1978 in the United Kingdom

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Years in the United Kingdom:	1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Years:	1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981

1978 in the United Kingdom:
British and Irish current events
Sport and Music
1978 British Grand Prix
1978 English cricket season
Football England \| Scotland
1978 in British music
United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1978

Events from the year 1978 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
- 2.1 Undated
3 Publications
4 Births
5 Deaths
6 References
7 See also

[edit] Incumbents

Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister - James Callaghan, Labour

[edit] Events

18 January - The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.
13 February - Anna Ford becomes the first female newsreader on ITN.^[1]
18 February - 20 suspects arrested in connection with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of the La Mon restaurant in County Down which had killed 12 people and injured 30.^[2]
8 March - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy first broadcast by BBC Radio 4.^[3]
30 March - Conservative Party recruit Saatchi & Saatchi to revamp their image.^[4]
8 April - Regular broadcasts of proceedings in the Parliament of the United Kingdom start.
1 May - May Day becomes a bank holiday for the first time.^[3]
8 June - Naomi James becomes the first woman to sail around the world single-handedly.^[5]
19 June - Cricketer Ian Botham becomes the first man in the history of the game to score a century and take eight wickets in one innings of a Test match.^[6]
21 June
- An outbreak of shooting between Provisional IRA members and the British Army leaves one civilian and three IRA men dead.^[7]
- The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita opens at the Prince Edward Theatre in London.^[3]
6 July - Taunton train fire: eleven people killed in worst rail accident since Hither Green rail crash in 1967.^[8]
7 July - The Solomon Islands become independent from the United Kingdom.
25 July
- Louise Brown becomes the world's first human born from in vitro fertilization.^[9]
- Motability, a charity which provides cars to disabled people, founded.^[10]
20 August - Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al airline bus in London.
25 August - U.S. Army Sergeant Walter Robinson "walks" across the English Channel in 11 hours 30 minutes, using homemade water shoes.
11 September - Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov dies after having been stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella in London.^[11]
15 September - German terrorist Astrid Proll arrested in London.^[12]
19 September - British Police launch a massive murder hunt, following the discovery of the dead body of newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater (13) at a farmhouse near Kingswinford in the West Midlands. Carl is believed to have been shot dead after disturbing a burglary at the property.^[13]
17 October - A cull of Grey seals in the Orkney and Western Islands reduced after a public outcry.^[14]
3 November - Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
5 November - Rioters sack the British Embassy in Tehran.
23 November - Pollyanna's nightclub in Birmingham is forced to lift its ban on black and Chinese revellers, after a one-year investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality concludes that the nightclub's entry policy was racist.
30 November - An industrial dispute closes down The Times newspaper.^[5]
10 December - Peter D. Mitchell wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory".^[15]