1988 in the United Kingdom

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1988 in the United Kingdom
Other years
1986 | 1987 | 1988 (1988) | 1989 | 1990
Constituent countries of the United Kingdom
England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales
Popular culture

Events from the year 1988 in the United Kingdom. The year saw the merger in March of the SDP and the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats. There were also two notable disasters this year: the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Incumbents

Events

January

  • January –
    Lord Justice of Appeal
    .
  • 3 January – Margaret Thatcher becomes the longest-serving UK Prime Minister this century, having been in power for eight years and 244 days.
  • 4 January – Sir
    Robin Butler replaces Sir Robert Armstrong as Cabinet Secretary, on the same day that Margaret Thatcher makes her first state visit to Africa when she arrives in Kenya
    .
  • 5 January – Actor Rowan Atkinson launches the new Comic Relief charity appeal.
  • 7 January – Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock calls for a further £1,300,000,000 to be made available for the National Health Service.
  • 8 January – The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders reveals that new car sales in Britain last year exceeded 2,000,000 for the first time. The Ford Escort was Britain's best-selling car for the sixth year running.[1]
  • 11 January – The government announces that inflammable foam furniture will be banned from March next year.
  • 14 January – Unemployment figures are released for the end of 1987, showing the eighteenth-successive monthly decrease. Just over 2,600,000 people are now unemployed in the United Kingdom – the lowest figure for seven years. More than 500,000 of those unemployed, found jobs in 1987.
  • 22 January
  • 23 January – David Steel announces that he will not stand for the leadership of the new Social and Liberal Democratic Party.
  • 24 January – Arthur Scargill is re-elected as Leader of the National Union of Mineworkers by a narrow majority.
  • 28 January – The Birmingham Six lose an appeal against their convictions.

February

March

April

  • 9 April – The house price boom is reported to have boosted wealth in London and the South-East by £39,000,000,000 over the last four years, compared with an £18,000,000,000 slump in Scotland and the North-West of England.
  • 10 April – Golfer
    US Masters
    .
  • 15 April – Comedian and actor Kenneth Williams, 62, dies of an overdose of barbiturates at his flat in London.
  • 21 April – The government announces that nurses will receive a 15% pay rise, at a cost of £794,000,000 which will be funded by the Treasury.
  • 24 April – Luton Town FC beat Arsenal in the Littlewoods Cup final at Wembley 3–2. The match was won in the 92nd minute with a goal by Brian Stein after Luton had come back from being 2–1 down and goalkeeper Andy Dibble saving a penalty in the 79th minute. Luton scorers Brian Stein (2) and Danny Wilson. 96,000 fans were in attendance.

May

June

  • 2 June – U.S. President Ronald Reagan makes a visit to the UK.
  • 11 June – Some 80,000 people attend a concert at Wembley Stadium in honour of Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid campaigner who has been imprisoned since 1964.
  • 15 June – Six British soldiers are killed by the IRA in Lisburn.
  • 16 June – More than one hundred English football fans are arrested in West Germany in connection with incidents of football hooliganism during the European Championships.
  • 18 June – England's participation in the European Football Champions ended when they finished bottom of their group having lost all three games.
  • 21 June – The Poole explosion of 1988 causes 3,500 people to be evacuated from Poole town centre in the biggest peacetime evacuation in the United Kingdom since World War II.[13]
  • 23 June – Three gay rights activists invade the BBC television studios during the six o'clock bulletin of the BBC News.

July

August

September

October

  • 2 October
    • Great Britain and Northern Ireland finish competing in the
      Seoul Olympic Games
      , as the games come to a close.
    • Car designer Sir Alec Issigonis, who designed the Mini and Morris Minor, dies aged 81 at his home in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
  • 9 October – Labour MP and Shadow Chancellor John Smith, 50, is hospitalised due to a heart attack in Edinburgh.
  • 12 October – As
    heckles and denounces him as the Antichrist
    .
  • 13 October – The House of Lords rules that extracts of the banned book Spycatcher can be published in the media.[23]
  • 14 October –
    coupe
    will be launched next year.
  • 18 October –
    Motor Show
    . It is set to go into production in 1990, costing £350,000 and being the world's fastest production car with a top speed of 220mph.
  • 19 October – The United Kingdom bans broadcast interviews with IRA members. The BBC gets around this stricture through the use of professional actors.
  • 27 October – Three IRA supporters are found guilty of conspiracy to murder in connection with a plot to kill Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Tom King.
  • 28 October – British Rail announces a 21% increase in the cost of long distance season tickets.[24]

November

  • 2 November – Victor Miller is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 14-year-old Stuart Gough in Worcestershire earlier this year, with a recommendation by the trial judge that he is not considered for parole for at least thirty years.
  • 4 November – Margaret Thatcher presses for freedom for the people of Poland on her visit to Gdańsk.
  • 9 November – The government unveils plans for a new
    identity card
    scheme in an attempt to clamp down on football hooliganism.
  • 15 November
  • 30 November
    • A government report reveals that up to 50,000 people in Britain may be HIV positive, and that by the end of 1992, up to 17,000 people may have died from AIDS.
    • A bronze statue of former Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883–1967) is unveiled outside Limehouse Library in London by another former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.[25]

