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1990 in the United Kingdom:

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Sport and Music

British and Irish current events

1990 English cricket season

Football England | Scotland

1990 in British music

Events from the year 1990 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister - Margaret Thatcher, Conservative (until 28 November), John Major, Conservative

Events

• January - Vauxhall enters the coupe segment of the car market with the launch of its Cavalier-based Calibra, which is the first coupe built by General Motors in Europe since the demise of the Opel Manta in 1988.
• 1 January - Glasgow begins 1990 as the Culture Capital of Europe.
• 2 January - James Pickles, the controversial judge, sentences 19-year-old Huddersfield supermarket cashier Tracey Scott and her 10-week-old baby to six months in prison after she admitted helping shoplifters. Judge Pickles defends his controversial decision to jail Ms Scott by saying that he needed to let women know that they could not avoid custody just by becoming pregnant.
• 6 January - Scottish actor Ian Charleson, best remembered for playing Eric Liddell in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, dies of an AIDS related illness at the age of 40, barely two months after his last stage appearance with the leading role in Hamlet at the National Theatre.
• 13 January - Some 50,000 people demonstrate on the streets of London support of Britain's ambulance workers, as the ongoing ambulance crew strike has yet to end four months after it began.
• 16 January - Tracey Scott is freed after serving 14 days of her prison sentence.
• 18 January - The first MORI poll of the decade shows that Labour have a 12-point lead over the Tories with 48% of the vote. Liberal support is at its lowest for more than a decade as the Liberal Democrats gain a mere 5% of the vote. [1]
• 19 January - Police in Johannesburg, South Africa break up a demonstration against the cricket match played by rebel English cricketers led by Mike Gatting.[1]
• 25 January - Recent hurricane-force winds are reported to have killed 39 people in England and Wales.[2]
• 29 January - Lord Justice Taylor publishes his report in the Hillsborough disaster, which claimed the lives of 95 Liverpool F.C. supporters on 15 April last year. He recommends that all top division stadiums are all-seater by 1994 and that the rest of the Football League follows suit by 1999, but he rules out Margaret Thatcher's proposed ID card scheme to combat football hooliganism as "unworkable".
• 9 February - Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran renews his fatwa on British author Salman Rushdie, which he imposed last year following controversy over the author's book The Satanic Verses.
• 15 February - The UK and Argentina restore diplomatic links after 8 years. Diplomatic ties were broken off links in response to Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982.
• 20 February - Three people are injured in Leicester city centre by a bomb explosion.
• 26 February - 14 people are killed as storms hit Britain. One of the worst hit areas is Towyn in North Wales, where approximately 2,000 people are evacuated from their homes after huge waves smash a 200-yard hole in the sea wall and cause a major flood.
• 1 March - a new Official Secrets Act comes into force.[3]
• 9 March - Public uproar against the new Poll tax culminates in rioting in Brixton, London, where 37 people are arrested and 10 police officers injured.
• 13 March - The ambulance crew dispute ends after six months when workers agree to a 17.6% pay rise.
• 15 March - Iraq hangs British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying. Daphne Parish, a British nurse, is sentenced to 15 years in prison for being an accomplice to Mr Bazoft. Britain's unemployment is now down to 1,610,000 - the lowest since 1978.
• 31 March - 200,000 protesters in Poll Tax Riots in London.[4]
• 1 April - Strangeways Prison riot in Manchester begins.[5] Finally ends on 25 April.
• 2 April - An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale and centred on the Shropshire town of Bishop's Castle is felt throughout much of England and Wales[6].
• 3 April - The government forces 20 local councils to cut their proposed Poll tax levels.
• 4 April - Dr Raymond Crockett is struck off the medical register for using kidneys from Turkish immigrants who had been paid to donate them.
• 9 April - Four Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers are killed by an IRA bomb in County Down.
• 10 April - With 19 inmates at Strangeways Prison in Manchester still staging a rooftop protest against prison conditions, rioting has broken out at prisons in Cardiff and Bristol.
• 11 April - Customs and Excise officers seize parts of an Iraqi supergun in Middlesbrough.[7]
