1977 in the United Kingdom

1977 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1975 | 1976 | 1977 (1977) | 1978 | 1979

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport, Television and music

1977 British Grand Prix 1977 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland 1977 in British television 1977 in British music 1977 in British radio UK in the Eurovision Song Contest 1977

Events from the year 1977 in the United Kingdom. This is the Queen's Silver Jubilee Year.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – James Callaghan (Labour)

Events

January

• January–June – The United Kingdom holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the first time.
• January – The Ford Fiesta goes on sale in the UK.
• 3 January – Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, announces he is leaving the House of Commons to become President of the European Commission.
• 6 January – Record company EMI sacks the controversial British punk rock group the Sex Pistols for their behaviour on ITV's Today Show, whose presenter Bill Grundy was also dismissed by his employers for inciting them.
• 10 January – Clive Sinclair introduces his new two-inch screen television set, which retails at £175.
• 29 January – Seven Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs explode in the West End of London, but there are no fatalities or serious injuries.

February

• 4 February
  • Fleetwood Mac's Grammy-winning album Rumours is released, featuring songs that include "The Chain", "Don't Stop", and "Go Your Own Way".
  • Police discover an IRA bomb factory in Liverpool.
• 5 February – 28-year-old homeless woman Irene Richardson is murdered in Leeds, at almost the exact location where prostitute Marcella Claxton was badly injured nine months ago. 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.
• 10 February
  • Elizabeth II visits American Samoa.
  • The three IRA terrorists involved in the 1975 Balcombe Street Siege in London are sentenced to life imprisonment on six charges of murder.
• 11 February – Elizabeth II visits Western Samoa.
• 13 February – Anthony Crosland, Foreign Secretary, suffered a massive stroke from which he would not regain consciousness. He died six days later in hospital.
• 14 February – Elizabeth II visits Tonga.
• 16–17 February – Elizabeth II visits Fiji.
• 17 February – George Newman, chairman of Staffordshire County Council, is sentenced to 15 months in prison for corruption.
• 22 February – David Owen, 38, becomes the youngest post-Second World War Foreign Secretary, succeeding the late Anthony Crosland, who died 3 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 aid 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 £10million a week.
• 17–23 March – The Prince of Wales visits Ghana.
• 19 March – The last Rover P6 rolls off the production line after 14 years.
• 23 March – 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.
• 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

• April – Mike Leigh's comedy of manners Abigail's Party opens at the Hampstead Theatre, starring Alison Steadman.
• 2 April – Red Rum wins the Grand National for the third time.
• 8 April – Punk band The Clash's debut album The Clash is released in the UK through CBS Records.
• 11 April – London Transport's Silver Jubilee buses are launched.
• 18–30 April – The Embassy World Snooker Championship moves to the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, and attracts television coverage for the first time.
• 23 April
  • National Front marchers clash with anti-Nazi protesters in London.
  • Prostitute Patricia Atkinson is murdered in Bradford; she is believed to be the fourth woman to die at the hands of the mysterious Yorkshire Ripper.
• 29 April – British Aerospace is formed to run the nationalised aviation industry.
• 30 April – Mid Hants Railway reopened.

