2003 in the United Kingdom

UK-related events during the year of 2003

2003 in the United Kingdom

Other years

2001 | 2002 | 2003 (2003) | 2004 | 2005

Countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Popular culture

2003 British Grand Prix
2003 English cricket season
Football: England | Scotland | Wales
2003 in British television
2003 in British music
2003 in British radio
UK in the Eurovision Song Contest 2003

Events from the year 2003 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

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

Events

January

January – Toyota launches an all-new Avensis to be built at TMUK.
10 January – Ian Carr, a 27-year-old banned from driving with a total of 89 previous convictions (including causing death by dangerous driving), admits causing the death by dangerous driving of a six-year-old girl in Ashington, Northumberland – a crime which sparks widespread public and media outrage across the United Kingdom.^[1]
14 January – Anti-terrorism detective Stephen Oake is murdered in Crumpsall, Manchester by Islamic terrorist Kamel Bourgass after being stabbed eight times while attempting his arrest.^[2]
25 January – Central line underground train crashes into the tunnel wall at Chancery Lane tube station in London, injuring 34 people.
29 January – 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 suffered sudden infant death syndrome.^[3]
30 January – Richard Colvin Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber", is sentenced to life imprisonment by a United States court.^[4]
31 January – One of the longest prison sentences ever issued in a British court for a motoring offence is given to killer driver Ian Carr, who receives a nine-and-a-half-year sentence for causing death by dangerous driving – his second conviction for the crime in twelve years.^[5]

February

1 February – In Northern Ireland, the Protestant Ulster Defence Association Belfast leader John Gregg is killed by a loyalist faction.
15 February – In London, more than 2,000,000 people demonstrate against the Iraq War, the largest demonstration in UK history.^[6]
17 February – The London congestion charge, a fee levied on motorists travelling within designated parts of central London, comes into operation.
27 February
- 122 Labour MPs vote against the government in a debate over the Iraq War.^[6]
- Rowan Williams enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury.

March

12 March – Iraq disarmament crisis: UK 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.
15 March – Comic actress Dame Thora Hird dies in a nursing home in London, aged 91, less than a year after her final appearance on BBC Radio.
18 March – Parliament votes to approve an invasion of Iraq.
20 March – 2003 Iraq war: Land troops from United Kingdom join troops from the United States, Australia and Poland in the invasion of Iraq.
22 March – Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from Royal Navy submarines take part in a massive air and missile strike on military targets in Baghdad.
End – First arrest of a British-based terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda, in Operation CREVICE.^[7]

April

6 April – British forces capture the city of Basra during the invasion of Iraq.
8 April – Three men are convicted in relation to a Real IRA campaign that saw bombs explode in London and Birmingham in 2001. Two others have already admitted plotting to cause explosions as part of the same campaign.^[8]
9 April – Invasion of Iraq: the Battle of Baghdad, fought with British air support, concludes, ending Saddam Hussein's rule in the country after 24 years in power.^[9]
21 April – Robert Wardle is appointed Director of the Serious Fraud Office of England and Wales.^[10]
29 April – Tony Blair holds a one-day summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin mocks the United Kingdom and America's failure to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.^[6]

May

3 May
- 2003 Scottish Parliament election: 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.
- 2003 National Assembly for Wales election: the Labour Party remain in power.
- The BBC announces that the hugely popular character Den Watts will return to its soap opera EastEnders later this year, fourteen years after he was supposedly killed off.
15 May – The government suspends all flights to and from Kenya after warnings of an imminent al-Qaeda attack.^[6]
28 May – The UEFA Champions League Final at Old Trafford (home to Manchester United) with AC Milan beating Juventus in a penalty shootout following a goalless draw.
29 May – Journalist Andrew Gilligan broadcasts a report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme stating that the government claimed in its 2002 dossier that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within forty-five minutes knowing the claim to be dubious. A political storm ensues. Gilligan has interviewed weapons expert David Kelly.^[11]

June

14 June
- First Minister for Children appointed, Margaret Hodge.^[12]
- The first official Twenty20 cricket matches are played between the English counties in the Twenty20 Cup.^[13]
15 June – The News of the World publishes an 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 employed as Huntley's guard.
21 June – The novel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is released to the public.
24 June
- President Vladimir Putin becomes the first Russian head of state to make a state visit to the United Kingdom since Tsar Alexander II in 1874.^[14]
- Six members of the Royal Military Police are killed, and eight other soldiers are injured, in Iraq.^[6]
26 June
- The latest MORI poll puts Labour and Conservative parties on even terms at 35%.^[15]
- Businessman Sir Denis Thatcher, husband of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, dies aged 88 at the Lister Hospital in London.

July

2 July – Chelsea F.C. are bought by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for a sum of £150,000,000 from current chairman Ken Bates, twenty-one years after he bought the club for £1.^[16]
15 July – David Kelly appears before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, to answer questions over the information he had given to Andrew Gilligan.
18 July – David Kelly is found dead near his home in Oxfordshire – police suspect that he committed suicide.^[17]
20 July – The BBC confirms that Dr. David Kelly, found dead from a suspected suicide two days earlier, was the main source for a controversial report that sparked a deep rift with the government.^[18]
27 July – The British-born American actor and comedian Bob Hope dies at his home in California, two months after his hundredth birthday.
30 July – Eurostar train number 3313/14 sets a new speed record at 334.7 km/h (208 mph) on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

