An opinion poll conducted for the Daily Mail shows the Conservative opposition 11 points ahead of the Labour government, with an election due by October next year. The turnaround in fortunes for the Conservatives, who last month were narrowly behind Labour, is attributed to
Margaret Thatcher's recent comments on immigration.[4]
26 March – The body of 21-year-old prostitute and mother-of-two Yvonne Pearson, who was last seen alive on 21 January, is found in Leeds. The Yorkshire Ripper is believed to have been responsible.[7]
16 May – 40-year-old prostitute Vera Millward is found stabbed to death in the grounds of the
Manchester Royal Infirmary Hospital; she is believed to have been the tenth woman to die at the hands of the Yorkshire Ripper. Both of the victims killed outside Yorkshire have been killed in
Manchester.[14]
17 May – Charlie Chaplin's coffin, stolen 11 weeks previously, is found in a field about a mile away from the Chaplin home in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland.[15]
25 May – Liberal Party leader
David Steel announces that the
Lib–Lab pact will be dissolved at the end of the current Parliamentary session by mutual consent, leaving Britain with a minority Labour government.[10]
31 May – Labour wins the
Hamilton by-election, retaining it in the face of a strong challenge from the
Scottish National Party in that seat.
June
1 June –
William Stern is declared bankrupt with debts of £118 million, the largest bankruptcy in British history at the time.[16][17]
17 June – Media reports suggest that a general election will be held this autumn as the minority government led by James Callaghan and Labour appears to be nearing the end of its duration. Callaghan's chances of an election win are now looking brighter than they were four months ago, as the 11-point Conservative lead has evaporated.[21]
19 June – Cricketer
Ian Botham becomes the first man in the history of the game to score a century and take eight wickets in one innings of a Test match.[22]
21 June
An outbreak of shooting between Provisional IRA members and the
British Army leaves one civilian and three IRA men dead.[23]
20 August – Gunmen open fire on an Israeli
El Al airline bus in London.
25 August – U.S. Army Sergeant Walter Robinson "walks" across the
English Channel in 11 hours 30 minutes, using homemade water shoes.
September
7 September
Prime Minister
James Callaghan announces that he will not call a general election for this autumn, and faces accusations from Tory leader
Margaret Thatcher and Liberal leader
David Steel of "running scared", in spite of many opinion polls showing that Labour (currently a minority government) could win an election now with a majority, safeguarding its place in government until 1983. Callaghan also announces that the Lib-Lab pact, formed 18 months ago when the government lost its majority, has reached its end.[27]
Bulgarian dissident
Georgi Markov, 49, is stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella as he walks across
Waterloo Bridge, London, probably on orders of Bulgarian intelligence; he dies 4 days later.[28]
15 September – German terrorist
Astrid Proll arrested in London.[29]
19 September – British Police launch a massive murder hunt, following the discovery of the dead body of newspaper boy
Carl Bridgewater (13) at a farmhouse near
Kingswinford in the
West Midlands. Carl is believed to have been shot dead after disturbing a burglary at the property.[30]
26 September – 23
Ford car plants are closed across Britain due to strikes.
23 October – The government announces plans for a new single exam to replace O Levels and CSEs.
25 October – A ceremony marks the completion of
Liverpool Cathedral, for which the foundation stone was laid in 1904.
27 October – Four people die and four others are wounded in a shooting spree which began in a residential street in
West Bromwich and ends at a petrol station some 20 miles away in
Nuneaton.[32]
28 October –
Barry Williams, aged 36, is arrested in
Derbyshire and charged with the previous day's shootings following a high-speed police chase.[33]
November
3 November –
Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
4 November – Many British bakeries impose bread rationing after a baker's strike led to panic buying of bread.[34]
5 November – Rioters sack the British Embassy in
Tehran.
10 November – Panic buying of bread stops as most bakers go back to work.
18 November – The British leg of the
1978 Kangaroo tour concludes with Australia winning the
Ashes series by defeating Great Britain in the third and deciding Test match in Leeds.
23 November – Pollyanna's nightclub in
Birmingham is forced to lift its ban on black and Chinese revellers, after a one-year investigation by the
Commission for Racial Equality concludes that the nightclub's entry policy was racist.
29 November –
Viv Anderson, the 22-year-old
Nottingham Forest defender, becomes
England's first black international footballer when he appears in 1–0 friendly win over
Czechoslovakia at
Wembley Stadium – six months after he became the first black player to feature in an English league championship winning team and was also on the winning side in the final of the
Football League Cup.[35]
30 November – An industrial dispute closes down The Times newspaper (until 12 November 1979).[18]
December
Four men aged between 17 and 50 are charged with the murder of newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater at a farmhouse near
Stourbridge in September this year. They are also accused of other armed robberies including a raid on a farmhouse near
Halesowen and another at a
Tesco supermarket on
Birmingham'sCastle Vale estate.
10 December –
Peter D. Mitchell wins the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory".[36]
14 December – The Labour minority government survives a vote of confidence.
21–22 December – The BBC is hit by a series of strikes. From Thursday 21 December, BBC One and BBC Two television are taken off air, as the BBC members of the ABS union strike over pay. On 22 December, the ABS union calls its radio members out on strike, which leads to the merging of BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 into one national radio network, which from 4.00 pm that day provides a management-run schedule of news and music. With the strike called so close to Christmas, the BBC does not want their festive television programming to be interrupted (Bill Cotton, the controller of BBC One, has prepared two Christmas schedules for BBC One, one if there is no strike, and one filled with repeats and films if there is), and so the BBC and ABS go to the government's conciliation service ACAS, and a deal is reached by 10.00 pm on 22 December, with the unions getting a 15% pay rise. BBC One and Two return to normal service by lunchtime on Saturday 23 December, with all BBC radio stations resuming normal programming at breakfast time of the same day.[37][38]