1969 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Harold Wilson
• Parliament – 44th

  Events

January

• * Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity Barbara Castle published a White Paper In Place of Strife proposing powers of intervention in advance of industrial action. This proved unacceptable to the Trades Union Congress.
• * The Space hopper toy was introduced to Britain.
• 2 January – Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch purchased the best-selling UK Sunday newspaper The News of the World.
• 4 January – Guitarist Jimi Hendrix caused complaints of arrogance from television producers after playing an impromptu version of "Sunshine of your Love" past his allotted timeslot on the BBC One programme Happening for Lulu.
• 5 January – Derry Riots left over one hundred people injured.
• 10 January – Protestors in Northern Ireland defied police orders to abandon a planned march.
• 14 January – Sir Matt Busby, hugely successful manager of Manchester United F.C. for the last twenty-four years, announced his retirement as manager. He would become a director at the end of the season, and hand over first-team duties to current first team trainer and former player Wilf McGuinness.
• 18 January – Pete Best won his defamation lawsuit against the Beatles. He had originally sought $8,000,000 but is awarded considerably less.
• 24 January –
• * Violent protests by students about the installation of steel security gates, closed the London School of Economics, which did not reopen for three weeks.
• * Launch of the Ford Capri, a four-seater sporting coupe designed to compete with the likes of the MG B and which Ford expects to become a top 10 seller in Britain.
• 27 January
• * London School of Economics students occupied the University of London Union building in Malet Street in protest at the closure of the LSE.
• * Reverend Ian Paisley, the hard line Protestant leader in Northern Ireland, was jailed for three months for illegal assembly.
• 30 January – The Beatles performed together for the final time, on the rooftop of Apple Records. The impromptu concert was broken up by the police.

  February

• 18 February – Pop star Lulu, 20, married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees at St James Church, Gerrards Cross.

  March

• March – The first B&Q DIY superstore was set up in Southampton by Richard Block and David Quayle.
• 2 March – The maiden flight of Concorde took place.
• 4 March – The Kray twins were both found guilty of murder: Ronnie of murdering George Cornell; Reggie of murdering Jack "the Hat" McVitie. On 5 March, they are sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum of thirty years by Mr Justice Melford Stevenson.
• 7 March – The London Underground Victoria line was opened by The Queen.
• 12 March – Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman at Marylebone register office in London.
• 17 March – The Longhope life-boat from Orkney was lost; all eight crew members on board perished.
• 19 March
• * British paratroopers and Marines landed on the island of Anguilla.
• * The 385 metre tall Emley Moor transmitting station television mast in West Yorkshire collapsed because of icing.
• 25 March – John Lennon and Yoko Ono married in Gibraltar.
• 27 March – First ordination of a woman in the Church of Scotland, Catherine McConnachie by the Presbytery of Aberdeen.
• 29 March – Lulu, representing the UK with the song "Boom Bang-a-Bang", shared first place in the Eurovision Song Contest in a four-way tie with France, the Netherlands and the host country, Spain.

  April

• April – The Raleigh Chopper children's wheelie bike was launched.
• 1 April – The Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.1 V/STOL "Jump Jet" fighter entered service with the RAF.
• 9 April – Sikh busmen in Wolverhampton win the right to wear their turbans whilst on duty.
• 17 April
• *Representation of the People Act lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 with effect from February 1970. It also permitted candidates to have a party label included on the ballot paper, and removed the right of convicted prisoners to vote in Parliamentary elections.
• * Bernadette Devlin won the Mid Ulster by-election and became the youngest ever female MP at 21 years old.
• 20 April – British troops arrived in Northern Ireland to reinforce the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• 22 April – Robin Knox-Johnston became the first person to make a solo non-stop global circumnavigation under sail.
• 24 April
• * British Leyland Motor Corporation launched Britain's first production hatchback car, the Austin Maxi, designed to compete with family saloons like the Ford Cortina and following a new European design concept started in 1965 by French carmaker Renault's R16 range.
• * The final episode of the long-running BBC Radio serial drama Mrs Dale's Diary was broadcast.
• 26 April – Manchester City F.C. won the FA Cup with a 1-0 win over Leicester City in the Wembley final.
• 28 April – Leeds United won the Football League First Division title for the first time in their history.

  May

• 2 May – The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 departed from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York.
• 23 May – The Who released the concept album Tommy.
• 29 May – Carry On Camping was released, becoming the year's most popular film at the UK box office.

