1950 in the United Kingdom

1950 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1948 | 1949 | 1950 (1950) | 1951 | 1952

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport, television and music

1950 British Grand Prix 1950 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland 1950 in British television 1950 in British music

Events from the year 1950 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George VI
• Prime Minister – Clement Attlee (Labour)
• Parliament – 38th (until 3 February), 39th (starting 1 March)

Events

• 16 January – the BBC Light Programme first broadcasts the daily children's radio feature Listen with Mother.^[1]
• 26 January
  • India becomes a republic, severing ties with the United Kingdom.^[2]
  • Donald Hume is sentenced to imprisonment as an accessory to the murder of Stanley Setty, having dumped his dismembered body over the Essex marshes from a light aircraft.^[1]
• 8 February – George Kelly is sentenced to hang for the murder of the Cameo cinema manager in the Liverpool suburb of Wavertree, a conviction which will be quashed as unsafe fifty-three years later.^[1]
• 20 February – Ealing Studios release the film The Blue Lamp, introducing the character PC George Dixon, played by Jack Warner (with Dirk Bogarde as a young criminal).^[1][3]
• 21 February – Cunard liner RMS Aquitania arrives at the scrapyard in Faslane at the end of a 36-year career.
• 23 February – the 1950 general election is held. Labour is defending a triple-figure parliamentary majority in government, but their popularity took a plunge last year following the devaluation of the pound, and the failure of the groundnuts scheme,with many recent opinion polls showing a comfortable Conservative lead. BBC Television broadcasts its first election results programme, however no footage survives due to it being broadcast live and thus, was never recorded in the first place.
• 24 February – Clement Attlee wins the general election, giving Labour a second term in government after their election triumph five years earlier, in 1945. However, he retains power with a majority of just five seats, a stark contrast to the 146-seat majority that he gained previously.^[4] Among the lost Labour seats is Bexley in Kent, which 33-year-old Conservative Party candidate Edward Heath seizes from Ashley Bramall.^[5] Both Communist Party MP's lose their seats. University constituencies have been abolished at the dissolution.^[6] Voter turnout is 83.9%, an all-time high for a UK general election under universal suffrage.
• 1 March – the German-born theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, is convicted following a confession of supplying secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.^[7]
• 6 March – 8 March: the World Figure Skating Championships are held in London.
• 8 March – carmaker Rover tests a revolutionary new turbine-powered concept car.^[8]
• 12 March – eighty of the eighty-three passengers on board an Avro Tudor V aircraft are killed when it crashes at Llandow in Glamorgan, making it the world's worst air disaster at the time.
• 16 March – The Gambols comic strip first appears in the Daily Express.^[1]
• 1 April – Corby, a village in Northamptonshire, is designated as the first new town in central England, providing homes for up to 40,000 people by the 1960s.^[9]
• 14 April – the Eagle comic first appears, featuring Dan Dare and Captain Pugwash.^[1]
• 29 April – Arsenal win the FA Cup with a 2–0 win over Liverpool at Wembley Stadium.^[10]
• 13 May – first Grand Prix held at Silverstone.^[11]
• 20 May – first package holiday air charter, by Vladimir Raitz of Horizon Holidays, from Gatwick Airport to Calvi, Corsica, for camping.^[12]
• 21 May – a tornado tracks across England from Wendover to Blakeney, Norfolk (68 miles (109 km)), the longest ever such track in Britain.^[13]
• 26 May – motor fuel rationing comes to an end after eleven years, marking another stage in the phasing-out of rationing that was introduced in the wake of the Second World War.^[14]
• 6 June – the BBC Light Programme first broadcasts the popular radio comedy feature Educating Archie, with Max Bygraves.^[1]
• 7 June – pilot episode of the series The Archers broadcast on BBC Radio. It will still be running sixty years later.^[15]
• 24 June – World Cup opens in Brazil with the England national football team competing for the first time.^[1]
• 28 June – in the World Cup, the England national football team is humiliated by losing 1–0 to the United States in Belo Horizonte.^[1]
• 29 June – the England cricket team loses the Test Match by 326 runs to the West Indies at Lord's, an event commemorated in Lord Beginner's calypso Victory Test Match.^[1]
• 11 July – first broadcast of the popular BBC Television pre-school children's programme Andy Pandy.^[15]
• 19 July – release of the film Treasure Island made in England with Robert Newton as Long John Silver.^[16]
• 31 July
  • Sainsbury's opens the first purpose-built supermarket, at Croydon.^[17]
  • Warwickshire’s Eric Hollies beats Nobby Clark’s record of 65 innings without reaching double figures when dismissed for 7 against Worcestershire. Hollies will eventually make it 71 before scoring 14 against Nottinghamshire on 16 August.
• 15 August – Princess Elizabeth gives birth to her and her husband, The Duke of Edinburgh's second child and only daughter. ^[18]
• 19 August – the Football League season begins with four new members, taking membership from 88 to 92 across the four divisions.^[19] The new members are Colchester United, Gillingham (who lost their league status in 1938),^[20] Scunthorpe & Lindsey United and Shrewsbury Town.^[21]
• 24 August – Vale Park football stadium opens in Stoke-on-Trent, to serve Port Vale F.C. It has an initial capacity of more than 30,000; it had been billed as the "Wembley of the North" when first proposed, but high costs mean that the new stadium is much more basic than had been planned.^[22]
• 27 August – the BBC makes its first television broadcast from the European continent.^[15]
• 29 August
  • 4,000 British troops are sent to Korea.^[23]
  • Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh's fourteen-day-old infant daughter is named as Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. She was then known as Princess Anne of Edinburgh, and is now The Princess Royal.^[18]
• 8 September – 116 miners are trapped underground in a landslide at Knockshinnoch Castle colliery at New Cumnock in Ayrshire, Scotland.^[24]
• 9 September
  • Post-war soap rationing ends.^[17]
  • The first miners are rescued from Knockshinnoch Castle colliery.^[24]
• 11 September – the rescue operation from Knockshinnoch Castle colliery is completed, with all 116 miners saved.^[24]
• 1 October – full-time military service by conscripted National Servicemen is extended to two years.
• 25 October – the Festival Ballet, later to become the English National Ballet, founded by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, makes its debut performance.^[25][26]
• 26 October – the rebuilt House of Commons, following its destruction by bombing in World War II, is used for the first time.^[15]
• October – Alan Turing's paper Computing machinery and intelligence, proposing the Turing test, is published in Mind.^[25]
• October – a group of Conservative politicians publishes the tract One Nation: a Tory approach to social policy.^[1]
• November – attempt to hold the Second World Peace Congress at Sheffield City Hall is thwarted by the British authorities preventing many international delegates from entering the country^[1] and it is relocated to Warsaw.^[27]
• 10 December
  • Bertrand Russell wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".^[28]
  • Cecil Frank Powell wins the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".^[29]
• 25 December – the Stone of Scone, the traditional coronation stone of Scottish monarchs, English monarchs and more recently British monarchs, is stolen from London's Westminster Abbey by a group of four Scottish students with nationalist beliefs.^[15] It turns up in Scotland on 11 April 1951.
• 28 December – an order to designate the Peak District as the first of the National parks of England and Wales is submitted to the Minister of Town and Country Planning for approval.^[30][31]

