2001 in the United Kingdom

UK-related events during the year of 2001

2001 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1999 | 2000 | 2001 (2001) | 2002 | 2003

Countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Popular culture

2001 British Grand Prix
2001 English cricket season
Football: England | Scotland | Wales
2001 in British television
2001 in British music
2001 in British radio
UK in the Eurovision Song Contest 2001

Events from the year 2001 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Monarch – Elizabeth II
Prime Minister – Tony Blair (Labour)

Events

January

5 January – A report by the Department of Health suggests that Dr Harold Shipman, convicted of 15 murders a year ago, may have killed more than 300 patients since the 1970s.
8 January
- The High Court rules that the identities and whereabouts of the two killers of James Bulger are to be kept secret for the rest of their lives. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both now aged 18, are expected to be released from custody later this year.^[1]
- Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 comes into effect, reducing the age of consent for male homosexual sexual acts to that for heterosexual and lesbian acts, sixteen (seventeen in Northern Ireland).
9 January – Sven-Göran Eriksson begins his job as manager of the England football team six months ahead of schedule, having resigned from his previous job as Lazio manager. He had signed a five-year contract with The Football Association on 30 October 2000 to succeed Kevin Keegan.
12 January – Marie Therese Kouao and Carl Manning are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Kouao's niece Victoria Climbié, who died in 2000 after suffering horrific abuse and neglect at the hands of the couple in their London home. Victoria (aged eight) had been living with the pair since her parents sent her to England to receive a good education.^[2]
24 January – Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson resigns from the cabinet for the second time.^[3]
25 January – After briefly slipping behind the Conservatives in an opinion poll four months ago, Labour are looking all set for victory in the forthcoming general election as they score 49% in the latest MORI poll and open up a 20-point lead over their rivals.^[4]
31 January – The Scottish Court in the Netherlands convicts a Libyan and acquits another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed in Lockerbie in 1988. Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah (aged 44) is cleared, but Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 20 years.^[5]

February

19 February – Foot and mouth crisis begins.^[6]
21 February – A bomb disguised as a hand-held torch explodes outside a Territorial Army barracks in Shepherd's Bush, seriously injuring a 14-year-old cadet who picked it up.^[7]
25 February – Liverpool beat Birmingham City on penalties after a 1–1 draw in the Football League Cup final – the first cup final to be played at Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, since Wembley closed for redevelopment.
28 February – A rail crash near Selby kills 10 people.^[8]

March

4 March – A car bomb explodes outside the BBC's main news centre at White City, west London, seriously injuring a London Underground worker. The Real IRA are suspected of being behind the attack.^[9]
8 March – The wreckage of Donald Campbell's speedboat Bluebird K7 is raised from the bottom of Coniston Water in Cumbria, 34 years after Campbell was killed in an attempt to break the world water speed record.
15 March – Donald Campbell's body is recovered from Lake Coniston, 34 years after he died in an attempt to break the land water speed record.
17 March – Eden Project opens to the public near St Austell, Cornwall; conceived by Tim Smit with design by Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners.
18 March – Claire Marsh (aged 18) becomes the youngest woman in Britain to be convicted of rape after pinning down a woman who was raped by a pair of teenagers in west London. She is sentenced to seven years in prison, while her accomplices (aged 15 and 18) are jailed for five years.^[10]

April

5 April – Perry Wacker, a Dutch lorry driver, is jailed for 14 years for the manslaughter of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants who were found suffocated in his lorry at Dover ferry port in June last year.^[11]
15 April – Manchester United win the FA Premier League title for the third season in succession, and the seventh time in nine seasons.^[12]
23 April
- Jane Andrews, a former personal assistant to Sarah, Duchess of York, goes on trial accused of murdering her fiancé Thomas Cressman.
- Manchester United pay a British record fee of £19million for Ruud van Nistelrooy, the 24-year-old PSV Eindhoven and Netherlands national football team striker who had been due to join the club last year until the transfer was put on hold by injury.^[13]
29 April – Census of population in the United Kingdom.

May

1 May – An anti-capitalist demonstration in London, part of worldwide protests, turns violent.^[14]
4 May – The government relaxes its sanctions designed to tackle the foot and mouth crisis after more than two months.^[15]
11 May – House of Commons (Removal of Clergy Disqualification) Act 2001 removes disqualifications for clergy in standing for election as members of parliament and other elected bodies.
12 May – Liverpool win the FA Cup Final when two Michael Owen goals in the final minutes of the game give them a 2–1 win over Arsenal in the final at the Millennium Stadium.^[16]
13 May – The family of Mahmood Mattan, hanged in 1952 following his wrongful conviction for the murder of Lily Volpert, are awarded £1.4m in compensation by the Home Office, the first time the family of someone wrongfully hanged in the UK have received compensation.^[17]
15 May – Medication prices fall as a result of a court ruling which puts an end to the drug industry's price-fixing policies.^[18]
16 May
- Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott punches a protester who threw an egg at him in Rhyl.^[19]
- Jane Andrews is sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of murdering Thomas Cressman.^[20]
- Liverpool win the UEFA Cup – their first European trophy for 17 years – with a 5–4 win over Spanish side Deportivo Alavés.^[21]
23 May – The first C-17 Globemaster III to serve with the Royal Air Force arrives in the UK at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire^[22]

