1988 in the United Kingdom

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1988 in the United Kingdom:
Other years
1986 \| 1987 \| 1988 \| 1989 \| 1990
Sport and Music
British and Irish current events
1988 English cricket season
Football England \| Scotland
1988 in British music

Events from the year 1988 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
3 Publications
4 Births
5 Deaths
6 References
7 See also

[edit] Incumbents

Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister - Margaret Thatcher, Conservative

[edit] Events

21 December — Wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103

3 February - Nurses throughout the UK strike for higher pay and more cash for the National Health Service.^[1]
5 February - The first BBC Red Nose Day raises £15 million for charity.^[2]
13 February–28 February - Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, but do not win any medals.
3 March - The SDP merges with the Liberal Party to create the Social and Liberal Democratic Party.^[3]
6 March - The SAS shoot dead 3 unarmed Provisional Irish Republican Army members in Gibraltar.^[4]
10 March - The Prince of Wales narrowly avoids death in an avalanche while on a ski-ing holiday in Switzerland. Major Hugh Lindsay, former equerry to the Queen, is killed.^[5]
16 March - Milltown Cemetery attack: An Ulster Freedom Fighters terrorist, Michael Stone attacks and kills six mourners at the funeral of the three IRA members who died in Gibraltar.^[6]
19 March - Two British Army Corporals are killed by a mob after accidentally driving into a funeral cortege for the victims of the March 16 terrorist attack.^[7]
6 May - Graeme Hick makes English cricket history by scoring 405 runs in a county championship match.^[8]
14 May - Wimbledon F.C., who have been Football League members for just 11 seasons and First Division members for two, win the FA Cup with a 1-0 win over league champions Liverpool at Wembley. Lawrie Sanchez scored the winning goal in the first half, while Liverpool's John Aldridge missed a penalty in the second half.
24 May - Albert Dock in Liverpool reopened by Prince Charles as a leisure and business centre including the Tate Liverpool art museum.^[2]
6 July
- Piper Alpha disaster oil rig in the North Sea explodes and results in the death of 167 workers.^[9]
- A contractor's relief driver pours 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate into the wrong tank at a water treatment plant near Camelford in Cornwall, causing extensive pollution to the local water supply.
28 July - Paddy Ashdown is elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats.^[10]
22 August - New licensing laws allow pubs to stay open for 24 hours in England and Wales.^[2]
29 August - 14-year-old Matthew Sadler becomes Britain's youngest international chess master.^[2]
9 September - The England cricket team's tour to India is cancelled after Captain Graham Gooch and seven other players are refused visas because of involvement in South African cricket during the apatheid boycott.^[2]
17 September–2 October - Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and win 5 gold, 10 silver and 9 bronze medals.
30 September - A Gibraltar jury decides that the 3 IRA members killed on March 6 were killed "lawfully".^[11]
October - Vauxhall launches the third generation of its popular Cavalier family saloon.
12 October - As Pope John Paul II addresses the European Parliament, Ian Paisley heckles and denounces him as the Antichrist.
13 October - the House of Lords rules that extracts of the banned book Spycatcher can be published in the media.^[12]
3 December - Health minister Edwina Currie provokes outrage by stating that most of Britain's egg production is infected with the salmonella bacteria, causing an immediate nationwide fall in egg sales.^[13]
10 December - James W. Black wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings "for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment".^[14]
12 December - 35 people are killed in a collision between three trains at Clapham in London.^[15]
21 December - Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway and kills a total of 270 people - including all 259 who were on board. It is believed that the cause of the explosion was a terrorist bomb.^[16]