1983 in the United Kingdom

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Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg 1983 in the United Kingdom: Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
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British and Irish current events
1983 English cricket season
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1983 in British music

Events from the year 1983 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 References

[edit] Incumbents

Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister - Margaret Thatcher, Conservative

[edit] Events

6 January - Danish fishermen invade British waters after the government bans non-British boats entering UK coastal waters. The ban was lifted on January 23 when the European Economic Community's Common Fisheries Policy came into effect.^[1]
17 January - First British breakfast time television programme, Good Morning Britain, broadcast.^[2]
26 January - Red rain falls in the UK, caused by sand from the Sahara Desert in the droplets.
31 January - Seatbelt use for drivers and front seat passengers becomes mandatory.^[2]
1 February - First broadcast of TV-am.^[2]
10 February - after discovering the remains of his many victims, police begin the search for mass-murderer Dennis Nilsen.
1 March - Austin Rover, the successor organisation to British carmaking combine British Leyland, launches the Austin Maestro. The Maestro is a medium-sized five-door hatchback with front-wheel drive. It replaces the ageing Allegro and provides the firm with a modern and practical competitor to the likes of the Ford Escort, Vauxhall Astra and Volkswagen Golf. The Maestro's chassis will also form the base of a larger four-door saloon which goes on sale next year to replace the outdated Morris Ital.
1 April - Thousands form a 14-mile human chain in protest the citing of American nuclear weapons in British military bases.^[3]
9 June - Conservative Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1979, wins a landslide victory (42% of the popular vote) over Michael Foot, who led a highly-divided and weakened Labour Party which earned only 28% of the vote. The much improved economy (after 2-3 years of restructuring), her victory in the Falkands, as well as shrinking unemployment rates consolidates her election victory.
16 June - National Media Museum (then known as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television) opens in Bradford.^[4]
26 July - a mother of ten, Victoria Gillick, loses a case in the High Court of Justice against the DHSS. Her application sought to prevent the distribution of contraceptives to children under the age of 16 without parental consent. The case went to the House of Lords in 1985 when it was decided that it was legal for Doctors to prescribe contraceptives to under-16s without parental consent in exceptional circumstances.^[5] (See Gillick competence.)
23 September - Maze Prison escape: 38 prisoners hijack a lorry and escape from HM Prison Maze in County Antrim, Northern Ireland; one guard is stabbed and dies and twenty others are injured. Nineteen of the prisoners are later apprehended.^[6]
2 October - Neil Kinnock is elected leader of the Labour Party.^[7]
7 October - A plan to abolish the Greater London Council is announced.
22 October - over a million people demonstrate against nuclear weapons at a CND march in London.^[8]
24 October
- Arthur Hutchinson kills three members of Laitner family and rapes their daughter in the Sheffield suburb of Dore.
- Dennis Nilsen goes on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of six murders and two attempted murders.^[9]
13 November - The first US cruise missiles arrive at RAF Greenham Common amid protests from peace campaigners at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
24 November - Fifteen-year-old Lynda Mann is found raped and strangled in the village of Narborough.
26 November - Brinks Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly UK£26 million are taken from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Only a fraction of the gold is ever recovered, and only two men are convicted of the crime.^[10]
4 December - an SAS undercover operation ends in the shooting and killing of two PIRA gunmen, a third is injured.^[11]
6 December - first heart and lung transplant carried out in Britain at Harefield.^[12]
8 December - the House of Lords votes to allow television broadcast of its proceedings.^[13]
17 December - A Provisional Irish Republican Army car bomb kills six, three police and three members of the public, and injures 90 outside Harrods in London.^[14]

William Golding wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today".^[15]