2001 in the United Kingdom

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2001 in British music

Events from the year 2001 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 References

[edit] Incumbents

Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister - Tony Blair, Labour Party

[edit] Events

January 5 - A report by the Department of Health suggests that Dr Harold Shipman may have killed more than 300 patients since the 1970s.
January 12 - Sven-Göran Eriksson begins his job as manager of the England football team six months ahead of schedule, having resigned from his previous job as Lazio manager.
January 12 - Marie Therese Kouao and Carl Manning are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of their niece Victoria Climbie, who died last year after suffering horrific abuse and neglect at the hands of the couple.
January 24 - Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson resigns from the cabinet for the second time.^[1]
January 31 - The Scottish Court in the Netherlands convicts a Libyan and acquits another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed in Lockerbie in 1988.
February 19 - 2001 UK foot and mouth crisis begins.^[2]
February 24-27 - Patient Tony Collins spends 77 hours and 30 minutes on a hospital trolley outside the toilets in the Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon.
February 25 - Liverpool beat Birmingham City on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the Football League Cup final - the first cup final to be played at Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, since Wembley closed for redevelopment.
February 28 - The rail crash near Selby kills 10 people.^[3]
8 March - The wreckage of Donald Campbell's speedboat Bluebird is raised from the bottom of Lake Coniston in Cumbria, 34 years after Campbell was killed in an attempt to break the world water speed record.
15 March - Donald Campbell's body is recovered from Lake Coniston.
April 29 - Census of population in the United Kingdom.
16 May - Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott punches a protester who threw an egg at him in Rhyl.^[4]
June 7 - General Election- Labour Party attains a second successive General Election victory.
June 8 - William Hague announces his resignation as Conservative Party leader after four years.
25 June - A race riot breaks out in Burnley.^[5]
July - MG Rover launches a new range of MG-badged performance variants of its Rover family cars.
2 July - Barry George is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the television presented Jill Dando.^[6]
7 July - Bradford Riot: two people stabbed in race riots.^[7]
16 July - The Labour government suffers its first parliamentary defeat over the sacking of Gwyneth Dunwoody and Donald Anderson as chairs of select committees on transport and foreign affairs.^[8]
July 19 - Politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer, sentenced to four years in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
July 29 - A victim support group condemns a reported £11,000 payout by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority to the parents of murdered Sarah Payne as "derisory".
16 August - Royal butler Paul Burrell charged with the theft of items belonging to Diana, Princess of Wales.^[9]
September 10- The Bank of Scotland and the Halifax merge to form HBOS plc.
September 11-
- September 11 terrorist attacks: One Canada Square, the UK's tallest building, and the London Stock Exchange are evacuated following the attacks in the United States.
- Prime Minister Tony Blair cancels a speech he was due to the TUC, and pledges to "stand shoulder to shoulder" with the United States.
September 13-
- The Queen orders the Changing of the Guard ceremony to be paused for a two minute silence, followed by the playing of the American national anthem, in tribute to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
- Ian Duncan Smith becomes leader of the Conservative Party after winning the leadership election.^[10]
September 14- National memorial service held at St Paul's Cathedral for the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
October 7 - The United States invades Afghanistan. Royal Navy submarines participate using Tomahawk cruise missiles.^[11]
23 October - Provisional Irish Republican Army announces that it has begun to decommission its weapons.^[12]
25 October - The British Crime Survey reveals that crime rates are at their lowest levels since 1981.
12 November - Greek authorities hold 12 British plane-spotters on charges of spying.^[13]
November 11 - The Post Office announces that as many as 30,000 employees could be made redundant over the next 18 months as part of cost-cutting measures.
December 12 - Roy Whiting is found guilty at Lewes Crown Court of the murder of Sarah Payne, who was found dead near Pulborough, West Sussex, in July last year. It is then revealed that Whiting already had a conviction for abducting and molesting an eight-year-old girl in 1995. The trial judge sentences Whiting, a 42-year-old former mechanic, to life imprisonment and says that it is a rare case in which he would recommend to the appropriate authorities that life should mean life. It is only the 24th time that such a recommendation has been made in British legal history.
December 22 - British born terrorist, Richard Reid, attempts to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 going from Paris' Charles De Gaulle International Airport to Miami International Airport, using explosives hidden in his shoes.

V. S. Naipaul wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".^[14]
Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Leland H. Hartwell "for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle".^[15]