1972 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Edward Heath
• Parliament – 45th

  Events

January

• 4 January – Rose Heilbron became the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey.
• 9 January – The National Union of Mineworkers held a strike ballot in which 58.8% voted in favour of industrial action. Coal miners begin a strike which lasts for seven weeks, including picketing of Saltley coke depot in Birmingham.
• 20 January – Unemployment exceeded the 1,000,000 mark for the first time since the 1930s- almost double the 582,000 who were unemployed when Edward Heath's Conservative government came to power less than two years ago.
• 30 January – 'Bloody Sunday' in Northern Ireland: fourteen killed when troops open fire on demonstrators in Derry.

  February

• 2 February – Protesters burned down the British Embassy in Dublin.
• 3–13 February – Great Britain and Northern Ireland competed at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, but did not win any medals.
• 5 February – 91 people are hurt and 122 arrested as mounted police charge protestors in London.
• 9 February – A state of emergency was declared by Heath as a result of the miners' strike.
• 22 February – An Official Irish Republican Army bomb killed six people in the Aldershot Barracks bombing.
• 25 February – The miners' strike ended after seven weeks.

  March

• March – Ford announced its new Granada model, available as a saloon, coupé or estate car, which would be built at the Dagenham plant in England as well as the Cologne plant in West Germany. It was designed to compete with the likes of the Rover P6 and Vauxhall Victor, and would be sold as the Ford Consul in mainland Europe.
• 21 March – Chancellor Anthony Barber announced a £1,200,000,000 tax reduction in the Budget.
• 26 March – The UK's last trolleybus system, in Bradford, was closed.
• 30 March – The Troubles: The Parliament of Northern Ireland was suspended.
• 31 March – A CND demonstration was held protesting against the nuclear base at Aldermaston.

  April

• 1 April – William Whitelaw was appointed as the first Northern Ireland Secretary.
• 6 April – Ford launches a new flagship saloon model, the Granada, which replaces the Zephyr on the UK market and will be produced at the Dagenham plant as well as Ford's Cologne plant in West Germany.
• 11 April – The BBC Radio 4 parodic panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue was broadcast for the first time.
• 19 April – A report into the Bloody Sunday shootings by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, exonerated the British troops of blame because the demonstration had been illegal.
• 30 April – The Brighton Belle Pullman car train made its final journey from London to Brighton.

  May

• 3 May
• * In the first UEFA Cup final, Tottenham Hotspur beat Wolverhampton Wanderers 2–1 in the first leg at the Molineux.
• * The General Synod of the Church of England failed to agree union with the Methodist Church.
• 6 May – Leeds United won the FA Cup for the first time with a 1–0 win over last year's winners Arsenal at Wembley Stadium. The only goal is a header by Allan Clarke from a Mick Jones pass.
• 8 May – Derby County won the Football League First Division title for the first time in their history.
• 12 May – Crown Court established by the Courts Act 1971 to replace the courts of Assize and Quarter Sessions in England and Wales. Property qualifications requiring jurors to be householders are abolished.
• 17 May – Tottenham Hotspur completed a 3-2 aggregate win over Wolverhampton Wanderers at White Hart Lane to win the first UEFA Cup.
• 18 May
• * Queen Elizabeth II met her uncle, Edward, Duke of Windsor for the last time, at his home in Paris.
• * Four troopers of the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service were parachuted onto the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 across the Atlantic after a bomb threat and a ransom demand which turned out to be bogus.
• 22 May – The Dominion of Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka.
• 24 May
• * The final stretch of the M6 motorway opened between junctions 6 and 7 north of Birmingham, with the fully operational motorway stretching more than 200 miles from Rugby to Carlisle, more than a decade after the first sections were opened.
• * Glasgow-based team Rangers F.C. won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, defeating FC Dynamo Moscow 3-2 in the final at Camp Nou in Barcelona. A pitch invasion by their supporters led to the team being banned from defending the trophy the following season.
• 26 May – The state-owned travel company Thomas Cook & Son is privatised.
• 28 May – Edward, Duke of Windsor, dies of cancer at his home in France aged 77, 35 years after his abdication from the throne.
• 30 May – Official Irish Republican Army declares a ceasefire in Northern Ireland.