June

1 June – Official opening of Cardiff Bay Barrage.^[23]
7 June – General Election: Labour Party attains a second successive landslide election victory.^[14] Among the new entrants to parliament is 34-year-old future Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who retains the Witney seat in Oxfordshire for the Conservative Party.^[24] Amongst the retiring members is Edward Heath, the former Conservative Prime Minister, who at the age of eighty-four, was the oldest member of the last parliament and also its longest-serving continuous member having served since the 1950 election.^[25] This is the first election to have been held under the regulation of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Voter turnout at 59.4% is the lowest since the introduction of universal suffrage.^[26]
8 June – William Hague announces his resignation as Conservative Party leader after four years.
17 June – Cardinal Winning, head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland, dies of a heart attack aged seventy-six in Glasgow.^[27]
22 June – Home Secretary David Blunkett announces that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, convicted at the age of eleven of murdering toddler James Bulger on Merseyside, are to be released on life licence later this year after the Parole Board recommended their release after eight years in custody.^[28]
25 June – A race riot breaks out in Burnley, with more than 200 White and Asian youths being involved in brawling, vandalism and arson.^[29]
29 June – The government announces plans to build a £3,000,000 fountain in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales at Hyde Park, London.^[30]

July

July – MG Rover launches a new range of MG-badged performance variants of its Rover family cars.
2 July – Barry George is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the television presenter Jill Dando, who was killed in Fulham, London, on 26 April 1999.^[31] George is acquitted at a retrial in 2008.
7 July – Race riots in Bradford, West Yorkshire.^[32] The riots begin after National Front members reportedly stab an Asian man outside a pub.^[33]
12 July – The British transfer record is broken for the third time in eight months when Manchester United pay Italian club Lazio £28.1million for Argentine midfielder Juan Sebastián Verón.^[34]
16 July – The Labour government suffers its first parliamentary defeat over the sacking of Gwyneth Dunwoody and Donald Anderson as chairs of select committees on transport and foreign affairs.^[35]
18 July – Philip John Smith is sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to the murders of three women in Birmingham in November last year.^[36]
19 July – Politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer is sentenced to four years in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice.^[2]
20 July – Rioting breaks out in Brixton, London, following the fatal shooting of Derek Bennett, a 29-year-old black man, by armed police in the area. 27 people are arrested and three police officers are injured.^[37]
29 July – A victim support group condemns a reported £11,000 payout by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority to the parents of murdered Sarah Payne as "derisory".

August

3 August – A car bomb explodes in Uxbridge Road, near Ealing Broadway railway station, injuring seven people.^[38]
4 August – Oxford United move into their new 12,500-seat Kassam Stadium near the city's Blackbird Leys estate. Work on the stadium had started in 1996 but halted the following year due to the club's financial problems. The stadium will initially have three stands but a fourth stand could be built in the future to take the capacity to 15,000.^[39]
7 August – The government takes an unprecedented step with the £27million nationalisation of a private hospital near Harley Street in London.^[40]
10 August – Former Conservative Party MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine are arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.^[41]
11 August – Southampton F.C. move into their new 32,000-seat St Mary's Stadium.^[42]
16 August – Former royal butler Paul Burrell charged with the theft of items belonging to the late Diana, Princess of Wales;^[43] the prosecution subsequently collapses.
28 August – Police officer Karl Bluestone murdered his wife and two children at their home in Gravesend, Kent.^[44]
31 August – Neil and Christine Hamilton are cleared in connection with the sexual assault allegations.

September

3 September – In Belfast, Protestant loyalists begin a picket of Holy Cross, a Catholic primary school for girls. For the next 11 weeks, riot police escort the schoolchildren and their parents through hundreds of protesters, amid rioting and heightened violence.
5 September – Peter Bray completes the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a kayak.^[45]
7 September – One million children in over 3,000 schools participate in an experiment to discover if it is possible to create earthquakes by all jumping off chairs.^[46]
10 September
- Charles Ingram wins £1 million on the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, but the prize is cancelled after he is accused of cheating.^[47]
- The Bank of Scotland and the Halifax merge to form HBOS plc.
11 September
- 11 September terrorist attacks: by al-Qaeda upon the United States of America. 67 UK nationals perish in the attacks, the largest loss of life from any nation other than the United States where the attacks take place.
- One Canada Square, the UK's second tallest building, and the London Stock Exchange are evacuated following the attacks in the United States.
- Prime Minister Tony Blair cancels a speech he was due to give to the TUC, and pledges to "stand shoulder to shoulder" with the United States.
12 September – The funeral of Donald Campbell takes place at Coniston in Cumbria, 34 years after his death.
13 September
- The Queen orders the Changing of the Guard ceremony to be paused for a two-minute silence, followed by the playing of the American national anthem, in tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks two days earlier.
- British politician William Hague resigns as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party. Iain Duncan Smith becomes leader of the Conservative Party after winning the leadership election.^[48]
14 September – National memorial service held at St Paul's Cathedral for the victims of the terrorist attacks.
17 September – Gateshead Millennium Bridge opens to the public.^[49]
21 September – Increased racial tensions in Peterborough, England, following the September 11 attacks result in the murder of Ross Parker by a gang of ten Muslims in a racially motivated attack.

