1950 in the United Kingdom

1950 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1948 | 1949 | 1950 (1950) | 1951 | 1952

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport, Television and music

1950 British Grand Prix 1950 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland 1950 in British television

Events from the year 1950 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch — George VI
• Prime Minister — Clement Attlee (Labour)

Events

• 16 January — The BBC Light Programme first broadcasts the daily children's radio feature Listen with Mother.^[1]
• 26 January
  • India becomes a republic, severing ties with the United Kingdom.^[2]
  • Donald Hume is sentenced to imprisonment as an accessory to the murder of Stanley Setty, having dumped his dismembered body over the Essex marshes from a light aircraft.^[1]
• 8 February — George Kelly is sentenced to hang for the murder of the Cameo cinema manager in the Liverpool suburb of Wavertree, a conviction which will be quashed as unsafe 53 years later.^[1]
• 20 February — Ealing Studios release the film The Blue Lamp, introducing the character PC George Dixon, played by Jack Warner (with Dirk Bogarde as a young criminal).^[1][3]
• 21 February — Cunard liner RMS Aquitania arrives at the scrapyard in Faslane at the end of a 36-year career.
• 24 February — Clement Attlee wins the general election, giving Labour a second term in government after their election triumph in 1945. However, he retains power with a majority of just five seats, a stark contrast to the 146-seat majority that he gained when he came to power five years ago.^[4] Among the lost Labour seats is Bexley in Kent, which 33-year-old Conservative Party candidate Edward Heath seizes from Ashley Bramall.^[5] Both Communist Party MP's lose their seats. University constituencies have been abolished at the dissolution.^[6] Voter turnout is 83.9%, an all-time high for a U.K. general election under universal suffrage.
• 1 March — The German-born theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, is convicted following a confession of supplying secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.^[7]
• 6 March–8 March — The World Figure Skating Championships are held in London.
• 8 March — Carmaker Rover tests a revolutionary new turbine-powered concept car.^[8]
• 12 March — 80 of the 83 people on board an Avro Tudor V aircraft are killed when it crashes at Llandow in Glamorgan, making it the world's worst air disaster for the time.
• 16 March — The Gambols comic strip first appears in the Daily Express.^[1]
• 1 April — Corby, a village in Northamptonshire, is designated as the first new town in central England, providing homes for up to 40,000 people by the 1960s.^[9]
• 14 April — The Eagle comic first appears, featuring Dan Dare and Captain Pugwash.^[1]
• 29 April — Arsenal win the FA Cup with a 2–0 win over Liverpool at Wembley Stadium.^[10]
• 13 May — First Grand Prix held at Silverstone.^[11]
• 20 May — First package holiday air charter, by Vladimir Raitz of Horizon Holidays, from Gatwick Airport to Calvi, Corsica, for camping.^[12]
• 21 May — A tornado tracks across England from Wendover to Blakeney, Norfolk (68 miles (109 km)), the longest ever such track in Britain.^[13]
• 26 May — Motor fuel rationing comes to an end after 11 years, marking another stage in the phasing-out of rationing that was introduced in the wake of the Second World War.^[14]
• 6 June — The BBC Light Programme first broadcasts the popular radio comedy feature Educating Archie, with Max Bygraves.^[1]
• 7 June — Pilot episode of the series The Archers broadcast on BBC Radio. It will still be running sixty years later.^[15]
• 24 June — World Cup opens in Brazil with the England national football team competing for the first time.^[1]
• 28 June — In the World Cup, the England national football team is humiliated by losing 1–0 to the United States in Belo Horizonte.^[1]
• 29 June — The England cricket team loses the Test Match by 326 runs to the West Indies at Lord's, an event commemorated in Lord Beginner's calypso Victory Test Match.^[1]
• 11 July — First broadcast of the popular BBC Television pre-school children's programme Andy Pandy.^[15]
• 19 July — Release of the film Treasure Island made in England with Robert Newton as Long John Silver.^[16]
• 31 July
  • Sainsbury's opens the first purpose-built supermarket, at Croydon.^[17]
  • Warwickshire’s Eric Hollies beats Nobby Clark’s record of 65 innings without reaching double figures when dismissed for 7 against Worcestershire. Hollies will eventually make it 71 before scoring 14 against Nottinghamshire on 16 August.
• 15 August — The Princess Elizabeth gives birth to her and her husband, The Duke of Edinburgh's second child, a princess.^[18]
• 19 August — The Football League season begins with four new members, taking membership from 88 to 92 across the four divisions.^[19] The new members are Colchester United, Gillingham (who lost their league status in 1938),^[20] Scunthorpe & Lindsey United and Shrewsbury Town.^[21]
• 24 August — Vale Park football stadium opens in Stoke-on-Trent, to serve Port Vale F.C. It has an initial capacity of more than 30,000; it had been billed as the "Wembley of the North" when first proposed, but high costs mean that the new stadium is much more basic than had been planned.^[22]
• 27 August — The BBC makes its first television broadcast from the European continent.^[15]
• 29 August
  • 4,000 British troops are sent to Korea.^[23]
  • The Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh's 14-day-old daughter is named as Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. She was then known as Princess Anne of Edinburgh and is now The Princess Royal.^[18]
• 8 September — 116 miners trapped underground in a landslide at Knockshinnoch Castle colliery at New Cumnock in Ayrshire, Scotland.^[24]
• 9 September
  • Post-War soap rationing ends.^[17]
  • The first miners are rescued from Knockshinnoch Castle colliery.^[24]
• 11 September — The rescue operation from Knockshinnoch Castle colliery is completed, with all 116 miners saved.^[24]
• 1 October — Full-time military service by conscripted National Servicemen is extended to two years.
• 25 October — The Festival Ballet, later to become the English National Ballet, founded by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, makes its debut performance.^[25][26]
• 26 October — The rebuilt House of Commons, following its destruction by bombing in World War II, is used for the first time.^[15]
• October — Alan Turing's paper Computing machinery and intelligence, proposing the Turing test, is published in Mind.^[25]
• October — A group of Conservative politicians publishes the tract One Nation: a Tory approach to social policy.^[1]
• November — Attempt to hold the Second World Peace Congress at Sheffield City Hall is thwarted by the British authorities preventing many international delegates from entering the country^[1] and it is relocated to Warsaw.^[27]
• 10 December
  • Bertrand Russell wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".^[28]
  • Cecil Frank Powell wins the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".^[29]
• 25 December — The Stone of Scone, the traditional coronation stone of Scottish monarchs, English monarchs and more recently British monarchs, is stolen from London's Westminster Abbey by a group of four Scottish students.^[15] It turns up in Scotland on 11 April 1951.
• 28 December — An order to designate the Peak District as the first of the National parks of England and Wales is submitted to the Minister of Town and Country Planning for approval.^[30][31]