  June

• 1 June – Hotels and boarding houses became required to obtain certification under the Fire Precautions Act 1971.
• 3 June – A Protestant demonstration in Derry turned into a battle.
• 5 June – The funeral of The Duke of Windsor is held at Windsor Castle.
• 18 June – British European Airways Flight 548 crashed near Staines and 118 people are killed, making it the UK's worst air disaster at this date. The only two survivors both die by the time they reach a hospital.
• 23 June – The Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber announced a decision to float the Pound.

  July

• 1 July – The first official gay pride march in London was held.
• 21 July – Bloody Friday: Nine people died and over a hundred were injured in a series of IRA explosions in Belfast city centre.
• 28 July – A strike by thousands of dockers led to the government announcing a state of emergency on 4 August.
• 31 July – The Troubles in Northern Ireland:
• * Operation Motorman, 4:00 AM: British Army began to regain control of the "no-go areas" established by Irish republican paramilitaries in Belfast, Derry and Newry.
• * Claudy bombing, 10:00 AM: Three car bombs in Claudy, County Londonderry, killed nine. It became public knowledge only in 2010 that a local Catholic priest was an IRA officer believed to be involved in the bombings but his role was covered up by the authorities.

  August

• 6 August – Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda, announced that 50,000 Asians with British passports are to be expelled from Uganda to the United Kingdom within the next three months as they are "sabotaging the Ugandan economy".
• 9 August – The Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Jesus Christ Superstar made its West End debut.
• 26 August – 10 September: Great Britain and Northern Ireland competed at the Olympics in Munich, West Germany, and win 4 gold, 5 silver and 9 bronze medals.
• 28 August – Prince William of Gloucester, a cousin of the Queen, is killed in an air crash near Wolverhampton. He was thirty years old, a bachelor and ninth-in-line to the British throne at the time.

  September

• 1 September – Raising of school leaving age in England and Wales from fifteen to sixteen for pupils leaving school at the end of the academic year began. Many temporary new buildings were erected in secondary modern and comprehensive schools to accommodate the older pupils, while some authorities raised the secondary school transfer age from 11 to 12 or 13. The age was also raised in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• 11 September – The BBC1 television quiz programme Mastermind was broadcast for the first time.
• 12 September – The sinking of two British trawlers by an Icelandic gunboat triggered the second Cod War.
• 13 September – Hypermarkets make their debut in the United Kingdom some twenty years after their debut in France, when French retail giant Carrefour opens a hypermarket in Caerphilly, South Wales.
• 18 September – Thousands of Ugandan Asians arrived in the UK after being deported by Idi Amin.
• 19 September – A parcel bomb killed a diplomat at the Israeli embassy in London.

  October

• Three previously all-male Colleges of the University of Cambridge admitted female undergraduates.
• The lifting of restrictions on broadcasting hours permits extension of daytime television.
• 10 October – John Betjeman was appointed Poet Laureate.
• 13 October – Bank rates were abolished and replaced with the Minimum Lending Rate.
• 16 October – The first episode of Emmerdale Farm, a soap opera set in rural Yorkshire, was broadcast on ITV.
• 19 October – Royce Ryton's play about the Abdication Crisis of Edward VIII, Crown Matrimonial, premiered at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, for the first time includes the portrayal of a living member of the Royal Family on the legitimate stage.
• 22 October – Gordon Banks, the England national football team goalkeeper, suffered a serious eye injury in a car crash in Staffordshire.
• 23 October – Access credit cards were introduced.

  November

• 6 November – The Government introduces price and pay freezes to counter inflation.
• 18 November – England women's national football team played its first official association football match, against Scotland in Greenock, 100 years after the equivalent men's match.
• November – Formation in Coventry of the PEOPLE Party, predecessor of the Green Party and the first political party in Europe to promote Green politics.

  December

• 10 December
• * John Hicks was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics with Kenneth Arrow for "pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory."
• * Rodney Robert Porter won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Gerald Edelman "for their discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies".

