1985 in the United Kingdom

1985 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1983 | 1984 | 1985 (1985) | 1986 | 1987

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport, Television and music

1985 British Grand Prix 1985 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland 1985 in British television 1985 in British music 1985 in British radio UK in the Eurovision Song Contest 1985

Important events from the year 1985 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)

Events

January

• January The Fraud Investigation Group is set up for cases of financial & commercial fraud
• 1 January - The first British mobile phone call is made (by Ernie Wise to Vodafone).^[1]
• 7 January - Nine striking miners are jailed for arson.
• 10 January
  • The Sinclair C5, a battery-assisted recumbent tricycle, designed by the British inventor Clive Sinclair is launched.^[2][3]
  • Eight people are killed by a gas explosion at a block of flats in Putney.^[4]
• 16 January - London's Dorchester Hotel is bought by the Sultan of Brunei.
• 17 January - British Telecom announces it is going to phase out its famous red telephone boxes.
• 23 January - A debate in the House of Lords is televised for the first time.^[2]
• 29 January - Margaret Thatcher becomes the first post-war Prime Minister to be refused an honorary degree by Oxford University.^[5]

February

• 10 February - Nine people are killed in a multiple crash on the M6 motorway.
• 16 February - Civil servant Clive Ponting resigns from the Ministry of Defence after his acquittal of breaching section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 concerning the leaking of documents relating to the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War.^[6]
• 19 February - EastEnders, the BBC1 soap opera, goes on air.^[2]
• 25 February - Nearly 4,000 striking miners go back to work, meaning that only just over half of the miners are now on strike.

March

• 3 March - The miners' strike ends after one year.^[7]
• 7 March - Two IRA members are jailed for 35 years at the Old Bailey for plotting the bombing campaign across London during 1981.
• 11 March - Mohammed Al Fayed buys the London-based department store company Harrods.
• 13 March - Rioting breaks out at the FA Cup quarter-final between Luton Town and Millwall at Kenilworth Road, Luton; hundreds of hooligans tear seats from the stands and throw them onto the pitch before a pitch invasion takes place, resulting in 81 people (31 of them police officers) being injured. The carnage continues in the streets near the stadium, resulting in major damage to vehicles and property. Luton Town win the game 1-0.
• 19 March
  • After beginning the year with a lead of up to eight points in the opinion poll, the Conservatives suffer a major blow as the latest MORI poll puts them four points behind Labour, who have a 40% share of the vote.^[8]
  • Ford launches the third generation of its top-of-the-range Granada. It is sold only as a hatchback, in contrast to its predecessor which was sold as a saloon or estate, and on continental Europe it will be known as the Scorpio.^[9]
• 29 March - Production of the Sinclair C5 electric tricycle is suspended after less than three months.

April

• 11 April - An 18-month old boy becomes the youngest person in Britain to die of AIDS.
• 22 April - Construction of Japanese carmaker Nissan's new factory at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, begins. The first cars are expected to be produced next year.^[10]
• 30 April - Bernie Grant, born in Guyana, becomes the first black council leader when he is elected leader of Labour-controlled London Borough of Haringey council.

May

• 2 May - The SDP–Liberal Alliance makes big gains in local council elections.
• 11 May
  • A fire engulfs a wooden stand at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford during a football match, killing 56 people (54 Bradford City supporters and two Lincoln City supporters) and injuring more than 200 others.^[11]
  • A 14-year-old boy is killed, 20 people are injured and several vehicles are wrecked when Leeds United football hooligans riot at the Birmingham City stadium and cause a wall to collapse.[12]
• 16 May
  • Two South Wales miners are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie. Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, both 21, dropped a concrete block on Mr Wilkie's taxi from a road overbridge in November last year.
  • Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey discover the ozone hole.^[2]
• 18 May - Manchester United win the FA Cup for the sixth time in their history with a 1-0 win over Everton in the final at Wembley Stadium.
• 29 May - In the Heysel Stadium disaster at the European Cup final in Brussels, 39 football fans die and hundreds are injured. Despite the tragedy, the match is played and Juventus beat Liverpool 1-0.
• 31 May - The Football Association bans all English football clubs from playing Europe until further notice in response to the Heysel riots. Thatcher supports the ban and calls for judges to hand out stiffer sentences to convicted football hooligans.[13]

June

• 1 June - Battle of the Beanfield, Britain's largest mass arrest and the effective end of Stonehenge Free Festivals.^[12][13]
• 2 June - In response to the Heysel tragedy three days ago, UEFA bans all English football clubs from European competitions for an indefinite period, recommending that Liverpool should serve an extra three years of exclusion once all other English clubs have been reinstated.[14]
• 6 June - Birmingham unveils its bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, which includes plans for a new £66 million stadium.[15]
• 13 June - The James Bond film A View To A Kill is released, marking the last appearance by Roger Moore as the spy after six films since 1973.^[14]
• 25 June - Police arrest 13 suspects in connection with the Brighton hotel bombing of 1984.^[15]
• 29 June - Patrick Magee is charged with the murder of the people who died in the Brighton bombing eight months ago.
• June - Unemployment fell to 3,178,582 this month from May's total of 3,240,947, the best fall in unemployment of the decade so far (announced 4 July).

