1971 in the United Kingdom

1971 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1969 | 1970 | 1971 (1971) | 1972 | 1973

Sport and Music

1971 English cricket season Football England | Scotland 1971 in British music

Events from the year 1971 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Edward Heath (Conservative)

Events

January - March

• 1 January - Divorce Reform Act 1969 comes into effect, allowing couples to divorce after a separation of two years (five if only one of them agrees). A divorce can also be granted on the grounds that the marriage has irretrievably broken down, and it is not essential for either partner to prove "fault".^[1] It is revealed on 19 January 1972 that the number of divorces in Britain during 1971 exceeded 100,000 for the first time.
• 2 January - A stairway crush at the Rangers vs. Celtic football match at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow kills 66 and leaves many more injured.^[2]
• 3 January - BBC Open University broadcasts begin.
• 7 January - The British heavy metal band Black Sabbath release their breakthrough album, Paranoid.
• 8 January - Tupamaros kidnap Geoffrey Jackson, British ambassador to Uruguay, in Montevideo; they keep him captive until September.
• 12 January - The Hertfordshire house of Robert Carr, Secretary of State for Employment, is bombed. Nobody is injured.^[3]
• 14 January - "The Angry Brigade", an extremist group, admits responsibility for the bombing of Robert Carr's house, as well as planting a bomb at the Department of Employment offices at Westminster.
• 20 January - First ever postal workers' strike, led by UPW General Secretary Tom Jackson, in an attempt to win a 19.5% pay rise.
• 23 January - The first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, in Singapore, gives Britain permission to sell weapons to South Africa.^[4]
• February - British Leyland launches the new Morris Marina range of family saloons and coupes, which replace the (smaller) long-running Morris Minor, production of which ceases after 23 years, and are designed as a direct competitor for the successful Ford Cortina.
• 1 February - Broadcast receiver licence no longer required for radios.
• 3 February - Premiere of Tyneside-set British crime film Get Carter starring Michael Caine (in Los Angeles).
• 4 February - Rolls-Royce goes bankrupt^[5] and is nationalised.
• 11 February - The US, UK, USSR and others sign the Seabed Treaty, outlawing nuclear weapons on the ocean floor.
• 15 February - Decimalisation: The United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland both switch to decimal currency.^[5]
• 15 February - Enoch Powell predicts an "explosion" unless there is a massive repatriation scheme for the immigrants.
• 24 February - Home Secretary Reginald Maudling announces the Immigration Bill that is set to strip Commonwealth immigrants of their right to remain in the United Kingdom.[5] The bill is supported by Enoch Powell, but the former shadow cabinet minister continues to demand a massive voluntary repatriation scheme for the immigrants.[6]
• 1 March - An estimated 100,000 or more workers across Britain go on strike in protest against the government's proposed Industrial Relations Bill. Some 2,000 of these go on the march in London.^[6]
• 5 March - The Pakistani army occupies East Pakistan.
• 7 March - Following the recent protests in London, some 10,000 striking workers protest in Glasgow against the Industrial Relations Bill.
• 8 March - Postal workers' strike ends after 47 days.^[7]