• 28 April - Liverpool F.C. are champions of the Football League for a record 18 time.
• 29 April -
  • Stephen Hendry, 21, becomes the youngest ever world snooker champion.
  • Nottingham Forest equal Liverpool's record of four Football League Cup wins by defeating Oldham Athletic 1-0 in the final at Wembley Stadium. 21-year-old striker Nigel Jemson scores the only goal of the game.
• May - Rover Group launches a heavily facelifted version of its Metro, which has been the best-selling car of the combine previously known as British Leyland and more recently Austin Rover since its 1980 launch.
• 4 May - The local council elections see Labour win more local council seats than the Tories. Neil Kinnock's hopes of victory in the next general election are further boosted by the fact that Labour have finished ahead of the Tories in most of the last year's opinion polls.
• 7 May - Prince Charles and Princess Diana travel to Budapest for the first postwar British royal visit.
• 8 May - Billy Cartman, a 33-year-old grouter, becomes the sixth Briton to die in the construction of the Channel Tunnel when he is crushed to death by heavy machinery.
• 11 May - Inflation now stands at 9.4% - the highest level for eight years.
• 12 May - The FA Cup final ends in a 3-3 draw between Manchester United and Crystal Palace, an extra time equaliser from United striker Mark Hughes forcing a replay.
• 17 May - Manchester United equal the record total for FA Cup wins by winning the final replay 1-0 against Crystal Palace. Defender Lee Martin scores the only goal of the game.
• 19 May - British agriculture Minister John Gummer feeds a hamburger to his 5-year-old daughter to counter rumours about the spread of Mad cow disease and its transmission to humans. On the same day, unemployment is reported to have risen for the first time in four years, though it is still only just over 1,600,000 compared to the high of more than 3,000,000 that was on record in 1986.
• 24 May - Bobby Robson announces that he will be leaving his job as England national football team manager after this summer's World Cup to take charge of the Dutch club PSV Eindhoven.
• 25 May - The "rump" Social Democratic Party (consisting of members who backed out of the merger with the Liberal Party which formed the Liberal Democrats two years ago) finished behind the Monster Raving Loony Party in the Bootle by-election which was won by Labour.
• 28 May - Swindon Town, managed by the former Tottenham Hotspur and Argentina footballer Ossie Ardiles, win promotion to the Football League First Division for the first time in their history by defeating Sunderland 1-0 in the Second Division playoff final at Wembley Stadium.
• 30 May - France bans British beef and live cattle imports as a precaution against fears of Mad cow disease being spread.
• 1 June - An army recruit is shot dead and two others are wounded by two suspected IRA gunmen in Lichfield, Staffordshire.
• 3 June - The Social Democratic Party is wound up after nine years in existence.
• 7 June -
  • France, Italy and West Germany lift bans on British beef imposed during the BSE outbreak.[8]
  • Swindon Town are found guilty on 36 charges of financial irregularities and their promotion to the First Division is replaced with relegation to the Third Division, with Sunderland being promoted in their place and their place in the Second Division being given to Tranmere Rovers.
• 14 June - The proposed high speed rail link between London and the Channel Tunnel is shelved.
• 17 June - Over 20,000 Swindon Town football fans demonstrate on the streets of Swindon in a bid for promotion to the First Division to be restored.
• 20 June - Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major proposes the "hard ecu", a currency which would ciruclate into parallel with national currencies as an alternative to full monetary union.[9]
• 22 June - Housing Minister Michael Spicer announces a £15million plan to tackle homelessness.
• 2 July - Swindon Town are allowed to remain in the Second Division after a successful appeal to the Football Association.
• 4 July - England's chances of winning the World Cup are ended by a penalty shoot-out defeat at the hand of West Germany in the semi-finals.
• 10 July - FIFA announces that the ban on English clubs following the Heysel disaster five years ago will be lifted; however, not all of the English league's European places will be restored immediately. Aston Villa will be England's sole entrants in the UEFA Cup, while Manchester United will compete in the European Cup Winners' Cup and Liverpool - the team whose rioting at the 1985 European Cup final resulted in the ban - will have to serve at least one extra year.
• 14 July - Trade and Industry Secretary Nicholas Ridley resigns following an interview in The Spectator in which he likened the European Union to Hitler's Germany.[10]
