecture in the UK, is opened (demolished 1991).^[30]
• Peter Nichols' play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg premieres at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.
• The Eel Pie Island Hotel is forced to close by the police.
• American car manufacturer Chrysler takes full control of the Rootes Group.^[31]
• Ford announces the end of Anglia production and replaces it with an all-new car called the Escort, which like its predecessor will be built at Dagenham and sold all over Europe.
• Major changes are introduced to Scouting in the UK: the name of its organisation is changed from The Boy Scout Association to The Scout Association; the youngest section is renamed Cub Scouts; the Boy Scouts become the Scouts (with a new uniform including long trousers replacing shorts); and Senior Scouts (age 16–20) became Venture Scouts.^[32]

Publications

• 12 October – Desmond Morris' book The Naked Ape.^[33]
• Agatha Christie's novel Endless Night.
• Michael Holroyd's Lytton Strachey : a critical biography, volume 1: The unknown years (1880–1910).
• Liverpool poets Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri's poetry anthology The Mersey Sound.
• Boy's Own Paper, founded in 1879, publishes its final issue.

Births

January – April

• 7 January – Mark Lamarr, British comedian/TV and radio presenter
• 14 January – Emily Watson, English actress
• 21 January – Kathryn Johnson, British field hockey player
• 22 January
  • Nick Gillingham, British swimmer
  • Olivia d'Abo, English actress
• 14 February – Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Greek-Cypriot-born entrepreneur, founder of easyJet
• 16 February – Matthew Cottle, actor
• 23 February – Tamsin Greig, actress
• 25 February – Ed Balls, politician
• 11 March – John Barrowman, Scottish-born actor
• 15 March – Lisa Langford, English race walker
• 18 March – Miki Berenyi, British lead singer of Lush
• 2 April – Helen Chamberlain, British television presenter
• 15 April – Frankie Poullain, British bassist (The Darkness)
• 22 April – Sandra Douglas, British sprinter and Olympic medallist
• 26 April – Marianne Jean-Baptiste, British actress

May – August

• 2 May - David Rocastle, English footballer (d. 2001)
• 20 May – Graham Brady, Conservative politician and MP for Altrincham and Sale West
• 27 May – Paul Gascoigne, English footballer
• 29 May – Noel Gallagher, British musician (Oasis)
• 21 June – Tammy Miller, English field hockey player
• 3 July – Katy Clark, Labour politician and trade union official, MP for North Ayrshire and Arran
• 12 July – Kevin Painter, English darts player
• 18 July – Paul Cornell, British television writer
• 19 July – Rageh Omaar, broadcaster
• 22 July
  • Lauren Booth, British journalist
  • Monique Javer, English tennis player
• 15 August – Tony Hand, Scottish ice hockey player
• 24 August - Michael Thomas, English footballer

September – December

• 1 September – Steve Pemberton, English comedy writer and performer (The League of Gentlemen)
• 5 September – Jane Sixsmith, English field hockey player
• 7 September – Toby Jones, British actor (Infamous)
• 12 September - Jason Statham, English actor
• 18 September – Tara FitzGerald, English actress
• 21 September – Susie Dent, British lexicographer on Countdown.
• 5 October - Guy Pearce, British-born Australian-based actor
• 16 October – Davina McCall, British TV presenter and UK Big Brother host
• 20 October – Monica Ali, British nvelist
• 21 October – Paul Ince, English footballer
• 26 October – Douglas Alexander, Labour politician
• 28 October - Julia Roberts, English actress
• 30 October – Gavin Rossdale, English musician
• 14 November – Letitia Dean, British actress
• 24 November – Shahid Malik, Labour politician

Unknown dates

• Greg Clark, Conservative politician and MP for Tunbridge Wells.
• Anjem Choudary, British Islamic activist
• Ivan Noble, British journalist (died 2005)
• Jon Ronson, British journalist and radio presenter

Deaths

• 4 January – Donald Campbell, English water and land speed record seeker (born 1921)
• 3 February – Joe Meek, record producer (born 1929)
• 4 February – Albert Orsborn, the 6th General of The Salvation Army (born 1886)
• 8 February – Victor Gollancz, British publisher (born 1893)
• 6 March – John Haden Badley, English author (born 1865)
• 12 May – John Masefield, English poet and novelist (born 1878)
• 3 June – Arthur Ransome, author and journalist (born 1884)
• 7 July – Vivien Leigh, English actress (born 1913)
• 13 July – Tom Simpson, English road racing cyclist (born 1937)
• 21 July – Basil Rathbone, actor (born 1892, Johannesburg)
• 9 August – Joe Orton, English playwright (born 1933)
• 27 August – Brian Epstein, English band manager (The Beatles) (born 1934)
• 18 September – John Cockcroft, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1897)
• 3 October – Malcolm Sargent, English conductor (born 1895)
• 7 October – Norman Angell, British politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (born 1872)
• 8 October – Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1893)
• 9 October – Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1897)
• 13 November – Harriet Cohen, English pianist (born 1895)
• 4 December – Daniel Jones, British phonetician (born 1881)
• 26 December – Sydney Barnes, English cricketer (born 1873)

References

See also