1983 in the United Kingdom

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1983 in the United Kingdom:
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1981 \| 1982 \| 1983 \| 1984 \| 1985
Sport and Music
British and Irish current events
1983 English cricket season
Football England \| Scotland
1983 in British music

Events from the year 1983 in the United Kingdom.

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 References

[edit] Events

January 6 - Danish fishermen invade British waters after the government bans non-British boats entering UK coastal waters. The ban was lifted on January 23 when the EEC's Common Fisheries Policy came into effect. ^[1]
January 17 - First British breakfast time television programme, Good Morning Britain, broadcast. ^[2]
January 26 - Red rain falls in the UK, caused by sand from the Sahara Desert in the droplets.
January 31 - Seatbelt use for drivers and front seat passengers becomes mandatory. ^[2]
1 February - First broadcast of TV-am. ^[2]
February 10 - after discovering the remains of his many victims, police begin the search for mass-murderer Dennis Nilsen.
June 9 - Conservative Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1979, wins a landslide victory (42% of the popular vote) over Michael Foot, who led a highly-divided and weakened Labour Party which earned only 28% of the vote. The much improved economy (after 2-3 years of restructuring), her victory in the Falkands, as well as shrinking unemployment rates consolidates her election victory.
16 June - National Media Museum (then known as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television) opens in Bradford. ^[3]
July 26 - a mother of ten, Victoria Gillick, loses a case in the High Court of Justice against the DHSS. Her application sought to prevent the distribution of contraceptives to children under the age of 16 without parental consent. The case went to the House of Lords in 1985 when it was decided that it was legal for Doctors to prescribe contraceptives to under-16s without parental consent in exceptional circumstances. ^[4] (See Gillick competence.)
September 16 - Donna Griffiths of Pershore stops sneezing after a continual series of sneezes for 978 days (since January 13, 1981). ^[5]
September 23 - Mass outbreak in Maze prison: 38 prisoners hijack a lorry and crash out of the gate; 1 guard is killed and 5 others injured. Nineteen of the prisoners are later apprehended.
October 2 - Neil Kinnock is elected leader of the Labour Party.
October 7 - A plan to abolish the Greater London Council is announced.
October 22 - over a million people demonstrate against nuclear weapons at a CND march in London. ^[6]
October 24
- Arthur Hutchinson kills three members of Laitner family and rapes their daughter in the Sheffield suburb of Dore.
- Dennis Nilsen goes on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of six murders and two attempted murders.
November 13 - The first US cruise missiles arrive at RAF Greenham Common amid protests from peace campaigners at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
November 24 - Fifteen-year-old Lynda Mann is found raped and strangled in the village of Narborough, (Colin Pitchfork is sentenced to life imprisonment in 1988).
November 26 - Brinks Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly UK£26 million are taken from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Only a fraction of the gold is ever recovered, and only two men are convicted of the crime.
December 6 - first heart and lung transplant carried out in Britain at Harefield.
December 17 - A Provisional Irish Republican Army car bomb kills six Christmas shoppers and injures 90 outside Harrods in London.

William Golding wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today". ^[7]