India becomes a
republic, severing constitutional ties with the United Kingdom and other dominions.[3]
Donald Hume is sentenced to imprisonment as an
accessory to the murder of Stanley Setty, having dumped his dismembered body over the
Essex marshes from a light aircraft.[2]
21 February –
Cunard liner
RMS Aquitania arrives at the scrapyard in
Faslane at the end of a 36-year career.
23 February –
1950 United Kingdom general election:
Labour, led by
Clement Attlee, win a second term in government, though with a parliamentary majority of just five seats, a stark contrast to the 146-seat majority gained in 1945. Their popularity took a plunge last year following the devaluation of the pound and the failure of the
East African groundnuts scheme, with many recent opinion polls showing a comfortable Conservative lead.[4] Among the lost Labour seats is
Bexley in
Kent which 33-year-old
Conservative Party candidate
Edward Heath seizes from
Ashley Bramall.[5] Both
Communist Party MP's lose their seats.
Voter turnout is 83.9%, an all-time high for a UK general election under universal suffrage. This is the first Parliamentary election at which
plural voting is not permitted.
University constituencies have been abolished at the
dissolution.[6] Postal voting is available to civilians for the first time.
BBC Television airs its first election results programme, however no footage survives due to it being broadcast live and not recorded.
9 March – Welsh-born
Timothy Evans, aged 25, is
hanged by
Albert Pierrepoint at
HM Prison Pentonville in London for the
murder of his baby daughter (and, by imputation, his wife) at their residence at 10 Rillington Place in
Notting Hill, London. 3 years later, his downstairs neighbour
John Christie is found to be a serial killer of at least seven women at this address. Evans is posthumously pardoned in 1966.
12 March –
Llandow air disaster: eighty of the eighty-three passengers on board an
Avro Tudor V aircraft are killed when it crashes on approach to Llandow in Glamorgan, making it the world's worst air disaster at this time.
1 April –
Corby, a village in
Northamptonshire, is designated as the first
new town in central England, providing homes for up to 40,000 people by the 1960s.[9]
21 May – A tornado tracks across England from
Wendover to
Blakeney, Norfolk (68 miles (109 km)), the longest ever such track in Britain.[13]
26 May – Motor fuel rationing comes to an end after eleven years, marking another stage in the phasing-out of rationing that was introduced in the wake of the
Second World War.[14]
7 June – The pilot episode of the agricultural soap opera The Archers airs on
BBC Radio. The series proper begins in January 1951 and will still be running more than 70 years later.[15]
24 August –
Vale Park football stadium opens in
Stoke-on-Trent, to serve
Port Vale F.C. It has an initial capacity of more than 30,000 and it had been billed as the "Wembley of the North" when first proposed, but high costs mean that the new stadium is much more basic than had been planned.[22]
27 August – The
BBC makes its first television broadcast from the European continent.[15]
Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh's fourteen-day-old daughter is named as Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. She is known at this time as Princess Anne of Edinburgh and later as
The Princess Royal.[18]
A group of
Conservative politicians publishes the tract One Nation: a Tory approach to social policy.[2]
November – An attempt to hold the Second World Peace Congress at
Sheffield City Hall is thwarted by the British authorities preventing many international delegates from entering the country[2] and it is relocated to
Warsaw.[28]
Cecil Frank Powell wins the
Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".[30]
India becomes a
republic, severing constitutional ties with the United Kingdom and other dominions.[3]
Donald Hume is sentenced to imprisonment as an
accessory to the murder of Stanley Setty, having dumped his dismembered body over the
Essex marshes from a light aircraft.[2]
21 February –
Cunard liner
RMS Aquitania arrives at the scrapyard in
Faslane at the end of a 36-year career.
23 February –
1950 United Kingdom general election:
Labour, led by
Clement Attlee, win a second term in government, though with a parliamentary majority of just five seats, a stark contrast to the 146-seat majority gained in 1945. Their popularity took a plunge last year following the devaluation of the pound and the failure of the
East African groundnuts scheme, with many recent opinion polls showing a comfortable Conservative lead.[4] Among the lost Labour seats is
Bexley in
Kent which 33-year-old
Conservative Party candidate
Edward Heath seizes from
Ashley Bramall.[5] Both
Communist Party MP's lose their seats.
Voter turnout is 83.9%, an all-time high for a UK general election under universal suffrage. This is the first Parliamentary election at which
plural voting is not permitted.
University constituencies have been abolished at the
dissolution.[6] Postal voting is available to civilians for the first time.
BBC Television airs its first election results programme, however no footage survives due to it being broadcast live and not recorded.
9 March – Welsh-born
Timothy Evans, aged 25, is
hanged by
Albert Pierrepoint at
HM Prison Pentonville in London for the
murder of his baby daughter (and, by imputation, his wife) at their residence at 10 Rillington Place in
Notting Hill, London. 3 years later, his downstairs neighbour
John Christie is found to be a serial killer of at least seven women at this address. Evans is posthumously pardoned in 1966.
12 March –
Llandow air disaster: eighty of the eighty-three passengers on board an
Avro Tudor V aircraft are killed when it crashes on approach to Llandow in Glamorgan, making it the world's worst air disaster at this time.
1 April –
Corby, a village in
Northamptonshire, is designated as the first
new town in central England, providing homes for up to 40,000 people by the 1960s.[9]
21 May – A tornado tracks across England from
Wendover to
Blakeney, Norfolk (68 miles (109 km)), the longest ever such track in Britain.[13]
26 May – Motor fuel rationing comes to an end after eleven years, marking another stage in the phasing-out of rationing that was introduced in the wake of the
Second World War.[14]
7 June – The pilot episode of the agricultural soap opera The Archers airs on
BBC Radio. The series proper begins in January 1951 and will still be running more than 70 years later.[15]
24 August –
Vale Park football stadium opens in
Stoke-on-Trent, to serve
Port Vale F.C. It has an initial capacity of more than 30,000 and it had been billed as the "Wembley of the North" when first proposed, but high costs mean that the new stadium is much more basic than had been planned.[22]
27 August – The
BBC makes its first television broadcast from the European continent.[15]
Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh's fourteen-day-old daughter is named as Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. She is known at this time as Princess Anne of Edinburgh and later as
The Princess Royal.[18]
A group of
Conservative politicians publishes the tract One Nation: a Tory approach to social policy.[2]
November – An attempt to hold the Second World Peace Congress at
Sheffield City Hall is thwarted by the British authorities preventing many international delegates from entering the country[2] and it is relocated to
Warsaw.[28]
Cecil Frank Powell wins the
Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".[30]