October

6 October – The England national football team achieves automatic qualification for next summer's World Cup in Japan and South Korea with a 2–2 draw against Greece at Old Trafford, thanks to an injury time equaliser by captain David Beckham.^[50]
7 October – The United States of America's Armed-forces invade Afghanistan. Submarines of the British Royal Navy participate using Tomahawk cruise missiles.^[51]
23 October – Provisional Irish Republican Army announces that it has begun to decommission its weapons.^[52]
25 October – The British Crime Survey reveals that crime rates are at their lowest levels since 1981.

November

3 November – A car bomb explodes in Birmingham near New Street railway station. No-one is injured, and it is believed that only the device's detonator exploded.^[53]
4 November – The Police Service of Northern Ireland is established, as successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
9 November – The film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is premièred in London.^[45]
12 November – Greek authorities hold 12 British plane-spotters on charges of spying.^[54]
22 November
- At the Ipswich by-election, the Labour Party candidate Chris Mole holds the seat.^[55]
- The Labour government's upturn in popularity continues as the latest MORI poll puts them 31 points ahead of the Conservatives on 56%.^[4]
24 November – The 2001 Kangaroo tour concludes with the Australia national rugby league team defeating Great Britain in the 3rd and deciding test match of the Ashes series.^[56]

December

December – The third-generation Nissan Primera P12 goes into production with Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK.
10 December
- V. S. Naipaul wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".^[57]
- Timothy Hunt and Paul Nurse win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Leland H. Hartwell "for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle".^[58]
11 December – The Post Office announces that up to 30,000 postal workers could be made redundant over the next 18 months as part of a £1.2billion cost-cutting package.^[59]
12 December – Roy Whiting is found guilty at Lewes Crown Court of the murder of Sarah Payne, who was found dead near Pulborough, West Sussex, in July last year. It is then revealed that Whiting already had a conviction for abducting and molesting an eight-year-old girl in 1995. The trial judge sentences Whiting, a 42-year-old former mechanic, to life imprisonment and says that it is a rare case in which he would recommend to the appropriate authorities that life should mean life. It is only the 24th time that such a recommendation has been made in British legal history.^[2]
13 December – Lynette Lithgow, 51-year-old former BBC newsreader, is found murdered with her mother and brother at the family home in Trinidad.^[60]
21 December – The Metropolitan Police storm a cargo ship in the English Channel fearing that it might contain terrorist material.^[61]
22 December – British-born terrorist, Richard Reid, attempts to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris to Miami International Airport, using explosives hidden in his shoes.
25 December – The Queen's last surviving royal aunt, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, celebrates her hundredth birthday.

Undated

Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, a national higher education institution, is established, the founding affiliates being the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the London Contemporary Dance School.
The red-billed chough recolonises Cornwall after an absence of 50 years.^[62]
First osprey breed in England in recent times.
The proportion of people living in owner-occupied homes in England reaches an all-time peak of 72.5%.^[63]
A record of nearly 2.5 million new cars are sold in Britain this year, with the Ford Focus being Britain's best selling car for the third year in a row. Vauxhall maintains its second place behind Ford for sales, while Citroën, Peugeot, Renault and Volkswagen also enjoy strong sales. MG Rover sales, however, fall below 100,000.

Publications

29 October – Roger Hargreaves' children's book Mr. Cheeky celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Mr. Men series.^[45]
Ian McEwan's novel Atonement.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels Thief of Time, The Last Hero and The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents wins the Carnegie Medal.

Births

30 January – Curtis Jones, footballer
23 February – Molly Conlin, actress
24 February
- Anthony Gordon, footballer
- Ramona Marquez, actress
13 March – James Garner, footballer
23 April – Cleo Demetriou, actress
6 May – Gayatri Nair, pianist and vocalist
23 May – Brennan Johnson, footballer
11 June – Billy Gilmour, footballer
13 June – Olivia Broome, para powerlifter
14 June – George Martin, rugby union player
21 June – Eleanor Worthington Cox, actress
4 July – Mikey Lewis, rugby league player
10 July – Maisie Smith, actress
16 July – Tom Taylor, actor
5 September – Bukayo Saka, footballer
6 September – Freya Allan, actress
29 September – Lauren James, footballer
1 October – Mason Greenwood, footballer
9 October – Louis Hynes, actor
21 October – Jess Park, footballer
8 November – Tilly Ramsay, television presenter^[64]
12 November – Raffey Cassidy, actress
9 December – Cameron Archer, footballer
12 December – Michael Olise, footballer
13 December – Harley Bird, actress
16 December – Sebastian Croft, actor
22 December – Lily Laight, actress

Deaths