2003 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Tony Blair
• Parliament – 53rd

  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, 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 Britain.
• 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.
• 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.
• 30 January – Richard Colvin Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber", is sentenced to life imprisonment by a United States court.
• 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.

  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.
• 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.
• * 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.
• 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.

  April

• 6 April – British forces capture the city of Basra during the invasion of Iraq.
• 9 April – the Iraq war effort is given a major boost when a statue of Saddam Hussein is toppled in Baghdad and it is confirmed that Hussein's rule has ended after twenty-four years in power.
• 29 April – Tony Blair holds a one-day summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin mocks Britain and America's failure to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

  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.
• 28 May – the UEFA Champions League Final at Old Trafford with AC Milan beating Juventus in a penalty shootout following a goalless draw.
• 29 May – Andrew Gilligan broadcasts a report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme stating that the government claimed in its dossier, that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within forty-five minutes knowing the claim to be dubious. A political storm ensues. Gilligan's source is David Kelly, a weapons expert.

  June

• 13 June
• * First Minister for Children appointed, Margaret Hodge.
• * The first official Twenty20 cricket matches are played between the English counties in the Twenty20 Cup.
• 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 Britain since Tsar Alexander II in 1874.
• * Six members of the Royal Military Police are killed, and eight other soldiers are injured, in Iraq.
• 26 June – the latest MORI poll puts Labour and Conservative parties on even terms at 35%.

  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.
• 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.
• 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.

  August

• 1 August – the Hutton Inquiry into the recent death of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, chaired by judge Lord Hutton, opens, beginning to take evidence on 11 August.
• 3 August – police use the taser for the first time.
• 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 Britain's hottest summer for thirteen years.

  September

• 4 September – the 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 – the comeback of Den Watts 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.

  October

• 24 October – supersonic aircraft Concorde makes its final commercial flights after twenty-seven years.
• 29 October – Iain Duncan-Smith resigns after serving just two years as Leader of the Conservative Party.

  November

• 4 November – Channel 4's soap opera Brookside, on air since the station was launched in 1982, ends after 21 years.
• 8 November – Sophie, Countess of Wessex gives birth to her and Prince Edward's first child, a baby girl.
• 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.
• 18 November
• * United States President George W. Bush makes a state visit to London in the midst of massive protests.
• * 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.
• 22 November – England are rugby world champions after defeating Australia 20-17 after extra time.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 ".
• * 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".
• * Peter Mansfield wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Paul Lauterbur "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging".
• * 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.
• * The official inflation target measure is changed to the Consumer Price Index figure from RPIX.
• 12 December – Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones receives a knighthood from Charles, Prince of Wales.
• 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 in May 2004 as she has already served sixteen months on remand. 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.

  Undated

• 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.
• New car sales reach a record high this year of nearly 2,600,000, with the Ford Focus enjoying its fifth successive year as Britain's best-selling new car. BMW sales also reach a record high, with the BMW 3 Series managing well over 60,000 sales as Britain'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.
• 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.

  Births

• 2 March – Eloise Taylor, second daughter of Lady Helen Taylor and Timothy Taylor
• 30 March – Lara Wollington, actress
• 12 May – Madeleine McCann, abductee
• 14 June – Yasha Asley, mathematical prodigy
• 18 July – Lucy Hutchinson, actress
• 25 September – Alexander Aze, actor
• 8 November – Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of The Earl and Countess of Wessex

  Deaths

• 5 January – Roy Jenkins, Labour government minister, later founder member and the first leader of the former Social Democratic Party
• 8 January – Ron Goodwin, composer
• 11 January – Anthony Havelock-Allan, film producer
• 12 January – Maurice Gibb, musician and singer-songwriter ; died in the United States of America
• 26 January – Hugh Trevor-Roper, historian
• 26 January – George Younger, 4th Viscount Younger of Leckie, politician
• 14 February – Dolly the Sheep, cloned sheep
• 27 February – John Lanchbery, composer ; died in Australia
• 8 March – Adam Faith, actor and singer
• 11 March – Brian Cleeve, English-Irish author and playwright
• 15 March – Dame Thora Hird, comic actress
• 22 March – Terry Lloyd, ITN television journalist ; killed in Iraq
• 11 April – Cecil Howard Green, geophysicist and businessman
• 14 May – Dame Wendy Hiller, actress
• 6 June – Dave Rowberry, singer-songwriter and pianist
• 10 June – Bernard Williams, philosopher
• 26 June
• * Marc-Vivien Foé, British-based Cameroonian footballer ; died in France while playing football for the Cameroon national football team
• * Sir Denis Thatcher, husband of prime minister Margaret Thatcher
• 1 July – George Roper, comedian
• 10 July
• * Winston Graham, novelist
• * Hartley Shawcross, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials
• 15 July – Elisabeth Welch, singer
• 17 July – Dr. David Kelly, government weapons expert ; suspected suicide
• 25 July – John Schlesinger, film director
• 27 July – Bob Hope, comedian
• 9 August
• * Jimmy Davis, footballer
• * Ray Harford, footballer and football manager
• 1 September – Terry Frost, artist
• 26 September – Robert Palmer, singer
• 5 October – Denis Quilley, actor
• 13 October – Anne Ziegler, soprano
• 4 November – Richard Wollheim, philosopher
• 11 November
• * Harold Walker, former Labour MP and government minister
• * George Wallace, Baron Wallace of Coslany, former Labour MP
• 28 November – Ted Bates, former footballer and football manager
• 29 November – Jesse Carver, former footballer and football manager
• 2 December – Alan Davidson, food writer
• 22 December – Rose Hill, actress and soprano
• 27 December – Alan Bates, actor
• 28 December – Dickie Davis, cricketer
• 29 December
• * Dinsdale Landen, actor
• * Bob Monkhouse, comedian and game show host