my-server
← Wiki

1987 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1987 in the United Kingdom.

The major political event of this year is the re-election of Margaret Thatcher in June's general election, making her the longest continuously serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th century. The year is also marked by six disasters: the 1987 United Kingdom and Ireland cold wave, the sinking of the ferry , the Hungerford massacre, the "Great Storm", the Remembrance Day bombing and the King's Cross fire.

Incumbents

Events

January

  • January – 1987 United Kingdom and Ireland cold wave: Most of Britain is affected by heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures.
  • 1 January
  • Personal equity plans permitting tax-free investments in shares are introduced.
  • Release of cult black comedy film Withnail and I.
  • 2 January – Golliwogs in Enid Blyton books are replaced by the publisher with gnomes following complaints that golliwogs are offensive to Black people.
  • 4 January – Economists predict that unemployment will fall below the 3,000,000 mark by the end of this year.
  • 5 January – Harold Macmillan, Lord Stockton, former Prime Minister, is buried in the village of Horsted Keynes, having died on 29 December at the age of 92.
  • 7 January – Telford, the new town created in Shropshire some 20 years ago, is reported to have the highest unemployment rate in the West Midlands region, eclipsing the unemployment levels seen in the city of Birmingham and nearby towns including Wolverhampton, Brierley Hill, Wednesbury and Bilston, which have lost a large percentage of traditional heavy industry since the late-1970s, although Brierley Hill's unemployment crisis is beginning to ease with the ongoing development of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, which already includes two retail parks and a large shopping mall and is set to expand even further by the end of the decade.
  • 13 January – Prince Edward leaves the Royal Marines just three months after joining.
  • 14 January – 1987 United Kingdom and Ireland cold wave: Heavy snow falls across Britain leaving houses, towns, roads, railways and motor vehicles stranded and blocked.
  • 15 January – Unemployment is reported to have fallen in December 1986 for the fifth month in succession.
  • 20 January
  • Terry Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lebanon, disappears in Beirut whilst negotiating for the release of hostages; he will himself remain a hostage until 1991.
  • Police arrest 26 suspected football hooligans across Britain after a mass operation.
  • 30 January – The flotation of British Airways on the stock market begins.

February

March

April

  • 1 April – MPs vote against the restoration of the death penalty by 342–230.
  • 3 April – The jewellery of the late Duchess of Windsor is sold at auction for £31,000,000 six times the expected value.
  • 5 April – Arsenal win the Football League Cup for the first time in their history with a 2–1 win over Liverpool, earning them their first major trophy since 1979. Charlie Nicholas scores both of Arsenal's goals.
  • 9 April – The Broderip Ward, the first hospital ward dedicated to the treatment of people with HIV/AIDS in the United Kingdom is opened by Diana, Princess of Wales at the Middlesex Hospital in London.
  • 16 April – Conservative MP Harvey Proctor appears in court charged with gross indecency.
  • 22 April – Former Prime Minister James Callaghan is appointed to the Order of the Garter. He will be retiring from Parliament at this year's general election.
  • 29 April – Chancellor Nigel Lawson promises that the UK will soon have an income tax rate of 25p in the pound.
  • 30 April – The House of Lords acting in a judicial capacity approves the sterilisation of a "mentally subnormal" 17-year-old female.

May

  • 4 May – Everton win the Football League First Division title for the ninth time in their history.
  • 8 May – Loughgall ambush: Soldiers of the SAS kill eight members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army at Loughgall, County Antrim.
  • 10 May – The church of St Mary-at-Hill in the City of London is damaged in a fire.
  • 11 May
  • Margaret Thatcher calls a general election for Thursday, 11 June; with most of the opinion polls pointing towards her securing a third successive election victory for the Conservatives, with the Labour opposition expected to increase its share of votes and seat tally at its first general election under the leadership of Neil Kinnock.
  • British Rail renames Second class travel as Standard class.
  • 14 May – Unemployment has fallen to 3,107,128.
  • 15 May – Family Law Reform Act removes remaining legal distinctions between children born to married and unmarried parents.
  • 16 May – Coventry City F.C. win the FA Cup for the first time in their history with a 3–2 win in the final over Tottenham Hotspur, who have won all of their previous seven FA Cup finals.
  • 25 May – Aldershot F.C. become the first team to win promotion through the new Football League playoffs, winning promotion from the Fourth Division with a 3–0 aggregate win over Wolverhampton Wanderers (who have a total of eight major trophies to their name, the most recent seven years ago). The Hampshire club have already condemned another side, Bolton Wanderers (four times FA Cup winners) to relegation to the Fourth Division for the first time in their history.

June

  • 3 June – The last MORI poll before the general election shows the Conservatives 11 points ahead of Labour with 43% of the vote, while the Liberal/SDP Alliance's support stands at 24% and their hopes of building on their result at the last general election look exceedingly slim.
  • 7 June – Chessington Zoo is renamed Chessington World of Adventures and made into a theme park by owner Madame Tussaud's.
  • 11 June – The 1987 general election sees Margaret Thatcher secure her third term in office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Her parliamentary majority is reduced to 102 compared to the 144-seat majority gained at the election four years earlier, but will still not be exceeded by the Conservative Party as of 2019. High-profile casualties of the election include: the former SDP leader Roy Jenkins (once a Labour home secretary) and the Ulster Unionist Party's 75-year-old Enoch Powell (a former Conservative MP). Four ethnic minority candidates are successful: Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Keith Vaz. Among the MPs retiring from parliament is 75-year-old James Callaghan, the former prime minister.
  • 13 June
  • The Queen attends Trooping the Colour for the first time in a carriage, and the first time not in uniform, which she will do for the remainder of her reign.
  • The Queen grants the title of Princess Royal to her daughter Anne, 22 years after the death of the previous holder.
  • 18 June – Unemployment has fallen below the 3,000,000 mark for the first time since 1981, after the biggest monthly fall in unemployment since records began in 1948; seeing more than 100,000 of the unemployed find work in May.
  • 19 June – Howard Kendall, manager of Football League champions Everton, resigns to take over of Athletic Club Bilbao in Spain. His successor at Everton is the club's assistant manager Colin Harvey.
  • 22 June – A riot takes place in Chapeltown, Leeds.
  • 25 June – A MORI poll shows support for the Conservative Party stands at almost 50% – the highest during Margaret Thatcher's time as leader.
  • 27 June – 25 years after the first James Bond film was released, the fifteenth, The Living Daylights, premieres in London, with the spy now being played by Timothy Dalton.
  • 30 June – Footballer Peter Beardsley, the 26-year-old England striker, becomes the most expensive player transferred between British clubs when he completes a £1,900,000 move from Newcastle United to Liverpool.

