1977 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1977 in the United Kingdom. This year was the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

1977 in the United Kingdom
Other years
1975 | 1976 | 1977 (1977) | 1978 | 1979
Constituent countries of the United Kingdom
England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales
Popular culture

Incumbents

Events

January

February

  • 4 February
  • 5 February – Twenty-eight-year-old homeless woman Irene Richardson is murdered in Leeds, at almost the exact location where prostitute Marcella Claxton was badly injured nine months earlier. Police believe that this murder and attempted murder may be connected, along with the murders of Wilma McCann, Emily Jackson and the attempted murders of at least three other women.[3]
  • 10 February
  • 11 February – Queen Elizabeth II visits Western Samoa.
  • 13 February – Anthony Crosland, Foreign Secretary, suffers a massive stroke, from which he will not regain consciousness. He dies six days later in hospital.
  • 14 February – Elizabeth II visits Tonga.
  • 15 February – The first Aardman Animations character, Morph, is introduced on BBC children's television programme Take Hart.
  • 16–17 February – Elizabeth II visits Fiji.
  • 17 February – George Newman, chairman of Staffordshire County Council, is sentenced to fifteen months in prison for corruption.[4]
  • 22 February – David Owen, 38, becomes the youngest post-Second World War Foreign Secretary, succeeding the late Anthony Crosland, who died three days earlier.
  • 22 February–7 March – Elizabeth II visits New Zealand.
  • 28 February – State opening of the Parliament of New Zealand, by Elizabeth II.

March

  • 1 March – James Callaghan threatens to withdraw state assistance to British Leyland unless it puts an end to strikes.
  • 7–30 March – Elizabeth II visits Australia.
  • 8 March – State opening of the Australian Parliament, Canberra by Elizabeth II.
  • 12 March – The Centenary Test between Australia and England begins at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
  • 14 March – The government reveals that inflation has pushed prices up by nearly 70% within three years.
  • 15 March – British Leyland managers announce intention to dismiss 40,000 toolmakers who have gone on strike at the company's Longbridge plant in Birmingham, action which is costing the state-owned carmaker more than £10,000,000 a week.[4]
  • 17–23 March – The Prince of Wales visits Ghana.
  • 19 March – The last Rover P6 rolls off the production line after fourteen years.
  • 23 March – The government wins a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons after James Callaghan strikes a deal with the leader of the Liberal Party, David Steel.[5]
  • 23–25 March – Elizabeth II visits Papua New Guinea.
  • 29 March – Income tax is slashed to 33p in the pound from 35p in the budget.
  • 31 March – Elizabeth II visits Muscat.

April

May

June

  • 6–9 June – Silver Jubilee celebrations are held in the United Kingdom to celebrate twenty-five years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign, with a public holiday on 7 June.[12]
  • 17 June – Wimbledon F.C., champions of the Isthmian League, are elected to the Football League in place of Workington in the Fourth Division.[13]
  • 20 June
    • Anglia Television broadcasts the fake documentary Alternative 3; it enters into the conspiracy theory canon.
    • Seventeen people are arrested during clashes between pickets and police at the Grunwick film processing laboratory.
  • 26 June – 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne McDonald, is found battered and stabbed to death in Chapeltown, Leeds; police believe she is the fifth person to be murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper.[14]

July

August

September

  • September – Ford launches the second generation of its flagship Granada saloon and estate models.
  • 6 September – Car industry figures show that foreign cars are outselling British-built ones for the first time. Japanese built Datsuns, German Volkswagens and French Renaults are proving particularly popular with buyers, although British-built products from Ford, British Leyland, Vauxhall and Chrysler UK are still the most popular.
  • 16 September – Rock star Marc Bolan, pioneer of the glam rock movement at the start of the 1970s with T. Rex, is killed in a car crash in Barnes, London, two weeks before his thirtieth birthday. His girlfriend Gloria Jones, who was driving the car, is seriously injured.
  • 19 September – Manchester United, the English FA Cup holders, are expelled from the European Cup Winners' Cup after their fans rioted in France during a first round first leg game with AS Saint-Etienne (which ended in a 1–1 draw) five days ago.[26]
  • 26 September
    • Freddie Laker launches his new budget Skytrain airline, with the first single fare from Gatwick to New York City costing £59 compared to the normal price of £186.
    • UEFA reinstates Manchester United to the European Cup Winners' Cup on appeal. However, they are ordered to play their return leg against AS Saint-Etienne at least 120 miles away from their Old Trafford stadium.[27]

