1945 in the United Kingdom

1945 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1943 | 1944 | 1945 (1945) | 1946 | 1947

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport, Television and music

1945 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland 1945 in British television

Events from the year 1945 in the United Kingdom. This year sees the end of World War II and a landslide General Election victory for the Labour Party.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George VI
• Prime Minister – Winston Churchill, coalition (until 27 July), Clement Attlee, Labour

Events

• 7 January – General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference at Zonhoven describing his contribution to the Battle of the Bulge.
• 4 February – Prime Minister Winston Churchill attends the Yalta Conference (ends 11 February).^[1]
• 13 February – The RAF Bomber Command begins the strategic bombing of Dresden in Saxony, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm which kills tens of thousands of civilians.
• 10 March – Sixty-seven German prisoners of war tunnel their way out of Island Farm Camp 198 at Bridgend, the biggest escape attempt by German POWs in the UK during the War.
• 14 March – The RAF uses the Grand Slam bomb for the first time on the Bielefeld railway viaduct.^[1]
• 27 March – The last V-2 rocket attack on the UK takes place, with one fatality, in Orpington.^[2]
• 29 March – The last V-1 flying bomb attack on the UK takes place. The last enemy action of any kind on British soil occurs when one strikes Datchworth in Hertfordshire.
• 13 April – The first Scottish National Party Member of Parliament, Robert McIntyre, is elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom after his victory at the Motherwell by-election.

Churchill waves to the crowds on VE Day

• 15 April – British troops liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.^[1]
• 19 April – Geoffrey Fisher enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury.
• April – Sybil Campbell is appointed a stipendiary magistrate in London, the first woman to become a professional judge in the U.K.
• 7 May – At 23:00 the SS Avondale Park is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-2336 off the Firth of Forth with two killed, the last British-flagged merchant ship lost to German action.
• 8 May – Eight days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Nazi rule in Berlin, V-E Day is celebrated throughout the UK. Churchill makes a victory speech and appears on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with George VI, Queen Elizabeth and The Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Street parties take place throughout the country.^[3]
• 12 May – German forces in the Channel Islands, the only occupied part of the British Isles, surrender.^[4]
• 23 May – Churchill forms a 'caretaker' Conservative administration, pending an election, officially ending the wartime Coalition government.^[4]
• 28 May – William Joyce, known as "Lord Haw-Haw" is captured. He is later charged with high treason in London for his English-language wartime broadcasts on German radio. He is hanged in January 1946.
• 1 June – The UK takes over administration of Lebanon and Syria.
• 7 June – The Benjamin Britten opera Peter Grimes first performed at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London.^[5]
• 13 June – Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts renamed Arts Council of Great Britain.
• 15 June – Parliament passes the Family Allowances Act to provide payments to families with children.
• 18 June – The demobilization of the wartime armed forces begins.
• 5 July – Polling day for the general election; the count is not made for another three weeks (see below) so that votes from the armed services overseas can be added.^[4]
• 17 July – Potsdam Conference – the three main Allied leaders begin their final summit of the war. The meeting will end on 2 August.

