Information about 2003 In The United Kingdom

2003 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005

News by month

Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun Jul - Aug - Sep - Oct - Nov - Dec

Sport and Music

British and Irish current events

2003 English cricket season

Football England | Scotland

2003 in British music

Incumbents

• Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister - Tony Blair, Labour Party

Events

January

• January 25 - Central Line underground train crashes into the tunnel wall at Chancery Lane tube station in London, injuring 34 people.
• January 29 - Sally Clark, a 38-year-old former solicitor from Cheshire, is released from prison after the Court of Appeal clears her of murdering her two sons, who are believed to have died of Cot Death.

February

• February 1 - In Northern Ireland, the Protestant Ulster Defence Association Belfast leader John Gregg is killed by a loyalist faction.

March

• March 12 - Iraq disarmament crisis: British prime minister Tony Blair proposes an amendment to the possible 18th U.N. resolution, which would call for Iraq to meet certain benchmarks to prove that it was disarming. The amendment is immediately rejected by France, who promises to veto any new resolution.
• March 20 - 2003 Iraq war: Land troops from United Kingdom join troops from the United States, Australia and Poland in the invasion of Iraq.
• March 22 - Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from Royal Navy submarines take part in a massive air and missile strike on military targets in Baghdad.

April

• April 6- British forces capture the city of Basra during the Iraq war.

May

• May 1
• May 3 - The BBC announces that the hugely popular character Den Watts will return to its soap opera EastEnders later this year, 14 years after he was supposedly killed off.
• Scottish parliamentary election, 2003- the Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition led by Jack McConnell win a majority of the seats and remain in power. The Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Socialist Party significantly increase their representation.
• Welsh Assembly election, 2003- the Labour Party remain in power.

June

• June 10 - Soham Murders suspect Ian Huntley returns to Woodhill Prison after being treated for the effects of an overdose yesterday.
• June 15 - The News of the World publishes a newspaper article in which Ian Huntley is photographed in his cell at Woodhill Prison. An undercover reporter had got a job in the prison and was being employed as Huntley's guard.

July

• July 18 - Dr David Kelly, a British government weapons expert, is found dead near his home in Oxfordshire - police suspect that he committed suicide.

August

• August 10 - The highest-ever temperature in Britain (38.1C) is recorded in Gravesend, Kent. The summer of 2003 has so far been Britain's hottest summer for 13 years.

September

• September 4 - The Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham, is officially opened by Sir Albert Bore.
• September 18 - Brent East by-election: Sarah Teather of the Liberal Democrats becomes MP for Brent East after 29 years of Labour control.

October

• October 24 - Supersonic aircraft Concorde is taken out of service after 27 years.
• October 29 - Iain Duncan-Smith resigns after just over two years as leader of the Conservative Party.

November

• November 3 - Channel 4's soap opera Brookside finishes after 21 years on air.
• November 18 - U.S. President George W. Bush makes a state visit to London in the midst of massive protests.
• November 20 - Several bombs explode in Istanbul, Turkey at several British targets. The Turkish head office of HSBC and the British consulate are destroyed, and the British Consulate-General, Roger Short is killed.
• November 22 - England wins the Rugby World Cup defeating Australia 20-17 after extra time.
• November 24 - The High Court in Glasgow imposes a minimum sentence of 27 years for Al Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He is currently four years into a life sentence, but the trial judge had originally recommended a minimum of just 20 years, which could have seen him out of prison as early as 2019. But the new sentence means that Al Megrahi is set to remain behind bars until at least 2026.

December

• December 10 - The Court of Appeal overturns two murder convictions against 40-year-old Wiltshire woman Angela Cannings, who was wrongly convicted of murdering her two baby sons in April last year. Mrs Cannings, who has a surviving daughter, always maintained that her sons were both Cot Death victims.
• December 16 - The Government announces plans to build a new runway at Stansted Airport in Essex and a short-haul runway at Heathrow Airport sparking anger from environmental groups.
• December 17 - Ian Huntley is found guilty of the Soham Murders and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey. A High Court judge will later decide on the minimum number of the years that he will have to serve before being considered for parole. His ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr is found guilty of perverting the course of justice and receives a jail term of three-and-a-half years, but she will be freed on licence (under a new identity to protect her from reprisal attacks) in May 2004 as she has already served 16 months on remand.
• December 26 - A policeman dies and two others are injured after being shot by a man they were questioning about a suspicious BMW car.
• December 31 - David Bieber, a 37-year-old former American marine, is arrested on suspicion of the Boxing Day police shootings in Leeds.

Unknown dates

• Clive Granger wins the Nobel Prize in Economics jointly with Robert F. Engle "for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)" ^[1]
• Anthony J. Leggett wins the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov and Vitaly Ginzburg "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids". ^[2]
• Peter Mansfield wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Paul Lauterbur "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging". ^[3]

Births

• November 8 - Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of Earl and Countess of Wessex

Deaths

• 5 January - Roy Jenkins, politician (born 1920)
• 8 January - Ron Goodwin, composer (born 1925)
• 26 January - Hugh Trevor-Roper, historian (b. 1914)
• 26 January - George Younger, 4th Viscount Younger of Leckie, politician (b. 1931)
• 14 February - Dolly the Sheep, cloned sheep (b. 1996)
• 27 February - John Lanchbery, composer (b. 1923)
• 11 April - Cecil Howard Green, geophysicist and businessman (b. 1900)
• 14 May - Wendy Hiller, actress (b. 1912)
• 10 June - Bernard Williams, philosopher (b. 1929)
• 1 July - George Roper, comedian (b. 1934)
• 10 July - Winston Graham, writer (b. 1908)
• 10 July - Hartley Shawcross, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials (b. 1902)
• 25 July - John Schlesinger, film director (b. 1926)
• 27 July - Bob Hope, comedian (b. 1902)
• 1 September - Terry Frost, artist (b. 1915)
• 26 September - Robert Palmer, singer (b. 1949)
• 5 October - Denis Quilley, actor (b. 1927)
• 4 November - Richard Wollheim, philosopher (b. 1923)
• 2 December - Alan Davidson (b. 1924)
• 27 December - Alan Bates, actor (b. 1934)
• 29 December - Dinsdale Landen, actor (cancer) (b. 1932)
• 29 December - Bob Monkhouse, comedian and game show host (b. 1928)

References