Undated

• North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board begins work on Sloy-Awe Hydro-Electric Power Scheme.
• Kenwood Chef food mixer introduced.

Publications

• Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel A Murder is Announced.
• Catherine Cookson's first novel Kate Hannigan.^[1]
• William Cooper's novel Scenes from Provincial Life.^[1]
• Marion Crawford's royal biography The Little Princesses: the Story of the Queen's Childhood by her Nanny.^[1]
• Elizabeth David's book Mediterranean Cooking.
• C. S. Forester's novel Mr. Midshipman Hornblower.
• Doris Lessing's novel The Grass is Singing.
• C. S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, first of The Chronicles of Narnia series (16 October).^[32]
• Mervyn Peake's novel Gormenghast, second of the eponymous series.
• Barbara Pym's novel Some Tame Gazelle.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel Helena.

Births

• 1 January — Chris Black, Scottish hammer thrower
• 4 February — Pamela Franklin, actress
• 13 February — Peter Gabriel, musician
• 16 February — Peter Hain, politician
• 19 February — Andy Powell, musician (Wishbone Ash)
• 22 February — Julie Walters, actress
• 27 March — Terry Yorath, footballer and football manager
• 30 March — Robbie Coltrane, actor and comedian
• 3 April — Sally Thomsett, actress
• 22 April — Peter Frampton, musician
• 1 May — Danny McGrain, footballer
• 3 May — Mary Hopkin, singer
• 11 May — Jeremy Paxman, television presenter and author
• 12 May — Jenni Murray, radio presenter
• 17 May — Alan Johnson, politician
• 22 May — Bernie Taupin, songwriter
• 22 May — Mary Tamm, actress
• 1 June — Tom Robinson, singer and musician
• 13 June — Nick Brown, politician
• 14 June — Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
• 30 June — Olly Flynn, race walker
• 14 July — Bruce Oldfield, fashion designer
• 18 July — Richard Branson, entrepreneur
• 19 July — Simon Cadell, actor
• 26 July — Susan George, actress
• 27 July — Simon Jones, actor
• 30 July — Harriet Harman, politician
• 15 August — Anne, Princess Royal
• 14 September — Paul Kossoff, guitarist (Free) (died 1976)
• 21 September — Charles Clarke, politician
• 25 October — Steve Barry, race walker
• 6 December — Helen Liddell, politician
• 28 December — Clifford Cocks, cryptographer

Deaths

• 21 January — George Orwell, author (born 1903)
• 9 March — Timothy Evans hanged by Albert Pierrepoint for the murder of his baby daughter (pardoned in 1960s) (born 1924)
• 19 March — Walter Haworth, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1883)
• 30 March — Joe Yule, Scottish-born comedian (born 1894)
• 6 September — Olaf Stapledon, author and philosopher (born 1886)
• 21 September — Arthur Milne, physicist (born 1896)
• 2 November — George Bernard Shaw, playwright (born 1856)
• 23 November — Percival Mackey, pianist, composer and bandleader (born 1894)
• 28 November — James Corbitt hanged for murder by Albert Pierrepoint (born c. 1913)

References

See also