1960 in The United Kingdom - Events

Events

• January – State of emergency is lifted in Kenya – the Mau Mau Uprising is officially over.
• 5 January – Closure of the Swansea and Mumbles Railway (opened to passengers in 1807 and by this date operated by double-deck electric trams).
• 10 January – British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan makes the "Wind of Change" speech for the first time, to little publicity, in Accra, Gold Coast – now Ghana.
• 28 January – The comic ballet La fille mal gardée, in a version newly choreographed by Frederick Ashton to a score adapted by John Lanchbery, is premiered by The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London, rapidly becoming a classic of the repertoire.
• 3 February – Macmillan makes the "Wind of Change" speech to the South African Parliament in Cape Town, where it attracts attention. (It was drafted by David Hunt.)
• 18 February–28 February – Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, Placer County, California but do not win any medals.
• 19 February – The Queen gives birth to her third child and second son.
• March
  • Manchester City F.C. sign 20-year-old forward Denis Law for a national record fee of £55,000 from Huddersfield Town.
  • The 18th century Naval dockyard at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent is closed. A total of 2,500 jobs have gradually been shed at the site since its closure was first announced by the government in February 1958.
• 14 March – Jodrell Bank Observatory makes contact with the American Pioneer 5 over a record-breaking distance of 407,000 miles.
• 26 March – The Grand National is televised for the first time. The winner is Merryman II.
• 1 April – Bill Griggs of Northampton first markets the Dr. Martens 'AirWair' style 1460 boots.
• 8 April – The seven-week-old son of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh is christened Andrew Albert Christian Edward (he is now The Duke of York).
• 13 April – Cancellation of the Blue Streak missile.
• 16 April – The Times of London abandons use of the term "Imperial and Foreign News", replacing it with "Overseas News", and changes its house style from "to-day" to "today".
• 18 April – 60,000 protestors stage a demonstration in London against nuclear weapons.
• 27 April – First production of Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker at the Arts Theatre in London.
• 3 May – Burnley F.C. win the Football League First Division title with a 2-1 win over Manchester City at Maine Road. Burnley's title win means that Wolverhampton Wanderers, the FA Cup finalists, have lost out on the chance of becoming the first team this century to win the double of the league title and FA Cup.
• 6 May – The Princess Margaret marries photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey in the first televised Royal marriage.
• 7 May – Wolverhampton Wanderers are FA Cup winners for the fourth time, beating Blackburn Rovers 3-0 at Wembley Stadium.
• 24 June – Avro 748 makes its first flight at Woodford.
• 26 June – British Somaliland gains independence from the United Kingdom; five days later it unites with the former Italian Somaliland to create the modern Somali Republic.
• 28 June – 38 miners killed in an explosion at Six Bells Colliery in Monmouthshire.
• July – The Shadows' instrumental Apache is released.
• 21 July – Francis Chichester, English navigator and yachtsman, arrives in New York aboard Gypsy Moth II having made a record solo Atlantic crossing in 40 days.
• 27 July – In a Cabinet reshuffle, Selwyn Lloyd is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Home becomes Foreign Secretary.
• 30 July – "Battle of Beaulieu": At a jazz festival at Beaulieu, Hampshire, fans of trad jazz come to blows with progressives.
• 7 August – The Bluebell Railway in Sussex begins regular operation as the first standard gauge steam-operated passenger heritage railway in the world.
• 16 August – Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
• 17 August – The Beatles, a four-strong male band from Liverpool, perform their first concert under this name in Hamburg, West Germany.
• 22 August – First performance of the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe (in Edinburgh).
• 25 August–11 September – Great Britain and Northern Ireland competes at the Olympics in Rome and win 2 gold, 6 silver and 12 bronze medals.
• 10 September – ITV broadcasts the first live Football League match to be shown on television, and the last for 23 years.
• 15 September – The first traffic wardens deployed in London.
• 30 September–4 December – Severe flooding in the valley of the River Exe and surrounding areas of Devon following heavy rainfall.
• 1 October – Nigeria gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
• 7 October – The second notable flood occurs in Horncastle, Lincolnshire. The town enters the UK Weather Records with the Highest 180-min total rainfall at 178 mm. As of October 2010 this record remains.
• 8 October – Closure of the Sheffield Tramway, leaving Blackpool as the only place in England with electric trams.
• 21 October (Trafalgar Day) – The Queen launches Britain's first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, at Barrow-in-Furness.

• 25 October – Barges collide with one of the columns of the Severn Railway Bridge in heavy fog, causing two spans of the twenty-two span steel and cast iron bridge to collapse. It is never repaired.
• 30 October – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplantation in the UK, at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
• November – Film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning released, first of the British social-realist wave.
• 2 November – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case.
• 10 November – Lady Chatterley's Lover sells 200,000 copies in one day following its publication since being banned since 1928.
• 2 December – The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, talks with Pope John XXIII in the Vatican, the first ever meeting between the leader of the Anglican Church and the Pope.
• 9 December – The first episode of soap opera Coronation Street is aired on ITV. It will still be running more than fifty years later. Characters introduced in the first episode include Ken Barlow (William Roache), Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix) and Ena Sharples (Violet Carson).
• 10 December – Sir Peter Brian Medawar and Australian Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance".
• 31 December
  • Last day on which the farthing, a coin first minted in England in the 13th century, is legal tender.
  • The last man is called up for National Service, as Conscription ends.