July

• 4 July - 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence achieves a first in Mathematics at Oxford University, becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.^[16]
• 13 July - Live Aid pop concerts in London and Philadelphia raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.^[17]
• 17 July - The Live Aid appeal reaches £50 million.
• 29 July - Despite unemployment having fallen since October last year, it has increased in 73 Conservative constituencies, according to government figures.

August

• 13 August
  • The first UK heart-lung transplant is carried out at the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex. The patient is three-year-old Jamie Gavin.^[18]
  • The Sinclair C5 ceases production after just seven months and less than 17,000 units.
• 22 August - 55 people are killed in the Manchester air disaster at Manchester International Airport when a British Airtours Boeing 737 burst into flames after the pilot aborts the takeoff.
• 24 August - Five-year-old John Shorthouse is shot dead by police at his family's house in Birmingham, where they were arresting his father on suspicion of an armed robbery committed in South Wales.[16]

September

• September - SEAT, the Spanish carmaker originally a subsidy of Fiat but now under controlling interest from Volkswagen, began importing cars to the United Kingdom. Its range consisted of the Marbella (a rebadged version of the Fiat Panda), the Ibiza hatchback and Malaga saloon.^[19]
• 1 September - A joint Franco-American expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
• 4 September - The first photographs and films of the RMS Titanic's wreckage are taken, 73 years after it sank.[17]
• 9 September - Rioting, mostly motivated by racial tension, breaks out in the Handsworth area of Birmingham.[18]
• 10 September
  • The riots in Handsworth escalated, with mass arson and looting resulting in thousands of pounds worth of damage, leaving several people injured, and resulted in the deaths of two people who died when the local post office was petrol bombed. One of the fatalities was the owner of the post office.^[20]
  • Scotland national football team manager Jock Stein, 62, collapses and dies from a heart attack at the end of his team's 1-1 draw with Wales at Ninian Park, Cardiff, which secured Scotland's place in the World Cup qualification playoff.[19]
• 11 September
  • The rioting in Handsworth ended, with the final casualty toll standing at 35 injuries and two deaths. A further two people are unaccounted for.
  • The England national football team secures qualification for next summer's World Cup in Mexico with a 1-1 draw against Romania at Wembley. Tottenham midfielder Glenn Hoddle scored England's only goal.
  • Enoch Powell, the controversial former Tory MP who was dismissed from the shadow cabinet 17 years ago for his Rivers of Blood speech on immigration, states that the riots in Handsworth were a vindication of the warnings he voiced in 1968.^[21]
• 17 September - Mrs Thatcher's hopes of winning a third term in office at the next election are thrown into doubt by the results of an opinion poll, which shows the Conservatives in third place on 30%, Labour in second place on 33% and the SDP–Liberal Alliance in the lead on 35%.[20]
• 28 September - A riot in Brixton erupts after an accidental shooting of a woman by police. One person dies in the riot, 50 are injured and more than 200 are arrested.^[22]
• September - Unemployment for the month falls by nearly 70,000 to less than 3,300,000 (announced 1 November).

October

• 1 October
  • Neil Kinnock makes a speech at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth attacking the Militant tendency (Revolutionary Socialist League) in Liverpool.^[23]
  • Lord Scarman's report on the riots in Toxteth and Peckham blames economic deprivation and racial discrimination.^[24]
  • Economists predict that unemployment will remain above the 3,000,000 mark for the rest of the decade.
• 5 October - Mrs Cythnia Jarrett, a 49-year-old black woman, dies after falling over during a police search of her council house on the Broadwaster Farm estate in Tottenham, London.[21]
• 6 October - PC Keith Blakelock is fatally stabbed during the Broadwater Farm Riot in Tottenham, London. Two of his colleagues are treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, as are three journalists.^[25]
• 15 October - The SDP-Liberal Alliance's brief lead in the opinion polls is over, with the Conservatives now back in the lead by a single point over Labour in the latest MORI poll.^[8]
• 24 October - Members of parliament react to the recent wave of rioting by saying that unemployment is an unacceptable excuse for the riots.
• 28 October - Production of the Peugeot 309 begins at the Ryton car factory near Coventry. The 309, a small family hatchback, is the first "foreign" car to be built in the UK. It was originally going to be badged as the Talbot Arizona, but Peugeot has decided that the Talbot badge will be discontinued on passenger cars after next year and that the Ryton plant will then be used for the production of its own products, including a larger four-door saloon (similar in size to the Ford Sierra) which is due in two years.
• 30 October - Unemployment is reported to have risen in nearly 70% of the Tory held seats since this time last year.
• 31 October - The two miners who killed taxi driver David Wilkie in South Wales eleven months ago have their life sentences for murder reduced to eight years for manslaughter on appeal.