• 15 July - The Football Association names Graham Taylor as the new England manager. Taylor, 46, recently took Aston Villa to second place in the English league, and also reached an FA Cup final with his previous club Watford.
• 16 July -
  • An official report reveals that High Street sales are at their lowest since 1980, sparking further fears of a recession.
  • Nigel Mansell, Britain's most successful racing driver of the last 10 years, announces that he is to retire from Grand Prix races at the end of the 1990 season.
• 17 July - German food superstore chain Aldi opens its first British store in Birmingham and plans to have up to 200 stores across the country by 1993.
• 19 July - Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, frees Daphne Parish from prison for "humanitarian reasons" and she returns to Britain.
• 20 July - An IRA bomb explodes at Stock Exchange Tower, the base of the London Stock Exchange.
• 24 July - A Roman Catholic nun and three police officers are killed by an IRA landmine in County Armagh.
• 30 July - IRA car bomb kills British MP Ian Gow, a staunch unionist.
• 31 July -
  • The England cricket team defeats the India national cricket team in a high-scoring Lord's test match totalling 1,603 runs.[11]
    • Aldershot F.C., members of the Football League Fourth Division, are wound up in the High Court - "hopelessly insolvent" with debts of £495,000.
• 1 August - British Airways Flight 149 is seized by the Iraqi Army at Kuwait International Airport following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
• 5 August - Margaret Thatcher announces her desire for a new Magna Carta to guarantee basic rights for all European citizens.
• 7 August - The winding-up order on Aldershot F.C. is lifted when 19-year-old property developer Spencer Trethewy pledges a £200,000 rescue package for the Hampshire based club.
• 14 August - A survey carried out by the BBC reveals that 20% of taxpayers in England and Wales had not paid their Poll tax (community charge) by 30 June this year. [1]
• 16 August - A MORI poll shows that Labour now has a 15-point lead over the Tories with 50% of the vote, while support to the Liberal Democrats has doubled to 10% over the last seven months. [2]
• 23 August - British hostages in Iraq are paraded on TV.[12]
• 24 August - Irish hostage Brian Keenan is released in Beirut, Lebanon, after being held a hostage there for more than four years.
• 27 August -
  • four found guilty in the Guinness share-trading fraud trial.[13]
  • The BBC begins broadcasting on BBC Radio 5 Live, its first new station for 23 years.
• 29 August - Home Secretary David Waddington announces that the case of the Birmingham Six will be referred to the Court of Appeal.
• September - Ford launches the MK4 Escort and Orion, while Nissan launches the NMUK-built Primera.
• 4 September - A fire causes severe damage to the historic town centre of Totnes in Devon.
• 10 September - Pegasus, a leading British travel operator, goes bankrupt.
• 19 September - The IRA try to assassinate Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Terry at his home near Stafford. Hit by at least nine bullets, the former Governor of Gibraltar survives.
• 22 September - John Banham, a leading British industrial minister, warns that most of Britain is now affected by a recession and that there is worse to come. The latest CBI prediction is also the gloomiest since 1980, the last time Britain was in recession. Fears of a recession have been growing across most of the world since the autumn of last year. However, chancellor John Major denies that Britain is on the verge of a recession. [14]
• 26 September - Margaret Thatcher joins in with the politicians who are denying that the British economy is slumping into recession, despite manufacturers reporting their biggest drop in output since 1982 and a growing number of bankruptcies.
• 2 October - Neil Kinnock cites education and training as key areas needing an improvement in standards when he addresses his party's conference in Blackpool.
• 8 October - Pound Sterling joins the Exchange Rate Mechanism.[15]
• 18 October - Eastbourne by-election won by the Liberal Democrat David Bellotti.
• 19 October - The Liberal Democrats win the "safe" Eastbourne Tory seat in East Sussex.
• 23 October -
  • Treasury officials speak of their belief that a "brief, technical" recession in the British economy is now inevitable.
  • Edward Heath, the former British prime minister, leaves Baghdad on a plane bound for Heathrow Airport with 33 freed hostages. Saddam Hussein has promised to release a further 30 hostages in the near future.
• 27 October - Economists predict that the current economic downturn will be confined to the second half of this year.