  June

• 14 June – The black horse Burmese, ridden by the Queen, made her first appearance at Trooping the Colour; she would continue in this role until 1986.
• 21 June –
• * The showing of television documentary The Royal Family, attracted more than 30,600,000 viewers; which was more than half of the entire population of the United Kingdom at the time, which is an all-time British record for a non-current event programme.
• * Patrick Troughton made his final appearance as the Second Doctor in Doctor Who in the final episode of The War Games which was also the last episode to be recorded in black and white.
• 24 June – After a referendum in Rhodesia voted in favour of becoming a Republic, the Governor of Southern Rhodesia Sir Humphrey Gibbs left Government House, severing the last diplomatic relationship with the United Kingdom.
• 30 June – Two members of the Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru were killed whilst placing a bomb outside government offices in Abergele in an attempt to disrupt the following day's events.

  July

• 1 July
• *Charles, Prince of Wales, was invested with his title at Caernarfon.
• *John Lennon, Yoko Ono and their children were hospitalised at Golspie in Scotland following a car accident while on holiday.
• 3 July – Swansea was granted city status.
• 5 July – The Rolling Stones performed at the free festival The Stones in the Park outdoors in Hyde Park, London, in front of at least a quarter of a million fans, two days after the death of founder Brian Jones.
• 10 July – Donald Crowhurst's sailing trimaran Teignmouth Electron was found drifting and unoccupied in mid-Atlantic; it was presumed that Crowhurst committed suicide at sea earlier in the month having falsified his progress in the solo Sunday Times Golden Globe Race.
• 12 July – Golfer Tony Jacklin won The Open Championship.
• 20–21 July – BBC television continues broadcasting overnight to provide coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing; Neil Armstrongs first steps on the surface take place at 03:56 British Summer Time on 21 July. Television coverage to Europe is transmitted via Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in Cornwall.
• 23 July – BBC Two television first aired the Pot Black snooker tournament.
• 24 July – British lecturer Gerald Brooke was freed from a Soviet prison in exchange for the spies Morris and Lona Cohen.

  August

• 1 August – the pre-decimal halfpenny ceased to be legal tender.
• 12 August – Rioting broke out in Derry, Northern Ireland in the Battle of the Bogside, the first major confrontation of The Troubles.
• 13–17 August – Sectarian rioting in Northern Ireland.
• 13 August – The Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, Jack Lynch, made a speech on Teilifís Éireann saying that his government "can no longer stand by" and requesting a United Nations peacekeeping force for Northern Ireland.
• 14 August – British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland to restore law and order.
• 30-31 August – The second Isle of Wight Festival attracted 150,000 pop music fans, with the appearance of Bob Dylan a major draw.

  September

• 11 September – The housing charity Shelter released a report claiming that there are up to 3,000,000 people in need of rehousing due to poor living conditions.
• 16 September – Iconic 1960s fashion store Biba reopened on Kensington High Street.
• 21 September – Police evicted squatters of the London Street Commune from 144 Piccadilly.
• 26 September – The Beatles released what would be their final album recorded together.
• 28 September – The National Trust acquired ownership of the island of Lundy.

  October

• 1 October – The Post Office became a statutory corporation.
• 5 October – The first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus was broadcast on the BBC.
• 10 October – The Government accepted the recommendations of Lord Hunt's report on policing in Northern Ireland including the abolition of the Ulster Special Constabulary.
• 14 October
• * The new seven-sided 50p coin was introduced as replacement for the 10-shilling note, to a mixed reception from the British public, with many people complaining that it was easily confused with the 10p coin.
• * With a general election due within the next eighteen months, opinion polls showed that the Conservatives were comfortably ahead of Labour, by up to 24 points.
• 16 October – Peter Nichols' black comedy The National Health was premiered by the National Theatre at the Old Vic in London.

  November

• November – Ken Loach's film Kes was released at the London Film Festival.
• 15 November – Regular colour television broadcasts began on BBC One and ITV.
• 16 November – BBC One first aired the children's television series Clangers, made by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin's Smallfilms in stop motion animation.
• 17 November – The Sun newspaper was relaunched as a tabloid under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch.
• 25 November – John Lennon returned his MBE to protest against the British Government's involvement in Biafra and support of the U.S. war in Vietnam.