October

  • 3 October – Undertakers go on strike in London, leaving more than 800 corpses unburied.
  • 7 October – Rock band Queen's power ballad "We Are the Champions" is released.
  • 10 October – Missing 20-year-old prostitute Jean Jordan is found dead in Chorlton, Manchester, nine days after she was last seen alive. Police believe that the "Yorkshire Ripper" may have killed her; the first crime outside Yorkshire which the killer has been suspected of.[28]
  • 14 October – Fourteen people are injured in a bomb explosion at a London pub.
  • 15 October – World's End Murders: Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, disappear after leaving the World's End pub in Edinburgh, Scotland. Their bodies are found tied and strangled in the countryside the next day. In 2014, serial killer Angus Sinclair is convicted of the crime.
  • 25 October – Michael Edwardes succeeds Richard Dobson as chief executive and chairman of British Leyland.
  • 27 October
    • Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe denies allegations of the attempted murder of and having a relationship with male model, Norman Scott.[29]
    • Punk band Sex Pistols release Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols on the Virgin Records label. Despite refusal by major retailers to stock it, it debuts at #1 on the UK Album Charts the week after its release. In a promotional stunt, the group perform on a boat on the River Thames shortly afterwards, only for the police to wait for them and make several arrests, including that of Malcolm McLaren, the band's manager at this time.
  • 28 October
    • Police in Yorkshire appeal for help in finding the "Yorkshire Ripper", who is believed to be responsible for a series of murders and attacks on women across the county during the last two years.
    • Rock band Queen release the album News of the World.

November

December

  • 3 December – The England football team fails to achieve World Cup qualification for the second tournament in succession.
  • 10 December
    • James Meade wins the 1977 Nobel Prize in Economics jointly with the Swede Bertil Ohlin for their "Pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements".[32]
    • Nevill Francis Mott wins the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Philip Warren Anderson and John Hasbrouck van Vleck "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems".[33]
  • 12 December
    • Chrysler Europe announces its new Horizon range of five-door front-wheel drive hatchbacks, which will be built in the UK as a Chrysler, and in France as a Simca. It will give buyers a more modern alternative to the Avenger range of rear-wheel drive saloons and estates.
    • Ron Greenwood signs a permanent contract as England manager, despite England's failure to qualify for next summer's World Cup. The appointment is controversial, as there had been widespread support for Brian Clough of Nottingham Forest to be appointed.[34]
  • 14 December – 25-year-old Leeds prostitute Marilyn Moore, is injured in an attack believed to have been committed by the Yorkshire Ripper.[35]
  • 16 December – The Queen opens a £71,000,000 extension of London Underground's Piccadilly line, which runs to Heathrow Central, serving Heathrow Airport.[36][37]
  • 21 December – Four children die at a house fire in Wednesbury, West Midlands, as Green Goddess fire appliances crewed by hastily trained troops are sent to deal with the blaze while firefighters are still on strike. 119 people have now died as a result of fires since the strike began, but this is the first fire during the strike which has resulted in more than two deaths.[38]
  • 22 December – The Queen's first grandchild is christened Peter Mark Andrew Phillips.[39]
  • 25 December – The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show on BBC 1 television attracts an audience of more than 28,000,000 viewers, one of the highest ever in UK television history.[40][41][42][43][44][45]
  • 27 December – The much-acclaimed Star Wars film, which has been a massive hit in the United States, is screened in British cinemas for the first time.[46]

Undated

  • Inflation has fallen slightly this year to 15.8%, but it is the fourth successive year that has seen double-digit inflation.[47]
  • Colour television licences exceed black and white ones for the first time in the UK.