April - June

• 1 April - The United Kingdom lifts all restrictions on gold ownership.
• 11 April - Ten British Army soldiers are injured in rioting in Derry, Northern Ireland.
• 15 April - The planned Barbican Centre gets the go-ahead.
• 18 April - Serious fire at Kentish Town West railway station. The station remains closed until 5 October 1981.
• 19 April - Unemployment reaches a post-Second World War high of nearly 815,000.
• 27 April
  • Eight members of the Welsh Language Society go on trial for destroying English language road signs in Wales.^[8]
  • British Leyland launches the Morris Marina, which succeeds the aged Minor and Oxford models and is similar in size to the Ford Cortina, Vauxhall Victor and Hillman Hunter. It has 1.3 and 1.8 litre petrol engines, rear-wheel drive and a choice of four-door saloon and two-door coupe bodystyles, with a five-door estate set to follow in the next two years.^[9]
• 1 May
  • A bomb planted by The Angry Brigade explodes in the Biba Kensington store.^[10]
  • The Daily Mail appears as a broadsheet newspaper for the last time.
• 2 May - The Daily Mail is relaunched as a tabloid.
• 8 May - Arsenal win the FA Cup final with a 2-1 win over Liverpool at Wembley Stadium. Substitute Eddie Kelly becomes the first substitute to score in an FA Cup final, and it is only the second time this century (and the fourth time ever) that an English team has completed the double of the Football League First Division and the FA Cup.
• 11 May - The Daily Sketch, Britain's oldest tabloid newspaper, is withdrawn from circulation after 62 years.^[11]
• 20 May - Chelsea, last year's FA Cup winners, win the European Cup Winners' Cup with a 2-1 win over Real Madrid of Spain in Athens, Greece.^[12]
• 23 May - Jackie Stewart wins the Monaco Grand Prix.^[5]
• 7 June - The children's show Blue Peter buries a time capsule in the grounds of BBC Television Centre, due to be opened on the first episode of the year 2000.
• 14 June
  • The first Hard Rock Cafe opens near Hyde Park Corner in London.
  • Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher's proposals to end free school milk for children aged over seven years are backed by a majority of 33 MPs.
• 15 June
  • Several Labour run councils threaten to increase rates in order to continue the free supply of milk to school children aged over seven years, in reaction to Thatcher's plans to end free milk supply to school children of that age group. Thatcher defends her plans, saying that the change will free up more money to be spent on the construction of new school buildings.^[13]
  • Upper Clyde Shipbuilders enters liquidation.^[14]
• 20 June - Britain announces that Soviet space scientist Anatoli Fedoseyev has been granted asylum.
• 21 June - Britain begins new negotiations for EEC membership in Luxembourg.
• 24 June - The EEC agrees terms for Britain's proposed membership and it is hoped that the nation will join the EEC next year.
• 25–27 June - First Reading Festival "of jazz and progressive music".

July - September

• 1 July - Release of Sunday Bloody Sunday, one of the first mainstream British films with a bisexual theme.
• 6 July - Police launch a murder investigation after three French tourists are found shot dead in Cheshire.^[15]
• 8 July - Two rioters shot dead by British troops in Derry, Northern Ireland.^[16]
• 13 July - Barlaston man Michael Bassett, 24, is found dead in his fume-filled car. Police identify him as their prime suspect in the recent triple French tourist murder in Cheshire.^[15]
• 14 July - The Criminal Damage Act abolishes the – theoretically capital – offence of arson in royal dockyards.
• 29 July - The United Kingdom opts out of the Space Race, with the cancellation of its Black Arrow launch vehicle.
• 30 July - Upper Clyde Shipbuilders workers begin to take control of the shipyards in a work-in under the leadership of Jimmy Reid.^[17]
• 6 August - Chay Blyth becomes the first person to sail around the world east to west against the prevailing winds.^[18]
• 9 August - British security forces in Northern Ireland detain hundreds of guerrilla suspects and put them into Long Kesh prison - the beginning of an internment without trial policy. Twenty die in riots that follow, including eleven in Ballymurphy Massacre.^[19]
• 11 August - Prime Minister Edward Heath participates in the British victory in the Admiral's Cup yacht race.^[5]
• 14 August - The Who release their critically acclaimed album Who's Next.
• 15 August - Showjumper Harvey Smith stripped of his victory in the British Show Jumping Derby by judges for making a V sign.^[20]
• 1 September - The pre-decimal penny and threepence cease to be legal tender.^[5]
• 3 September - Qatar gains independence from the United Kingdom. Unlike most nearby emirates, it declines to become part of either the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia.
• 7 September - The death toll in The Troubles of Northern Ireland reaches 100 after three years with the death of 14-year-old Annette McGavigan, who was fatally wounded by a gunshot in crossfire between British soldiers and the IRA.
• 9 September - British Ambassador Geoffrey Jackson is freed after being held captive for eight months by extreme left-wing guerrillas in Uruguay.^[21]
• 21 September - The television music show The Old Grey Whistle Test is aired for the first time on BBC 2.
• 24 September - Britain expels 90 Russian diplomats for spying, following revelations made by a KGB defector; fifteen are not allowed to return.

