1984 in the United Kingdom

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1984 English cricket season
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1984 in British music

Events from the year 1984 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
- 2.1 Unknown dates
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 References

[edit] Incumbents

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

[edit] Events

January 15 - Left-wing rebel Tony Benn wins the Labour Party's nomination for the Chesterfield by-election, eight months after losing his seat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol South in the General Election.
February - Japanese carmaker Nissan signs an agreement with the British government to build a car factory in Britain. This landmark deal means that "foreign" cars will be built in Britain for the first time.
February 14 - Torvill and Dean win a gold medal for ice skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.
March - Nissan chooses a greenfield site near Sunderland as the location of its new car factory, and hopes to have the factory ready within two years.
March 6 - The British coal industry goes on strike.
March 14 - Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and three others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
March 21 - European Economic Community summit breaks down over disagreement over Britain's budget rebate with Margaret Thatcher threatening to veto any expansion of spending plans.
March 27 - Starlight Express opened at Apollo Victoria Theatre in London.
April 4 - peace protesters evicted from the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
April 9 - More than 100 pickets are arrested in violent clashes at the Creswell colliery in Derbyshire and the Babbington colliery in Nottinghamshire. It is estimated that 46 out of 176 British coalmines are currently active as miners fight government plans to close 20 coalmines across Britain.
April 12 - Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Miners, rules out a national ballot of miners on whether to continue their strike, which has already lasted five weeks.
April 17 - WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot and killed by a secluded gunman during a siege outside the Libyan Embassy in London in the event known as the 1984 Libyan Embassy Siege. 11 other people are also shot but survive.
April 22 - In the wake of Yvonne Fletcher's death, Britain severs diplomatic relations with Libya and serves warning on its seven remaining Libyan diplomats to return to their homeland.
April 25 - Austin Rover launches its new Montego four-door saloon, which replaces the outdated Morris Ital and competes head-to-head with the Ford Sierra and Vauxhall Cavalier.
May 2 - The Liverpool International Garden Festival opens in Liverpool.
June 20 - The biggest exam shake-up in the education system in over 10 years is announced with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE. The first GCSE courses will begin in September 1986 and will be completed in the summer of 1988.
June 22 - Inaugural flight of Virgin Atlantic.
July 9 - A bolt of lightning strikes York Minster and causes extensive fire damage which is expected cost millions of pounds to repair.
July 19 - A magnitude 5.4 earthquake with an epicentre in the Lleyn Peninsula, North Wales is felt throughout the United Kingdom.
July 23 - Austin Rover announces its second new car launch of the year - the Rover 200, a four-door saloon which replaces the Triumph Acclaim and is the combine's second product from its venture with Japanese carmaker Honda.
August 2 - a Surrey business man wins a case in the European Court of Human Rights over illegal phone tapping by the police.
August 11 - Zola Budd collides with Mary Decker in the 3000 meters at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
September 4 - The Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends television series is first broadcast on ITV.
September 26 - United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the initial agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
October 5 - Police in Essex make the largest cannabis seizure in British criminal history when a multi-million pound stash of the drug is found on a schooner that was moored on the River Crouch near North Fambridge village.
October 12 - The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempts to assassinate the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escapes injury, but Norman Tebbit is trapped among the rubble and his wife is paralysed. Four members of parliament are killed.
October 23 - BBC News newsreader Michael Buerk gives powerful commentary of the famine in Ethiopia which has already claimed thousands of lives and reportedly has the potential to kill as many as 7million people. Numerous British charities including Oxfam and Save the Children begin collection work to aid the famine victims, who are mostly encamped near the town of Korem.
November 12 - The English one pound note withdrawn after 150 years in circulation.
November 25 - 36 of Britain and Ireland's top pop musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio to form Band Aid and recorded the song "Do They Know It's Christmas" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
November 30 - Tension in the miners' strike increases when two South Wales are charged with the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie, 35, who died when a concrete block was dropped on his car from a road overbridge. The passenger in his car, who escaped with minor injuries, was a miner who had defied the strike and continued going to work.
December 3 - British Telecom is privatised.
December 16 - Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union visits Britain.
December 19 - The People's Republic of China and United Kingdom sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration which will see Hong Kong returning to Chinese control in 13 years.

[edit] Unknown dates

Chatham Dockyard in Medway, England closed after being used a ship-building yard for over 400 years since the reign of King Henry VIII.
Richard Stone wins the Nobel Prize in Economics "for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis". ^[1]
César Milstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Niels Kaj Jerne and Georges J. F. Köhler "for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies". ^[2]
The Morris and Triumph car brands are discontinued. The last Morris car, the Ital, is replaced by the more modern Austin Montego. The Triumph Acclaim's successor is the Rover 200.
Vauxhall had a successful year in the motor industry. It reported that its market share has doubled since 1981, and the year ended on an even bigger high when its MK2 Astra range was elected European Car of the Year.