May

• 3 May – HMS Invincible is launched at Barrow-in-Furness by Elizabeth II.
• 5 May
  • Silver Jubilee review of the Police at Hendon by Elizabeth II.
  • Conservatives make gains in local council elections, including winning the Greater London Council from Labour.
• 7 May
  • 3rd G7 summit held in London.
  • Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Elliot Trudeau does a pirouette behind the back of Elizabeth II.
  • The 22nd Eurovision Song Contest is held in London. With Angela Rippon as the presenter, the contest is won by Marie Myriam representing France, with her song "L'oiseau et l'enfant" ("The Bird and the Child").
• 13 May – The Silver Jubilee Air Fair is held at Biggin Hill.
• 15 May – Liverpool F.C. are English league champions for the tenth time.
• 17 May – Elizabeth II commences her Jubilee tour in Glasgow.
• 18 May
  • The UK is among 29 signatories of a Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques.
  • Elizabeth II visits Cumbernauld and Stirling.
• 19 May – Elizabeth II visits Perth and Dundee.
• 21 May – Manchester United win the FA Cup for the fourth time by defeating Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley Stadium in the final. It is their first major trophy since they won the European Cup in 1968.
• 23–27 May – Elizabeth II visits Edinburgh.
• 25 May – Liverpool win their first European Cup by defeating the West German league champions Borussia Mönchengladbach 3-1 in the final in Rome.
• 27 May
  • Elizabeth II opens the new Air Terminal Building at Edinburgh Airport.
  • Prime Minister James Callaghan officially opens the M5 motorway, which is now complete with the opening of the final stretch around Exeter, 15 years after the first stretch of the motorway (beginning near Birmingham) was opened.
• 28 May – Climax of Windsor Silver Jubilee celebrations: Elizabeth II visits the town on her Jubilee tour.
• 30 May – A gala performance for the Silver Jubilee is held at the Royal Opera House, London.

June

• 6–9 June – 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.
• 17 June – Wimbledon F.C., champions of the Isthmian League, are elected to the Football League in place of Workington in the Fourth Division.
• 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.

July

• 4 July – Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty is sensationally dismissed by the club's directors due to his affair with the wife of the club's physiotherapist.
• 7 July – The first episode of the BBC documentary series Brass Tacks is aired, featuring a debate as to whether Myra Hindley should be considered for parole from the life sentence she received for her role in the Moors Murders in 1966.
• 10 July – Bradford woman Maureen Long, 42 is injured in an attack believed to have been committed by the Yorkshire Ripper in the West Yorkshire city.
• 11 July
  • Gay News found guilty of blasphemous libel in a case (Whitehouse v. Lemon) brought by Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association.
  • Don Revie announces his resignation after three years as manager of the England national football team.
• 12 July – Within 24 hours of resigning as manager of the England national football team, Don Revie accepts an offer to become the highest paid football manager in the world when he is appointed manager of the United Arab Emirates national football team on a four-year contract worth £340,000.
• 14 July – Manchester United appoint Dave Sexton, manager of Queen's Park Rangers and previously Chelsea, as their new manager.
• 23 July – Chrysler Europe launched the Sunbeam, a three-door rear-wheel drive small hatchback similar in concept to the Ford Fiesta and Vauxhall Chevette.
• 29 July – Finance Act abolishes the collection of tithes.

August

• August – Government introduces voluntary Stage III one-year pay restraint.
• 10 August
  • The Queen visits Northern Ireland as part of her Jubilee celebrations under tight security.
  • Kenny Dalglish, 26-year-old Scotland striker, becomes Britain's most expensive footballer in a £440,000 transfer from Glasgow Celtic to Liverpool.
• 11 August – Cricketer Geoff Boycott scores the 100th century of his career for England against Australia at Headingley, Leeds.
• 12 August – 19 September – Union-Castle Line RMS Windsor Castle (1959) makes the line’s last passenger mail voyage out of Southampton for Cape Town, the last major British ship to operate in the regular ocean liner trade.
• 13 August – Battle of Lewisham: an attempt by the far-right National Front to march from New Cross to Lewisham in southeast London leads to counter-demonstrations and violent clashes.
• 15 August – Rioting breaks out in Birmingham during demonstrations against the National Front.
• 17 August – Ron Greenwood, general manager of West Ham United, who guided the East London club to FA Cup and European Cup Winners' Cup glory as their team manager during the 1960s, accepts an offer from the Football Association to manage the England team on a temporary basis until December.
• 23 August – A new, smaller, £1 note is introduced.

September

• September – Ford launches the second generation of its popular Granada model.
• 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 30th birthday. His girlfriend Gloria Jones, the driver of 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 September
  • Freddie Laker launches his new budget Skytrain airline, with the first single fare from Gatwick to New York 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.