Publications

• Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel A Murder is Announced.
• Catherine Cookson's first novel Kate Hannigan.^[1]
• William Cooper's novel Scenes from Provincial Life.^[1]
• Marion Crawford's royal biography The Little Princesses: the Story of the Queen's Childhood by her Nanny.^[1]
• Elizabeth David's recipe book A Book of Mediterranean Food.
• C. S. Forester's novel Mr. Midshipman Hornblower.
• Doris Lessing's novel The Grass is Singing.
• C. S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, first of The Chronicles of Narnia series (16 October).^[32]
• Mervyn Peake's novel Gormenghast, second of the eponymous series.
• Barbara Pym's novel Some Tame Gazelle.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel Helena.

Births

• 1 January – Chris Black, Scottish hammer thrower
• 19 January – David Tredinnick, politician
• 4 February – Pamela Franklin, actress
• 13 February – Peter Gabriel, musician
• 16 February – Peter Hain, politician
• 19 February – Andy Powell, rock guitarist (Wishbone Ash)
• 22 February – Julie Walters, actress
• 27 March – Terry Yorath, footballer and football manager
• 30 March – Robbie Coltrane, actor and comedian
• 3 April – Sally Thomsett, actress
• 20 April – Robert Mair, engineer and academic
• 22 April – Peter Frampton, musician
• 1 May – Danny McGrain, footballer
• 3 May – Mary Hopkin, singer
• 11 May – Jeremy Paxman, television presenter and author
• 12 May – Jenni Murray, radio presenter
• 15 May – Keith Mills, businessman
• 17 May – Alan Johnson, politician
• 22 May
  • Mary Tamm, actress (died 2012)
  • Bernie Taupin, songwriter
• 23 May – Martin McGuinness, Irish republican politician and soldier (died 2017)
• 1 June – Tom Robinson, singer and musician
• 13 June – Nick Brown, politician
• 14 June – Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
• 30 June – Olly Flynn, race walker
• 6 July – Jonathon Porritt, English environmentalist and academic
• 8 July – Sarah Kennedy, television presenter
• 14 July – Bruce Oldfield, fashion designer
• 18 July – Richard Branson, entrepreneur
• 19 July – Simon Cadell, actor
• 23 July – Len McCluskey, trade unionist
• 26 July – Susan George, actress
• 27 July – Simon Jones, actor
• 30 July – Harriet Harman, politician
• 15 August – Anne, Princess Royal
• 11 September – Barry Sheene, motorcycle racer (died 2003 in Australia)
• 14 September – Paul Kossoff, blues rock guitarist (Free) (died 1976)
• 21 September – Charles Clarke, politician
• 5 October – Eddie Clarke, heavy metal guitarist (Motörhead) (died 2018)
• 25 October – Steve Barry, race walker
• 27 September – Linda Lewis, née Fredericks, pop singer
• 14 November – Sarah Radclyffe, production manager and producer
• 6 December – Helen Liddell, politician
• 10 December – Nicky Henderson, horse trainer
• 14 December – Vicki Michelle, actress
• 20 December – Geoffrey Grimmett, mathematician and academic
• 21 December – David Thacker, director and screenwriter
• 28 December – Clifford Cocks, cryptographer

Deaths

• 21 January – George Orwell, author (born 1903)
• 9 March – Timothy Evans hanged by Albert Pierrepoint for the murder of his baby daughter (pardoned in 1960s) (born 1924)
• 19 March – Walter Haworth, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1883)
• 24 March – Harold Laski, political theorist and economist (born 1893)
• 30 March – Joe Yule, Scottish-born comedian (born 1894)
• 6 September – Olaf Stapledon, author and philosopher (born 1886)
• 21 September – Arthur Milne, physicist (born 1896)
• 2 November – George Bernard Shaw, playwright (born 1856)
• 12 November – Julia Marlowe, English-American actress (born 1865)
• 23 November – Percival Mackey, pianist, composer and bandleader (born 1894)
• 28 November – James Corbitt hanged for murder by Albert Pierrepoint (born c. 1913)

See also

• 1950 in British music
• 1950 in British television
• List of British films of 1950

References

External links