10 February – Nine people are killed in a multiple crash on the M6 motorway.
14 February – Barbadian-born actress Eva Mottley is found dead aged 31 in her flat in Maida Vale, London. Her death is later confirmed as suicide by overdose.
25 February – UK miners' strike (1984–85): Nearly 4,000 striking coalminers return to work, meaning that only just over half of the miners are now on strike.
26 February – Following his trial and conviction at St Albans Crown Court, Malcolm Fairley, the sex attacker known as The Fox, is handed six life sentences.[11]
13 March – Rioting breaks out at the FA Cup quarter-final between Luton Town and Millwall at Kenilworth Road, Luton; hundreds of hooligans tear seats from the stands and throw them onto the pitch before a pitch invasion takes place, resulting in 81 people (31 of them police officers) being injured. The carnage continues in the streets near the stadium, resulting in major damage to vehicles and property. Luton Town win the game 1–0.
19 March
After beginning the year with a lead of up to eight points in the opinion poll, the Conservatives suffer a major blow as the latest MORI poll puts them four points behind Labour, who have a 40% share of the vote.[13]
Ford launches the third generation of its Granada. It is sold only as a hatchback, in contrast to its predecessor which was sold as a saloon or estate and in continental Europe it will be known as the Scorpio.[14]
21 March – Actor Sir Michael Redgrave dies aged 77 of Parkinson's disease in a nursing home at Denham.
April
11 April – An eighteen-month-old boy becomes the youngest person in the UK to die of HIV/AIDS.
15 May – Everton, who have already clinched their first Football League title for fifteen years, win the European Cup Winners' Cup, their first European trophy, with a 3–1 win over Rapid Vienna in Rotterdam. English clubs have now won 25 European trophies since 1963. Everton are also in contention for a treble of major trophies, as they take on Manchester United in the FA Cup final in three days.
16 May
Two South Wales miners are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie. Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, both twenty-one years old, dropped a concrete block on Mr. Wilkie's taxi from a road overbridge in November last year.
31 May – The Football Association bans all English football clubs from playing in Europe until further notice in response to the Heysel riots. Thatcher supports the ban and calls for judges to hand out stiffer sentences to convicted football hooligans.[18]
2 June – In response to the Heysel Stadium disaster four days ago, UEFA bans all English football clubs from European competitions for an indefinite period, recommending that Liverpool should serve an extra three years of exclusion once all other English clubs have been reinstated.[22]
13 June – The fourteenth James Bond film – A View to a Kill – is released, marking the seventh and final appearance by Roger Moore as the fictional secret agent after six films since 1973.[24]
29 June – Patrick Magee is charged with the murder of the people who died in the Brighton bombing eight months ago.
July
4 July
13-year-old Ruth Lawrence achieves a first in Mathematics at the University of Oxford, becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of the university.[26]
Unemployment for June falls to 3,178,582 from May's total of 3,240,947, the best fall in unemployment of the decade so far.
29 July – Despite unemployment having fallen since October last year, it has increased in 73 Conservative constituencies, according to government figures.
August
7 August – Five people are found killed in the White House Farm murders in Essex. Nevill and June Bamber, a couple in their sixties, are found shot dead, as is their 27-year-old adoptive daughter Sheila Caffell and her six-year-old twin sons Daniel and Nicholas. The crime is initially treated by the police and reported by the media as a murder-suicide committed by Sheila Caffell, who had a long history of mental health issues.
24 August – Five-year-old John Shorthouse is shot dead by police at his family's house in Birmingham, where they were arresting his father on suspicion of an armed robbery committed in South Wales.[30]
September
September
SEAT, the Spanish carmaker originally a subsidy of Fiat but now under controlling interest from Volkswagen, begins importing cars to the United Kingdom. Its range consists of the Marbella (a rebadged version of the Fiat Panda), the Ibiza hatchback and Malaga saloon.[31]
7 September – Welsh fashion designer Laura Ashley, 60, is seriously injured in a fall at her daughter's home near Coventry. She dies of her injuries ten days later.
8 September – Jeremy Bamber is arrested on suspicion of murdering his adoptive parents, sister and two nephews in last month's White House Farm murders.
9 September – Rioting, mostly motivated by racial tension, breaks out in the Handsworth area of Birmingham.[34]
10 September
The riots in Handsworth escalate, with mass arson and looting resulting in thousands of pounds worth of damage, leaving several people injured, and resulting in the deaths of two people when the local post office is petrol-bombed, one of the fatalities being its owner.
The rioting in Handsworth ends, with the final casualty toll standing at 35 injuries and two deaths. A further two people are unaccounted for. Enoch Powell, the controversial former-Conservative MP who was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet seventeen years earlier for his Rivers of Blood speech on immigration, states that the riots in Handsworth were a vindication of the warnings he voiced in 1968.[36]
17 September – Margaret Thatcher's hopes of winning a third term in office at the next general election are thrown into doubt by the results of an opinion poll, which shows the Conservatives in third place on 30%, Labour in second place on 33% and the SDP–Liberal Alliance in the lead on 35%.[37]
28 September
A riot in Brixton erupts in response to Metropolitan Police shooting Dorothy "Cherry" Groce in her home during a raid. One person dies in the riot, fifty are injured and more than 200 are arrested.[38]
Manchester United's excellent start to the Football League First Division season sees them win their tenth league game in succession, leaving them well-placed to win their first league title since 1967.