October - December

• 1 October - Godfrey Hounsfield's invention, the CAT scan, is first used on a patient at a hospital in Wimbledon.
• 13 October - The British Army begins to destroy roads between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as a security measure.^[22]
• 21 October
  • A gas explosion in Clarkston, Glasgow kills twenty people.
  • Television drama Edna, the Inebriate Woman is shown on BBC One.^[23]
• 23 October - Two women shot dead by soldiers in Belfast as their car fails to stop at a checkpoint.^[24]
• 28 October:
  • The House of Commons votes in favour of joining the EEC by a vote of 356-244.
  • The United Kingdom becomes the sixth nation to launch a satellite into orbit, the Prospero X-3, using a Black Arrow carrier rocket.
• 30 October - The Democratic Unionist Party is founded by the Rev. Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland.
• 31 October - A IRA bomb explodes at the top of the Post Office Tower in London.^[25]
• 10 November - The 10-route Spaghetti Junction motorway interchange is opened north of Birmingham city centre, incorporating the A38 (M) (Aston Expressway) and the southern section of the M6 motorway. The interchange will have a total of 12 routes when the final stretch of the M6 is opened next year.^[26]
• 22 November - Six climbers die trying to climb Cairn Gorm.^[27]
• 2 December - The Queen's yearly allowance is increased from £475,000 to £980,000.
• 4 December - Fifteen people are killed and seventeen others injured in a bomb attack that destroys McGurk's Bar in Belfast, the highest death toll from a single incident in the city during "The Troubles". The Ulster Volunteer Force are believed to have been behind the bombing.^[28]
• 10 December - Dennis Gabor wins the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his invention and development of the holographic method".^[29]
• 29 December - The United Kingdom gives up its military bases in Malta.
• 30 December - The seventh James Bond film - Diamonds Are Forever - is released. Sean Connery, who appeared in the first five films before being succeeded by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, returns to the role for one final appearance.^[30]

Undated

• Inflation stands at a 30-year high of 8.6%.[7]
• Government introduces a policy of "Competition and Credit Control", lifting quantitative limits on lending by retail banks and allowing them greater freedom to offer savings accounts.^[31]
• Government imposes a rent freeze.
• David Hockney's acrylic painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy completed.

Publications

• Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel Nemesis.
• E. M. Forster's novel Maurice (posthumous).
• Frederick Forsyth's novel The Day of the Jackal.
• Roger Hargreaves' children's book Mr. Tickle, first of the Mr. Men series.
• Spike Milligan's comic autobiography Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.
• V. S. Naipaul's novel In a Free State.
• Terry Pratchett's novel The Carpet People.
• Paul Scott's novel The Towers of Silence, third of the Raj Quartet.
• Keith Thomas' study Religion and the Decline of Magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England

Births

January - February

• 1 January - Suzanne Virdee, BBC newsreader
• 5 January - Jayne Middlemiss, British television presenter
• 6 January - Charlie Neil, British regional TV weather reader
• 7 January - Joanne Malin, British television presenter
• 12 January - Jay Burridge, British artist and television presenter
• 14 January - Yiolanda Koppel, British television presenter
• 15 January - Lara Cazalet, British actress
• 20 January - Gary Barlow, singer
• 21 January - Alan McManus, Scottish snooker player
• 30 January - Darren Boyd, actor
• 31 January - Patrick Kielty, Northern Irish comedian and television presenter
• 2 February - Michelle Gayle, singer and actress
• 3 February - Sarah Kane, English playwright (died 1999)
• 13 February - Sonia, English pop singer
• 16 February - Amanda Holden, British actress
• 16 February - Steven Houghton, British actor and singer
• 23 February - Melinda Messenger, British television presenter and model