  Undated

• Aardman Animations was founded.
• Inflation falls slightly during the year to 6.4% from 8.6%.
• Marriage rates peak.
• United Reformed Church formed by merger of most of the Congregational Church in England and Wales with the Presbyterian Church of England.
• British car production peaks at more than 1,900,000 units, despite regular strikes and increasing competition from overseas.
• Honda, the Japanese manufacturer whose motorcycles are already popular with British buyers, begins importing passenger cars to the United Kingdom, beginning only with its small Civic hatchback – one of the first medium-sized cars sold in Europe to feature this bodystyle – which competes with similar sized saloons including the Ford Escort. A larger hatchback and saloon model is due within the next four years to compete with the likes of the Ford Cortina.
• Japanese carmaker Nissan enjoys a surge in sales of its Datsun badged cars, with more than 30,000 cars sold in Britain this year compared to less than 7,000 in 1971. Popularity of imported Japanese products from Mazda and Toyota is also rising.

  Publications

• Richard Adams novel Watership Down.
• John Berger's novel G.
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novel Elephants Can Remember.
• Archie Cochrane's Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, drawing attention to collective ignorance about the outcomes of health care.
• John Yudkin's book on the dangers of sugar in the diet Pure, White and Deadly.
• A Blueprint for Survival first published as a special edition of The Ecologist magazine.

  Births

January–March

• 5 January – Philip Davies, politician
• 23 January – Gavin Barwell, politician
• 27 January – Mark Owen, singer
• 9 February - Darren Ferguson, footballer
• 11 February – Steve McManaman, footballer
• 19 February – Malky Mackay, footballer
• 6 March – Terry Murphy, snooker player
• 20 March – Alexander Kapranos, singer and guitarist
• 28 March – Nick Frost, actor

  April–June

• 3 April – Paul Greaves, musician, bass guitarist
• 16 April – John McGuinness, motorcycle racer
• 17 April – Vicky Lupton, English racewalker
• 22 April – Sarah Patterson, actress
• 2 May – Paul Adcock, footballer
• 3 May – Katya Adler, broadcast journalist
• 5 May – James Cracknell, Olympic winning rower
• 23 May – Martin Saggers, cricketer and umpire
• 3 June – Steve Crane, footballer
• 4 June – Debra Stephenson, actress
• 7 June – Curtis Robb, athlete

  July–September

• 6 August – Geri Halliwell, singer
• 7 August – Sarah Cawood, television presenter
• 17 August – David Ralph, Scottish field hockey forward
• 18 August – Victoria Coren Mitchell, writer, presenter and champion poker player
• 6 September – Idris Elba, actor
• 9 September – Natasha Kaplinsky, newsreader
• 21 September
• * Liam Gallagher, singer
• * Richard Maden, breaststroke swimmer

  October–December

• 20 October – Debbie McLeod, Scottish field hockey goalkeeper
• 29 September – Robert Webb, comic actor
• 2 November – Samantha Janus, actress
• 7 November – Danny Grewcock, rugby player
• 6 November – Thandie Newton, actress
• 30 November – Dan Jarvis, army officer and politician
• 6 December – Ewan Birney, scientist
• 12 December – Nicky Eaden, English footballer and coach
• 14 December
• *Miranda Hart, actress, comedian
• *Jonathan Slinger, actor
• 20 December – Sarah Jones, politician
• 21 December – Gloria De Piero, English journalist and politician, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
• 29 December – Jude Law, actor

  Deaths

January–March

• 19 February – John Grierson, documentary film maker
• 25 February – S. O. Davies, Welsh miner, trade union official and politician
• 29 February – Violet Trefusis, writer and socialite
• 13 March – Tony Ray-Jones, photographer
• 21 March – David McCallum Sr., violinist and the father of David McCallum
• 29 March – J. Arthur Rank, industrialist and film producer

  April–June

• 11 May – E. V. Rieu, poet
• 22 May
• * Cecil Day-Lewis, poet
• * Margaret Rutherford, actress
• 28 May – the Duke of Windsor

  July–September

• 26 August – Francis Chichester, aviator and sailor
• 28 August – Prince William of Gloucester
• 15 September – Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury

  October–December

• 1 October – Louis Leakey, palaeontologist
• 2 October – Syd Puddefoot, footballer
• 15 October – Douglas Smith, broadcaster
• 28 November – Havergal Brian, composer
• 30 November – Sir Compton Mackenzie, novelist and Scottish nationalist
• 13 December – L. P. Hartley, writer
• 24 December – Gisela Richter, art historian