November

• 1 November - The Queen Mother commissions aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.^[26]
• 9 November - The Prince and Princess of Wales arrive in the United States of America for a visit to Ronald Reagan in Washington DC.[22]
• 15 November - Anglo-Irish Agreement signed at Hillsborough Castle. Treasury Minister Ian Gow resigns in protest at the deal.^[27]
• 17 November - The CBI calls for the government to invest £1 billion in unemployment relief - a move which would cut unemployment by 350,000 and potentially bring it below 3,000,000 for the first time since late 1981.
• 18 November - A coach crash on the M6 near Birmingham kills two people and injures 51.^[28]
• 19 November - The latest MORI poll shows that Conservative and Labour support is almost equal at around 36%, with the SDP–Liberal Alliance's hopes of electoral breakthrough are left looking bleak as they have only 25% of the vote.[23]
• 22 November - Mrs Thatcher is urged by her MP's to call a general election for June 1987, despite the deadline not being until June 1988.
• 25 November - Department store chains British Home Stores and Habitat announce a £1.5 billion merger.
• 27 November - Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock suspends the Liverpool District Labour Party amid allegations that the revolutionary socialist group Militant Tendency was operating behind it.[24]
• 28 November - Gerard Hoarau, exiled political leader from the Seychelles, assassinated in London.
• 29 November - A gas explosion kills four people in Glasgow.^[29]

December

• December - Builders Alfred McAlpine complete construction of Nissan's new car factory at Sunderland. Nissan can now install machinery and factory components, and are expected to produce the first cars over the next few months.
• 4 December - Scotland's World Cup qualification is secured by a goal less draw with Australia in the playoff second leg in Sydney.^[30]
• 5 December - It is announced that unemployment fell in November, for the third month running. It now stands at 3,165,000.^[31]
• 25 December - Charitable organisation Comic Relief is launched.
• 26 December - Rock star Phil Lynott, formerly of Thin Lizzy, is rushed to hospital after collapsing from a suspected heroin overdose at his home in Berkshire.

DateToMM=Dec

Undated

• The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre opens in Glasgow.
• The Waterside Inn at Bray, Berkshire, founded by the brothers Michel and Albert Roux, becomes the first establishment in the UK to be awarded three Michelin Guide stars, a distinction which it retains for at least twenty-five years.^[32]
• Inflation stands at 6.1% - the highest since 1982 but still low compared to the highs reached in the 1970s.[25]
• Peak year for British oil production: 127 million tonnes.^[23]
• The Dire Straits album, Brothers In Arms, becomes the first million selling compact disc.^[33]
• The first retailers move into the Merry Hill Shopping Centre near Dudley, West Midlands. A new shopping mall is scheduled to open alongside the developing retail park in April 1986 and it is anticipated to grow into Europe's largest indoor shopping centre by 1990.^[34]

Publications

• Iain Banks' novel Walking on Glass.
• Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

Births

• 1 January — Steven Davis, footballer
• 7 January — Lewis Hamilton, Formula One racing driver
• 1 February — Dean Shiels, footballer
• 10 February — Cath Rae, Scottish field hockey goalkeeper
• 3 March — Sam Morrow, footballer
• 26 March — Keira Knightley, actress
• 3 April — Leona Lewis, singer
• 8 April — Gareth Rees, cricketer
• 2 May — Lily Allen, singer
• 21 May — Alex Danson, English field hockey forward
• 28 May — Carey Mulligan, actress
• 28 June — Phil Bardsley, footballer
• 24 October — Wayne Rooney, footballer
• 8 November — Jack Osbourne, actor
• 23 December — Harry Judd, drummer

Deaths

• 4 January - Sir Brian Horrocks, general (born 1895)
• 26 January - David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech, politician (born 1918)
• 6 February - James Hadley Chase, writer (born 1906)
• 28 February - Ray Ellington, singer, drummer and bandleader (born 1916)
• 9 March - Harry Catterick, former footballer and football manager (born 1919)
• 21 March - Michael Redgrave, actor (born 1908)
• 4 April - Kate Roberts, author (born 1891)
• 5 May - Donald Bailey, civil engineer (born 1901)
• 9 June - Clifford Evans, actor (born 1912)
• 17 June - John Boulting, film director (born 1913)
• 2 July - David Purley, race car driver (born 1945)
• 8 July - Frank Hampson, illustrator (born 1918)
• 9 July - Jimmy Kinnon, founder of Narcotics Anonymous (born 1911)
• 23 July - Johnny Wardle, cricketer (born 1923)
• 17 August - Lord Avon Nicholas Eden, Conservative Member of Parliament and son of the late prime minister Anthony Eden (born 1930)
• 1 September - Saunders Lewis, writer and founder of the Welsh National Party (Plaid Cymru) (born 1893)
• 7 September - Rodney Robert Porter, biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (born 1917)
• 10 September - Jock Stein, footballer and manager of Scotland (born 1922)
• 11 September - William Alwyn, composer (born 1905)
• 17 September - Laura Ashley, designer (born 1925)
• 2 December - Philip Larkin, poet (born 1922)
• 7 December - Robert Graves, writer (born 1895)
• 12 December - Ian Stewart, rock musician (born 1938)

References

See also