December

  • 3 December – Health Minister Edwina Currie provokes outrage by stating that most of Britain's egg production is infected with the salmonella bacteria, causing an immediate nationwide decrease in egg sales.[26]
  • 6 December – The last shipbuilding facilities on Wearside, once the largest shipbuilding area in the world, are to close with the loss of 2,400 jobs.
  • 10 December –
    James W. Black wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings "for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment".[27]
  • 12 December – 35 people are killed in the Clapham Junction rail crash.[28]
  • 15 December – Unemployment is now only just over 2,100,000 – the lowest level for almost eight years.
  • 16 December
    • Edwina Currie resigns as Health Minister.[2]
    • M25 Three: a series of burglaries take place, and a man is murdered during the early hours around the M25 motorway.
  • 19 December
    • The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors publishes its house price survey, revealing a deep recession in the housing market.
    • DC
      Leonard Jakeman is also shot but survives. One of the gunmen gives himself up to police, while the other shoots himself dead.
  • 20 December – The three-month-old daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York is
    Beatrice Elizabeth Mary.[29]
  • 21 December – Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over the town of Lockerbie, killing a total of 270 people – 11 on the ground and all 259 who were on board.[30]

Undated

Publications

Births

Deaths

January

Trevor Howard

February

March

Christianna Brand

April

Felicity Lane-Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox

May

Kim Philby

June

July

Jimmy Edwards

August

Kenneth Leighton

September

October

Sacheverell Sitwell
Alec Issigonis

November

December

Roy Urquhart

See also

References

  1. ^ "Car Sales Drive Through the Two Million Barrier | January 1988 | News Archive | Honest John".
  2. .
  3. ^ "The Glasgow Herald - Google News Archive Search".
  4. ^ "Nurses protest for better pay". BBC News. 3 February 1988. Archived from the original on 3 March 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  5. ^ .
  6. .
  7. ^ "IRA gang shot dead in Gibraltar". BBC News. 7 March 1988. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  8. ^ "Avalanche hits royal ski party". BBC News. 10 March 1988. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  9. ^ "Three shot dead at Milltown Cemetery". BBC News. 16 March 1988. Archived from the original on 2 January 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  10. ^ "Judges free man jailed over IRA funeral murders". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 6 September 2004. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  11. ^ "1984: O-Levels to be replaced by GCSEs". BBC News. 20 June 1984. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 29 January 2008.
  12. ^ "Hick makes cricketing history". BBC News. 6 May 1988. Archived from the original on 3 February 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  13. ^ "GALLERY: The explosions that rocked Poole - 30 years since the BDH fire". Bournemouth Echo. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
  14. ^ "Exposure Magazine: YBA's". Archived from the original on 10 April 2009. Retrieved 10 April 2009.
  15. ^ "Piper Alpha oil rig ablaze". BBC News. 6 July 1988. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  16. ^ "Ashdown to lead Britain's third party". BBC News. 28 July 1988. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  17. ^ "Tony Cottee". Soccerbase. Archived from the original on 6 January 2008. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  18. ^ "Glanford Park". Scunthorpe United Football Club. 15 February 2012. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  19. ^ "Ian Rush". Soccerbase. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  20. ^ a b "Britain's Postal Strike Ends With a Settlement". The New York Times. 13 September 1988. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
  21. ^ "Speech to the College of Europe ("The Bruges Speech")". Margaret Thatcher Foundation. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  22. ^ "'SAS killed lawfully' – Gibraltar jury". BBC News. 30 September 1988. Archived from the original on 3 January 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  23. ^ "Government loses Spycatcher battle". BBC News. 13 October 1988. Archived from the original on 30 December 2007. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  24. ^ "FAQs - HousePriceCrash.co.uk". Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
  25. ^ "Limehouse Library". Postcard of the Month. East London Postcard Co. Archived from the original on 15 April 2012. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  26. ^ "Egg industry fury over salmonella claim". BBC News. 3 December 1988. Archived from the original on 21 January 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  27. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1988". Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  28. . Retrieved 25 October 2021.
  29. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 31 December 2013. Retrieved 21 January 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  30. ^ "Jumbo jet crashes onto Lockerbie". BBC News. 21 December 1988. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  31. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 8 January 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  32. ^ "London Roman Amphitheatre". Historvius. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
  33. .
  34. ^ "Happy birthday to our frontman Calum have a great day mate". The Experiment. 12 October 2014.
  35. .
  36. .
  37. ^ "Bishop Anthony Joseph Emery". Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved 14 June 2011.
  38. ^ "Obituaries : Sir John Clements, 77; Leading British Shakespearean Actor". Los Angeles Times. 10 April 1988.
  39. .
  40. .
  41. ^ Advance. Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. 1986. p. 3.
  42. ^ New Perspectives: Journal of the World Peace Council. Information Centre of the WPC. 1988. p. 30.
  43. .
  44. .
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  46. .
  47. ^ The New York Times Biographical Service. New York Times & Arno Press. 1988. p. 923.
  48. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 9 May 2011. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  49. .
  50. .
  51. ^ The Daily Telegraph, Obituary: John Loder, 29 December 1988