November - British Sky Broadcasting founded as a merger between Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting.[16]

• 1 November - Geoffrey Howe, Deputy Prime Minister, resigns over the government's European policy.[17]
• 2 November - Neil Kinnock announces his support for the adoption of a single European currency.
• 12 November - The Football Association docks Arsenal two points and Manchester United one point and fines both clubs £50,000 for a mass player brawl in a Football League match between the two clubs last month at Old Trafford.
• 13 November - Geoffrey Howe makes a dramatic resignation speech in the House of Commons, attacking the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher's hostility towards the EC.
• 14 November -
  • The CBI confirms that the whole of Britain is now in recession, with every region now reporting a fall in output.
  • Chancellor Michael Heseltine announces that he will challenge Margaret Thatcher's leadership.
• 15 November - Despite constant disputes in the Tory government and widespread doubt over Mrs Thatcher's position as prime minister and party leader, as well as the economy sliding into recession, the Tories have cut Labour's lead in the opinion polls to four points as they gain 41% of the vote in the latest MORI poll. [3]
• 19 November - Major job cuts are reported to be on the way at the Rover Group as the recession affects demand for the company's Rover and Land Rover products.
• 20 November - Margaret Thatcher fails to win outright victory in a leadership contest for the Conservative Party.[18]
• 22 November - Margaret Thatcher announces she will resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and therefore as Prime Minister.[19]
• 26 November - Plastic surgeons Michael Masser and Kenneth Patton are murdered in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
• 27 November John Major is elected Leader of the Conservative Party, defeating Douglas Hurd and Michael Heseltine.[20]
• 28 November - John Major appointed Prime Minister by the Queen.[21]
• 1 December - Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the English Channel seabed,[11] establishing the first ground connection between the United Kingdom and the mainland of Europe since the last ice age. The CBI predicts that the recession will last longer than predicted, and that GDP is likely to fall by at least 1% in 1991.
• 6 December - Saddam Hussein announces that all British hostages in Iraq are to be released.
• 8 December - The UK grinds to a halt following heavy snow overnight. Large parts of the country are without power after snowfall brings down power lines, disrupting the electricity supply. Many rural areas are cut off for several days, while the Army is called out to help restore power. There is grim news for the retail industry as a CBI survey reports that retail sales have hit a standstill and High Street employment will fall.
• 11 December -
  • The first British hostages in Iraq released by Saddam Hussein arrive back in the UK.
  • The government makes £42million compensation available to the 1,200 British haemophilliacs infected with the AIDS virus through blood transfusions.
• 13 December -
  • - Russell Bishop is sentenced to life imprisonment (with a recommended minimum of 15 years) for the abduction, indecent assault and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl in Brighton earlier this year. Bishop, 24, was cleared of murdering two other girls in 1987.
    • - Poundland, a supermarket chain selling all items for £1, opens its first store at Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire. [4]
      • - Netto, a Swedish discount food supermarket chain, opens its first store in Britain in Leeds.
• 19 December - Tony Adams, the Arsenal captain and England defender, is sentenced to four months in prison for a drink-driving offence committed in Southend-on-Sea on 6 May this year.
• 20 December -
• British women Karyn Smith (aged 19) and Patricia Cahill (aged 20) receive 25-year prison sentences in Thailand for heroin smuggling. Their lawyers are planning to ask for a Royal pardon.
  • An era ends in the Rhondda, South Wales, when the last coalmine closes after more than 100 years of heavy coalmining in the region. 300 miners have lost their jobs and a further 17 will remain employed in the industry elsewhere.
• 25 December - Storms on Christmas Day leave more than 100,000 British homes without power.
• 26 December - The fatwa (order to kill) against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie is upheld by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, more than one year after it was first issued. Rushdie is still living in hiding.[22]
• 29 December - Leading economists warn that the recession creeping upon Britain will deepen during 1991 and unemployment is likely to increase to well over 2,000,000 from the current total of over 1,700,000.
• 30 December - An opinion poll shows Labour slightly ahead of the Tories for the first time since John Major became prime minister.
• 31 December - 88-year-old authoress Barbara Cartland becomes a Dame in the New Year's Honours.

Undated

• Inflation has increased to a nine-year high of 9.5%. [5]

Publications

• Iain M. Banks' novel Use of Weapons.
• Louis de Bernières' novel The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts.
• A. S. Byatt's novel Possession: A Romance.
• Hanif Kureishi's novel The Buddha of Suburbia.
• Ian McEwan's novel The Innocent.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels Eric and Moving Pictures and The Bromeliad novels Diggers and Wings.
• Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's novel Good Omens.

Births

• 23 March - Princess Eugenie of York, daughter of The Duke and Duchess of York
• 15 April - Emma Watson, actress
• 16 May - Thomas Sangster, actor
• 28 May - Jake Milroy, footballer

Deaths

• 7 January - Robert McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of Moffat, construction magnate (born 1907)
• 8 January - Terry-Thomas, actor (born 1911)
• 14 January - Gordon Jackson, actor (born 1923)
• 2 February - Kathleen Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn, the Mistress of the Robes to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (born 1905)
• 20 March - Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (born 1910)
• 8 May - Tomás Cardinal Ó Fiaich, clergyman (born 1923)
• 30 July - Ian Gow, MP for Eastbourne (born 1937)
• 6 September - Len Hutton, cricketer (born 1916)
• 7 September - A.J.P. Taylor, historian (born 1906)
• 5 October - Peter Taylor, football manager (born 1928)
• 5 November - Erich Heller, essayist (born 1911)
• 7 November - Lawrence Durrell, writer (born 1912)
• 14 November - Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist, author and media personality (born 1903)
• 23 November - Roald Dahl, author (born 1916)
• 24 November - Dodie Smith, novelist and playwright (born 1896)
• date unknown - Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, 9th Duke of Portland, diplomat (born 1897)

References

See also