29 September – Jeremy Bamber is rearrested upon his return to England after two weeks on holiday in France and charged with the five White House Farm murders.
5 October – Mrs. Cythnia Jarrett, a 49-year-old black woman, dies after falling over during a police search of her home on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, London.[40]
6 October – PC Keith Blakelock is fatally stabbed during the Broadwater Farm Riot in Tottenham, London, which began after the death of Cynthia Jarrett yesterday. Two of his colleagues are treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, as are three journalists.[41]
15 October – The SDP-Liberal Alliance's brief lead in the opinion polls is over, with the Conservatives now back in the lead by a single point over Labour in the latest MORI poll.[13]
17 October – The House of Lords decides the legal case of Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority,[42] which sets the significant precedent of Gillick competence, i.e. that a child of sixteen or under may be competent to consent to contraception or – by extension – other medical treatment without requiring parental permission or knowledge.
24 October – Members of Parliament react to the recent wave of rioting, by saying that unemployment is an unacceptable excuse for the riots.
28 October – Production of the Peugeot 309 begins at the Ryton car factory near Coventry. The 309, a small family hatchback, is the first "foreign" car to be built in the UK. It was originally going to be badged as the Talbot Arizona, but Peugeot has decided that the Talbot badge will be discontinued on passenger cars after next year and that the Ryton plant will then be used for the production of its own products, including a larger four-door saloon (similar in size to the Ford Sierra) which is due in two years.
30 October – Unemployment is reported to have risen in nearly 70% of the Conservative held seats since October 1984.
31 October – The two miners who killed taxi driver David Wilkie in South Wales eleven months earlier, have their life sentences for murder reduced to eight years for manslaughter on appeal.
Unemployment for September falls by nearly 70,000 to less than 3,300,000.
5 November – Mark Kaylor defeats Errol Christie to become the middleweight boxing champion, after the two brawl in front of the cameras at the weigh-in.
17 November – The Confederation of British Industry calls for the government to invest £1,000,000,000 in unemployment relief – a move which would cut unemployment by 350,000 and potentially bring it below 3,000,000 for the first time since late-1981.
18 November – A coach crash on the M6 motorway near Birmingham kills two people and injures 51 others.[46]
19 November – The latest MORI poll shows that Conservative and Labour support is almost equal at around 36%, with the SDP–Liberal Alliance's hopes of electoral breakthrough left looking bleak as they have polled only 25% of the vote.[47]
22 November – Margaret Thatcher is urged by her MPs to call a general election for June 1987, despite the deadline not being until June 1988 and recent opinion polls frequently showing Labour and the Alliance equal with the Conservatives, although the Conservative majority has remained well into triple figures.
25 November – Department store chains British Home Stores and Habitat announce a £1,500,000,000 amalgamation.
The official photograph of the Queen, the Prime Minister and all her living predecessors in 1985
December – Builders Alfred McAlpine complete construction of Nissan's new car factory at Sunderland. Nissan can now install machinery and factory components and car production is expected to begin by the summer of next year.
The Queen and all the five living former Prime Ministers attend an official dinner hosted by Denis and Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street to mark the 250th anniversary of the building becoming the Prime Minister's official residence.
Scotland's World Cup qualification is secured by a goalless draw with Australia in the play-off second leg in Sydney.[50]
5 December
It is announced that unemployment fell in November, for the third month running. It now stands at 3,165,000.[51]
A siege at a flat in Northolt, London, comes to an end after 29 hours when armed police storm the property and arrest 29-year-old Errol Walker, who had stabbed a woman to death and was holding her daughter hostage. The dramatic conclusion is captured by television cameras.[52]
Rock star Phil Lynott (36), formerly a member of the band Thin Lizzy, is rushed to hospital after collapsing from a suspected heroin overdose at his home in Berkshire. He will die on 4 January 1986.
December – After three successive monthly falls in unemployment, the jobless count for this month has increased by nearly 15,000 to 3,181,300.[53]
Undated
Inflation stands at 6.1% – the highest since 1982, but still low compared to the highs reached in the 1970s.[54]
Peak year for British oil production: 127,000,000 tonnes.[39]
A record of more than 1.8 million new cars have been sold in Britain during this year, beating the previous record set in 1983. The Ford Escort is Britain's most popular new car for the fourth year running and all of the top 10 best-selling new cars are produced by Ford, Vauxhall or Austin Rover. Continental and Japanese manufacturers enjoy a good-sized percentage of the new car market though, with Fiat, Nissan, Peugeot, Renault, Volkswagen and Volvo all doing well. These figures are announced on 7 January 1986 by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.[55]
The first retailers move into the Merry Hill Shopping Centre near Dudley, West Midlands. A new shopping centre is scheduled to open alongside the developing retail park in April 1986 and it is anticipated to grow into Europe's largest indoor shopping centre with further developments set to be completed by 1990, as well as including a host of leisure facilities.[56]
^Phillips, Nick; Bridgeman, June; Ferguson-Smith, Malcolm (October 2000). The BSE Inquiry (Report). Vol. 3. Archived from the original on 2 August 2006. Retrieved 13 May 2021. §1.7.
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