August

1 August – The Hutton Inquiry into the recent death of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, chaired by judge Lord Hutton, opens,^[19] beginning to take evidence on 11 August.^[17]
3 August – Police use the taser for the first time.^[14]
10 August – Brogdale, near Faversham, enters the UK Weather Records for the highest ever recorded temperature of 38.5 °C, a record which holds until July 2019. The 2003 European heat wave makes this the United Kingdom's hottest summer for thirteen years.^[20]

September

4 September – The rebuilt Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham is officially opened by Sir Albert Bore.
18 September – Brent East by-election: Sarah Teather of the Liberal Democrats becomes MP for Brent East after twenty-nine years of Labour control.
29 September
- Section 1 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, later High Speed 1, from Fawkham Junction to the Channel Tunnel is opened for passengers.
- The comeback of Den Watts (played by Leslie Grantham) in EastEnders is screened, fourteen years after the character was supposedly killed off, and just over four months after the BBC confirmed that Grantham would be returning to the series.^[21]

October

24 October – Supersonic aircraft Concorde makes its final commercial flights after twenty-seven years.^[22]
29 October – Iain Duncan-Smith resigns after serving just two years as Leader of the Conservative Party.^[23]

November

4 November – Channel 4's soap opera Brookside, on air since the station was launched in 1982, ends after 21 years.
6 November – 2003 Conservative Party leadership election: Michael Howard is elected unopposed as Leader of the Conservative Party, a post he will hold for two years.
8 November – Sophie, Countess of Wessex gives birth to her and Prince Edward's first child, a baby girl.^[24]
16 November – David Davis, the new Shadow Home Secretary, calls for a return of the death penalty for murderers found guilty of the most horrific murders; citing Moors murderer Ian Brady and Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe as criminals whose crimes would meet the criteria.^[25]
18 November
- United States President George W. Bush makes a state visit to London in the midst of massive protests.^[26]
- Passage of the Local Government Act 2003 including the repeal in England, Northern Ireland and Wales of controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which prevented local authorities from "promoting homosexuality". Section 28 had already been repealed in Scotland since 2000.
20 November
- 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 Consul-General, Roger Short is killed.^[27]
- Criminal Justice Act 2003 passed, permitting waiver of the rule against double jeopardy in certain serious cases.
- Sexual Offences Act 2003 passed, superseding the Act of 1956 with more specific and explicit wording, also creating several new offences.
22 November – England are rugby world champions after defeating Australia 20-17 after extra time.^[28]
24 November – 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.
25 November – Serial killer Anthony Hardy, of Camden, is jailed for life at the Old Bailey for murdering three women. The dismembered remains of two victims were found in a pub bin in December 2002.^[29]
26 November – The final Concorde flight touches down in Filton, Bristol where it is welcomed by the Duke of York.

December

9 December – The M6 Toll motorway opens, giving the United Kingdom its first toll motorway and providing a northern by-pass for the congested section of the M6 motorway through the West Midlands conurbation.^[30]
10 December
- Clive Granger wins the Nobel Prize in Economics jointly with Robert F. Engle "for methods of analysing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)".^[31]
- 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".^[32]
- Peter Mansfield wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Paul Lauterbur "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging".^[33]
- 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 victims of sudden infant death syndrome.^[34]
- The official inflation target measure is changed to the Consumer Price Index figure from RPIX.^[35]
12 December – Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones receives a knighthood from the Prince of Wales (now Charles III).^[14]
16 December – 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 environmentalist groups.
17 December – 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 sixteen months on remand.^[36] Home Secretary David Blunkett orders an inquiry into how the police vetting system failed to prevent Huntley from getting a job in a school after it is revealed at the end of his trial that he had been suspected in the past of crimes including underage sex, rape, indecent assault and burglary.^[37]

Undated

153,065 divorces this year.
Sales of the DVD home video format take the largest share of the UK home video market for the first time. The format, first launched in the UK in June 1998, accounts for more than 70% of home video sales this year as the VHS format's popularity falls and many new titles are not being released on it.^[38]
New car sales reach a record high this year of nearly 2,600,000, with the Ford Focus enjoying its fifth successive year as the United Kingdom's best-selling new car. BMW sales also reach a record high, with the BMW 3 Series managing well over 60,000 sales as the UK's ninth best-selling car. Sales of Vauxhall, Peugeot, Renault and Volkswagen cars remain strong as well, while Nissan also enjoys an increase in sales largely due to the popularity of its new version of the Micra.

Publications

Iain Banks' book Raw Spirit.
Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Adrian Praetzellis' Death by Theory: A Tale of Mystery and Archaeological Theory, first in the Hannah Green book series.^[39]^[40]
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels The Wee Free Men and Monstrous Regiment.
J. K. Rowling's novel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Lynne Truss's punctuation guide Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
Charlotte Voake's picture book Ginger Finds a Home.

Births

26 February – Levi Colwill, footballer
2 March – Eloise Taylor, second daughter of Lady Helen Taylor and Timothy Taylor
30 March – Lara Wollington, actress
4 April – Harvey Elliott, footballer
12 May – Madeleine McCann, abductee
14 June – Yasha Asley, mathematical prodigy
29 June – Jude Bellingham, footballer
9 July – Conor Bradley, footballer
18 July – Lucy Hutchinson, actress
25 September – Alexander Aze, actor
25 September – Bella Ramsey, actress
3 October – Callum Doyle, footballer
13 October – Shoaib Bashir, cricketer
20 October – Carney Chukwuemeka, footballer
8 November – Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie (then Earl and Countess of Wessex; now Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh)
9 December – Chris Sze, Malaysian footballer

Deaths