Attlee with King George VI after Labour's landslide election victory

• 26 July – General election results are announced; Winston Churchill resigns as prime minister after his Conservative Party is soundly defeated by the Labour Party, who have a majority of 146 seats, and Clement Attlee becomes the new prime minister. However, Churchill will remain Conservative leader of the party in opposition. It will be the first time that a Labour government with a commons majority has governed Britain.^[3] Among the new Labour members of parliament is 29-year-old Harold Wilson, MP for Ormskirk in Lancashire.^[6] A notable casualty of the election is Harold Macmillan, who has now lost the Stockton-on-Tees seat twice for the Conservatives.^[7]
• 27 July – Just one day after entering parliament, Alfred Dobbs, the Labour MP for Smethwick, near Birmingham, is killed in a car crash.
• 29 July – The BBC Light Programme radio station is launched, aimed at mainstream light entertainment and music.^[3]
• 5 August – The Giles family cartoon first appears in the Sunday Express.^[8]
• 13 August – Zionist World Congress approaches British government to talk about founding of Israel.
• 14 August – The 1945 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours are announced, to mark the resignation of Winston Churchill.^[9]
• 15 August – V-J Day is celebrated in the UK following the Japanese surrender.
• 16 August – In the House of Commons, Leader of the Opposition Winston Churchill speaks of an "Iron Curtain" descending across Europe.
• 17 August – George Orwell's Animal Farm published.
• 30 August – British sovereignty of Hong Kong restored following the end of the Japanese occupation of the territory.^[1]
• 2 September
  • Press censorship ends.
  • Lend-Lease from the United States terminates.
• 2 October – Piccadilly Circus tube station becomes the first to be lit by fluorescent light.^[1]
• 24 October – The British government signs the United Nations Charter.
• 14 November – Harold Macmillan begins his third term as a Conservative MP after winning the by-election in Bromley, Kent.^[10]
• 15 November – Gainsborough Pictures releases the period melodrama The Wicked Lady starring Margaret Lockwood, Patricia Roc and James Mason.
• 26 November – J. Arthur Rank releases David Lean's film of Noël Coward's Brief Encounter starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.
• 28 November – British fascist John Amery pleads guilty to treason and is immediately sentenced to hang.
• December
  • Alexander Fleming and Ernst Boris Chain win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Howard Florey "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases".^[11]
  • John Maynard Keynes secures a 50-year $3.75bn Anglo-American loan for the Government from the United States at 2%, effective from 1946.^[12]
• 10 December – Forced repatriation of Liverpool Chinese seamen begins.^[13]
• 31 December – Britain receives its first shipment of bananas since the beginning of the war.^[3]

Undated

• The Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation (ICFC; predecessor of 3i) is established by the Bank of England and the major commercial banks to provide long term investment funding for small and medium-sized enterprises.^[14]
• Bernard Lovell establishes the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire.^[15]
• The grammar school at Windermere reorganises itself to become Britain's first comprehensive school.^[16]

Publications

• Rev. W. V. Awdry's children's book The Three Railway Engines, first of The Railway Series.
• Agatha Christie's novel Sparkling Cyanide.
• Winston Graham's novel Ross Poldark, first of the Poldark Novels.
• Henry Green's novel Loving.
• C. S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength.
• Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love.
• George Orwell's novel Animal Farm.
• Karl Popper's book The Open Society and its Enemies.
• Bertrand Russell's book History of Western Philosophy.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited.

Births

• 6 January – Barry John, rugby union footballer
• 10 January – Rod Stewart, British singer
• 15 January – Princess Michael of Kent, Czech born wife of Prince Michael of Kent
• 21 January – Martin Shaw, English actor
• 26 January – Jacqueline du Pré, English cellist (died 1987)
• 29 January – Jim Nicholson, Northern Irish Unionist politician and MEP for Northern Ireland
• 5 February – Charlotte Rampling, English actress
• 7 February – Gerald Davies, Welsh rugby player
• 13 February – Simon Schama, historian
• 30 March – Eric Clapton, English guitarist
• 14 May – Widnes, Cheshire: George Nicholls, English rugby league footballer
• 16 May – Nicky Chinn, English songwriter (The Sweet and Suzi Quatro)
• 19 May – Pete Townshend, English guitarist and lyricist
• 12 June – Pat Jennings, Northern Irish footballer player
• 7 July – Michael Ancram, British Conservative politician and MP for Devizes
• 28 July – Richard Wright, English keyboardist (Pink Floyd)
• 9 August – Posy Simmonds, English cartoonist
• 19 August – Ian Gillan, English singer (Deep Purple)
• 31 August – Van Morrison, Northern Irish singer and songwriter
• 21 September – Shaw Clifton, General of The Salvation Army
• 26 September – Bryan Ferry, singer and musician
• 26 November – John McVie, English musician (Fleetwood Mac)
• 30 November – Hilary Armstrong, politician
• 24 December – Ian "Lemmy" Kilminster, British bassist and singer (Motörhead)

Deaths

• 21 February – Eric Liddell, athlete (born 1902)
• 26 March – David Lloyd George, former Prime Minister (born 1863)
• 29 March – Jack Agazarian, spy (born 1916)
• 18 April – John Ambrose Fleming, electrical engineer and physicist (born 1849)
• 15 May – Charles Williams, author (born 1886)
• 27 July – Alfred Dobbs, politician (born 1882)^[17]
• 5 December – Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1864)
• 14 December – Princess Maud, Countess of Southesk, granddaughter of Edward VII (born 1893)

References

See also

• Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II