October

• 3 October – Undertakers go on strike in London, leaving more than 800 corpses unburied.
• 7 October – 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.
• 14 October – Fourteen people are injured in a bomb explosion at a London pub.
• 25 October – Michael Edwardes succeeds Richard Dobson as chief of British Leyland.
• 27 October
  • Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe denies allegations of attempted murder of and having a relationship with male model Norman Scott.
  • 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 number one 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

• 14 November – Firefighters go on their first ever national strike, in hope of getting a 30% wage increase.
• 15 November
  • The Queen becomes a grandmother for the first time when Princess Anne gives birth to a son.
  • The first SavaCentre hypermarket, a venture between J Sainsbury and British Home Stores, opens at Washington, Tyne and Wear.
• 22 November – British Airways inaugurates regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.

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 Norwegian Bertil Ohlin for their "Pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements."
  • 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".
• 12 December
  • Chrysler Europe announces its new Horizon range of five-door front-wheel drive hatchbacks, which will be built in Britain as a Chrysler and 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.
• 14 December – 25-year-old Leeds prostitute Marilyn Moore is injured in an attack believed to have been committed by the Yorkshire Ripper.
• 16 December – The Queen opens a £71million extension to the London Underground which runs to Heathrow Airport.
• 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.
• 22 December – The Queen's first grandchild is christened Peter Mark Andrew Phillips.
• 25 December – The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show on BBC 1 television attracts an audience of more than 28 million viewers, one of the highest ever in U.K. television history.
• 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.

Undated

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

Publications

• Bruce Chatwin's travel book In Patagonia.
• Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel book A Time Of Gifts.
• John Fowles' novel Daniel Martin.
• Edith Holden's nature notes The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (posthumous), which sells an initial print run of 148,000.
• Shirley Hughes' children's book Dogger.
• Paul Scott's novel Staying On.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's collection The Silmarillion (posthumous).

Births

• 7 January – Michelle Behennah, model
• 13 January – Orlando Bloom, actor
• 24 January – Hayley Tamaddon, actress
• 5 February – Ben Ainslie, sailor
• 2 March – Chris Martin, singer-songwriter (Coldplay)
• 10 March – Colin Murray, radio DJ
• 10 May – Adrian Morely, rugby league footballer
• 13 May – Samantha Morton, actress
• 30 May – Rachael Stirling, actress
• 31 May – Joel Ross, DJ
• 6 June – Bryn Williams, Welsh chef and author
• 3 August – Angela Beesley, internet entrepreneur
• 10 August – Danny Griffin, footballer
• 8 September – Gavin Meadows, freestyle swimmer
• 15 September – Tom Hardy, actor
• 1 November – Alistair Griffin, singer/songwriter
• 4 November – Kavana, singer
• 15 November – Peter Phillips, son of The Princess Anne
• 22 November – Michael Preston, footballer
• 6 December – Paul McVeigh, footballer
• 23 December – Matt Baker, television presenter

Deaths

• 14 January
  • Anthony Eden, former Prime Minister (born 1897)
  • Peter Finch, actor (born 1912)
• 19 February – Anthony Crosland, Politician (born 1918)
• 26 March – Madeleine Dring, composer and actress (born 1923)
• 17 April – William Conway, cardinal (born 1913)
• 2 June – Stephen Boyd, actor (born 1931)
• 3 June – Archibald Vivian Hill, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1886)
• 19 June – Lady Olave Baden-Powell, Chief Girl Guide (born 1889)
• 4 August – Lord Adrian, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1889)
• 13 August – Henry Williamson, author (born 1895)
• 29 August – Edward Sinclair, actor (born 1914)
• 6 September – John Littlewood, mathematician (born 1885)
• 13 September – Leopold Stokowski, conductor (born 1882)
• 16 September – Marc Bolan, musician (born 1947)
• 30 November – Terence Rattigan, playwright (born 1911)
• 12 December – Clementine Churchill, widow of Winston Churchill (born 1885)
• 20 December – Henry Tandey, most highly decorated British private soldier of World War I (born 1891)
• 25 December – Charlie Chaplin silent film comedy actor (born 1889)