Publications

Births

Deaths

See also

References

  1. "1977: Jenkins quits Commons for Brussels". BBC News. 3 January 1977. Archived from the original on 10 January 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  2. "1977: EMI fires Sex Pistols". BBC News. 6 January 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  3. "Irene Richardson". The Yorkshire Ripper. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  4. "Those Were the Days". Wolverhampton: Express & Star.
  5. "1977: Government wins no confidence vote". BBC News. 23 March 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  6. "1977: Hat trick for Red Rum". BBC News. 2 April 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  7. "Patricia Atkinson". The Yorkshire Ripper. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  8. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
  9. "1977 Manchester United". The FA Cup. Archived from the original on 19 August 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2011.
  10. "Liverpool ascends throne". Calgary Herald. 26 May 2019. p. 37. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  11. "M5". roads.org.uk. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  12. "7 June 1977: Queen celebrates Silver Jubilee". On This Day. BBC. 7 June 1977. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
  13. "The Wimbledon story". Wimbledon AFC. 26 November 2012. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  14. "Jayne McDonald". The Yorkshire Ripper. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  15. "1977: Manchester United sack manager". BBC News. 4 July 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  16. "Maureen Long". The Yorkshire Ripper. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  17. "1977: Gay paper guilty of blasphemy". BBC News. 11 July 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  18. "Donald George Revie OBE". England Football Online. 4 June 2012. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  19. "Sexton joins United – in 30 seconds". Glasgow Herald. 15 July 1977. p. 1. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  20. "Chrysler Sunbeam: rushed supermini to champion rally car". Rootes-Chrysler.co.uk. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  21. Finance Act 1977, section 56.
  22. "1977: Tight security for Queen's Irish visit". BBC News. 10 August 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  23. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/worlds-most-expensive-footballer-liverpool-8129051
  24. MacKie, Lindsay (15 August 1977). "The real losers in Saturday's battle of Lewisham". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 11 January 2009.
  25. "Greenwood takes over - until December". Glasgow Herald. 18 August 1977. p. 15. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  26. "Man. U. Kicked Out of Europe". Evening Times. Glasgow. 19 September 1977. p. 1. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  27. "Manchester United reinstated in Cup". Montreal Gazette. 27 September 2019. p. 17. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  28. "Jean Jordan". The Yorkshire Ripper. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  29. "1977: Liberal MP denies murder plot". BBC News. 27 October 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  30. "1977: Firefighters strike over pay claim". BBC News. 14 November 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  31. "SavaCentre". The Sainsbury Archive. Museum of London. Archived from the original on 1 August 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  32. "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1977". Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  33. "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1977". Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  34. "It's Greenwood - until 1980". Glasgow Herald. 13 December 1977. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  35. "Marilyn Moore". The Yorkshire Ripper. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  36. "1977: Queen opens 'tube' link to Heathrow". BBC News. 16 December 1977. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  37. Green, Oliver (1988). The London Underground – An Illustrated History. Ian Allan. pp. 62–63. ISBN 0-7110-1720-4.
  38. "Worst British Fire Tragedy". Times-Union. Warsaw, Indiana. 21 December 1977. p. 1. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  39. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 31 December 2013. Retrieved 5 October 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  40. The Guinness Book of Records.
  41. "Eric and Ern – The Morecambe & Wise Show: Series 8". Morecambeandwise.com. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  42. "Ernie Wise". The Daily Telegraph. 22 March 1999. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  43. Bushby, Helen (30 December 2010). "Victoria Wood tells all about Eric and Ernie". BBC News. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  44. ITV and the BFI quote a figure of 21.3 million. "Features | Britain's Most Watched TV | 1970s". BFI. 4 September 2006. Archived from the original on 24 February 2012. Retrieved 28 April 2012.
  45. Moran, Joe (22 March 2011). "One nation Christmas television". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  46. "1977: Star Wars fever hits Britain". BBC News. 27 December 1977. Archived from the original on 30 December 2007. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
  47. "Inflation: the value of the pound 1750-1998" (PDF). Research Paper 99/20. House of Commons Library. 23 February 1999. Archived from the original (pdf) on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  48. Parsons, Nicholas (1985). The Book of Literary Lists. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. ISBN 0-283-99171-2.

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