March - April

• 7 March - Rachel Weisz, British actress
• 23 March - Gail Porter, British television presenter.
• 27 March - David Coulthard, Scottish race car driver
• 31 March - Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor
• 3 April - Douglas Carswell, British Conservative politician and MP for Harwich
• 11 April - John Leech, British Liberal Democrat politician, Shadow Transport Spokesperson, and MP for Manchester Withington
• 18 April - David Tennant, Scottish actor
• 27 April - Tess Daly, British television presenter.

May - June

• 9 May - Paul McGuigan, British musician and a founding member of Oasis
• 23 May - George Osborne, British Conservative politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and MP for Tatton
• 27 May - Paul Bettany, British actor
• 28 May - Richard Gunn, British journalist and motoring writer
• 5 June - Susan Lynch, Northern Irish actress
• 25 June - Neil Lennon, Northern Irish footballer

July - August

• 2 August - Michael Hughes, Northern Irish footballer
• 7 August - Melanie Sykes, British television presenter
• 9 August - Kate Sanderson, British television presenter and newsreader
• 26 August - Gaynor Faye, British actress
• 31 August - Kirstie Allsopp, British television presenter

September - October

• 1 September - Daniel Hannan, Conservative British politician and MEP for the South East England region
• 2 September - Lisa Snowdon, English fashion model, actress and television presenter
• 6 September - Dolores O'Riordan, Irish musician, singer and songwriter
• 13 September
  • Louise Lombard, British actress.
  • Stella McCartney, British fashion designer
• 17 September - Parmjit Dhanda, British Labour politician and MP for Gloucester
• 25 September - Jessie Wallace, British actress
• 28 September - Liza Walker, British actress
• 29 September - Mackenzie Crook, English actor
• 9 October - Simon Atlee, British fashion photographer (died 2004)
• 13 October - Sacha Baron Cohen, British comedian
• 16 October - Craig Phillips, British reality show star, Winner of Big Brother UK in 2000
• 19 October - Kacey Ainsworth, British actress.
• 30 October - John Alford, British actor and singer

November - December

• 8 November - Michael Jeffrey, English footballer
• 22 November
  • Cath Bishop, British rower and Olympic medallist
  • Kyran Bracken, Irish-born rugby union footballer
• 1 December - Emily Mortimer, British actress
• 5 December - Ashia Hansen, British athlete
• 25 December - Dido, English singer

Deaths

• 12 January - John Tovey, British admiral of the fleet (born 1885)
• 24 January - St. John Greer Ervine, Northern Irish dramatist and author (born 1883)
• 28 January - Donald Winnicott, British psychoanalyst (born 1896)
• 6 March - Thurston Dart, English harpsichordist and conductor (born 1921)
• 7 March - Stevie Smith, English poet (born 1902)
• 1 May - Violet Jessop, Titanic survivor (born 1887)
• 15 May - Sir Tyrone Guthrie, English film director, producer and writer (born 1900)
• 20 May - Waldo Williams, Welsh language poet (born 1904)
• 10 June - Michael Rennie, English actor (born 1909)
• 6 June - Edward Andrade, English poet and physicist (born 1887)
• 25 June - John Boyd Orr, Scottish physician and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (born 1880)
• 1 July - William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1890)
• 19 July - John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever, British businessman (born 1886)
• 27 July - Charlie Tully, Northern Irish footballer (born 1924)
• 30 August - Peter Fleming, travel writer and brother of Ian Fleming (born 1907)
• 11 November - A. P. Herbert, politician and writer (born 1890)
• 17 November - Gladys Cooper, actress, (born 1888)
• 12 December
  • Torry Gillick, Rangers winger (born 1915)
  • Alan Morton, Rangers outside left (born 1893)

References

See also