  December

• 10 December – Derek Harold Richard Barton won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Odd Hassel "for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry".
• 15 December – Martins Bank was purchased by Barclays.
• 17 December – Constitutional law case of Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission decided in the House of Lords established in English administrative law the "collateral fact doctrine", that any error of law made by a public body will make its decision a nullity and that a statutory exclusion clause does not deprive the courts from their jurisdiction in judicial review unless it expressly states this.
• 18 December
• * The abolition of the death penalty for murder was made permanent by Parliament.
• * The sixth James Bond film – On Her Majesty's Secret Service – was released in UK cinemas. Bond is now played by Australian actor George Lazenby, after Sean Connery quit the role. Starring alongside him is Yorkshire-born actress Diana Rigg.
• 26 December – A fire at the Rose and Crown Hotel, Saffron Walden, killed eleven.

  Undated

• The Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins introduced Mortgage Interest Relief at Source to encourage home ownership; it allowed borrowers tax relief for interest payments on their mortgage.
• Golden eagles were found to be nesting in England for the first time in modern history, at Haweswater in the Lake District.
• Completion of the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham, the largest postwar housing estate in Britain. The new estate predominantly consists of council housing, including 34 tower blocks - the largest number on any single British housing estate. The first residents moved onto Castle Vale in 1964 when the first houses and flats were completed.

  Publications

• Kingsley Amis's novel The Green Man.
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novel Hallowe'en Party.
• John Fowles' novel The French Lieutenant's Woman.
• Antonia Fraser's biography Mary Queen of Scots.
• George MacDonald Fraser's novel Flashman.
• P. H. Newby's novel Something to Answer For.
• The anthology edited by Michael Horovitz.

  Births

January – March

• 1 January - Nicholas Gleaves, actor and playwright
• 4 January – Mary Macleod, lawyer and politician
• 12 January – David Mitchell, author
• 13 January – Stephen Hendry, Scottish snooker player
• 19 February – Stewart Faulkner, English long jumper
• 21 February – James Dean Bradfield, Welsh musician
• 1 March – Dafydd Ieuan, Welsh drummer
• March – Jez Butterworth, dramatist and screenwriter

  April – June

• 4 April – Karren Brady, English sporting business executive
• 9 April – Tracie Andrews, English criminal convicted of murdering her fiancé
• 26 April – Kate Hardie, actress, director, and screenwriter
• 27 April – Tess Daly, English television presenter
• 6 May – Jim Magilton, Northern Irish footballer
• June – Emma Walmsley, English business executive
• 2 June
• * Cy Chadwick, English actor and producer
• * Jamie Thraves, English film writer, director and music video director
• 21 May – Martin Harris, English backstroke swimmer
• 22 June - Simon Taylor, English graphic artist

  July – September

• 26 July – Tanni Grey-Thompson, British Paralympian
• 7 August – Domino Harvey, British bounty hunter
• 29 August – Joe Swail, Northern Irish snooker player
• 20 September – Jo Jennings, English high jumper
• 22 September – Sue Perkins, English comedy performer
• 25 September – Catherine Zeta-Jones, Welsh actress
• 26 September – Paul Warhurst, English football player

  October – December

• 9 October
• * PJ Harvey, English rock musician
• * Steve McQueen, black British film director
• 15 October – Dominic West, English actor
• 13 November – Gerard Butler, Scottish actor
• 19 November – Michael Lee, English rock drummer
• 5 December – Sajid Javid, English Conservative politician, Home Secretary
• 18 December – Irvin Duguid, Scottish keyboard player
• 19 December – Richard Hammond, English TV presenter
• 24 December – Ed Miliband, English politician, former leader of the Labour Party
• 30 December – Jay Kay, English singer

  Deaths

January – March

• 4 January – Violet and Daisy Hilton, English conjoined twin actresses
• 8 January – Albert Hill, British athlete
• 11 January – Richmal Crompton, writer
• 2 February – Boris Karloff, English actor
• 14 February – Kenneth Horne, comedian
• 11 March – John Wyndham, British author
• 25 March – Billy Cotton, British entertainer and bandleader

  April – June

• 4 May – Sir Osbert Sitwell, English writer
• 23 May – Sir Owen Williams, civil engineer
• 22 June – Judy Garland, American film actress and singer

  July – September

• 3 July – Brian Jones, British musician
• 9 August – Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 27 August – Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist

  October – December

• 18 November – Ted Heath, bandleader
• 5 December – Princess Alice of Battenberg, wife of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and mother of The Duke of Edinburgh