July

August

September

October

  • October – Construction work begins on the extension to the M40 motorway between Oxford and Birmingham. It is hoped that the motorway, providing an alternative route to the M6 and M1 from the Midlands to London as well as improving road links with the Midlands and the South Coast ports, will be fully operational by 1990.
  • 1 October
  • Black History Month first celebrated in the UK.
  • Territorial Sea Act (passed 15 May) comes into effect, extending UK territorial waters to 12 nautical miles.
  • Swedish home product retailer IKEA opens its first British store at Warrington in Cheshire.
  • 9 October – Margaret Thatcher tells the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool that she wants to continue as prime minister until 1994 and the age of 69, which would make her Britain's oldest prime minister since Harold Macmillan in 1963. She is already three months away from becoming Britain's longest-serving prime minister this century, exceeding the previous record set by H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party more than 70 years ago, but will be forced by her party to resign in 1990.
  • 11 October – £1,000,000 Operation Deepscan in Loch Ness fails to locate the legendary Loch Ness Monster.
  • 15–16 October – Great storm: Hurricane force winds batter much of south-east England, killing 23 people and causing extensive damage to property. Two days after the end of the storm, some 250,000 homes in the region will still be without electricity.
  • 19 October
  • Black Monday: Wall Street crash leads to £50,000,000,000 being wiped of the value of shares on the London stock exchange.
  • Glanrhyd Bridge collapse: A train runs off the end of a bridge that has collapsed into the River Towy in Wales due to flooding, killing four people.
  • 23 October – Retired English jockey Lester Piggott is jailed for three years after being convicted of tax evasion.
  • 25 October – Peugeot begins production of its second car, the 405 four-door saloon at the Ryton plant near Coventry. The first customers are set to take delivery of their cars after Christmas. A French-built estate version will be launched next year.

November

  • November – The first acid house raves are reported in the United Kingdom, many of them being in derelict buildings.
  • 1 November – British Rail establishes a world speed record for diesel traction, 148.4 mph (238.9 km/h) with a test InterCity 125 formation between Darlington and York.
  • 2 November – Peter Brooke succeeds Norman Tebbit as Chairman of the Conservative Party.
  • 3 November – It is announced that unemployment in Britain fell quicker during October than in any other European country.
  • 5 November – London City Airport opens.
  • 8 November – Enniskillen bombing: Eleven people are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb at a Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen.
  • 11 November – Customs officers in Southampton seize more than £50,000,000 worth of cocaine – the most expensive haul of the drug ever found in the UK.
  • 12 November – Unemployment has fallen to 2,700,000 (just under 10% of the workforce), the lowest level of unemployment recorded in Britain for over six years.
  • 17 November
  • The Government announces that the Poll tax (community charge) to fund local government will be introduced in England and Wales in April 1990.
  • Fireman Sam, a children's television series about a fireman voiced and narrated by John Alderton, debuts on BBC1.
  • 18 November – King's Cross fire: A fire on an escalator at King's Cross station on the London Underground kills 31 people.
  • 19 November – Conservative support has reached 50% in a MORI poll for the first time.
  • 24 November – The Government announces that eye tests will no longer be provided free of charge by the National Health Service.

December

  • December – The British-built Peugeot 405 wins the European Car of the Year award, the first Peugeot to be given the title for nearly 20 years. British sales begin in the new year, several months after it was launched in France.
  • 9 December – The England cricket team's tour of Pakistan is nearly brought to a premature end when captain Mike Gatting and umpire Shakoor Rana row during a Test Match.
  • 15 December – Channel Tunnel construction is initiated, and it is expected to open in 1993 or early-1994 (in the event, it will be mid to late 1994).
  • 17 December – A year that has seen an excellent performance for the British economy ends with unemployment reported to have fallen below the 2,700,000 mark; having started the year in excess of 3,000,000.
  • 25 December – ITV enjoys a record breaking audience when more than 26,000,000 viewers tune in for the Christmas Day episode of Coronation Street, in which Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander) makes her final appearance on the show after 23 years.
  • 29 December – The Kylie Minogue single "I Should Be So Lucky" is released by PWL. Australian Minogue, 19, of maternal Welsh heritage, is already hugely popular with British audiences for her role in the TV soap Neighbours which debuted on the BBC fourteen months ago.
  • 31 December – 31 British and Belgian people are recognised in the New Year Honours for heroism shown in the rescue operation at the Zeebrugge Disaster earlier in the year.

Undated

  • Inflation remains low for the sixth year running, standing at 4.2% for 1987.
  • Largest ever deficit to date on UK balance of payments.
  • With overall unemployment falling below 3,000,000, youth unemployment is now below the 1,000,000 mark.
  • Overall economy growth for the year reaches 5.5% – the highest since 1963.

Publications

Births

Deaths

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

See also

References