Events from the year 1950 in the United Kingdom.
Incumbents
Monarch – George VI
Prime Minister – Clement Attlee (Labour) Parliament 38th (until 3 February) 39th (starting 1 March)
Events
12 January – Submarine sinks after collision in the Thames Estuary with 64 deaths (mostly from hypothermia) and 20 survivors. 16 January – The BBC Light Programme first airs the daily children's radio feature Listen with Mother. 26 January India becomes a republic, severing ties with the United Kingdom. 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. 8 February – George Kelly is sentenced to hang for the murder of the Cameo cinema manager in the Liverpool suburb of Wavertree, a conviction which will be quashed as unsafe fifty-three years later. 20 February – Ealing Studios release the film The Blue Lamp, introducing the character PC George Dixon, played by Jack Warner (with Dirk Bogarde as a young criminal). 21 February – Cunard liner arrives at the scrapyard in Faslane at the end of a 36-year career. 23 February – The 1950 General Election is held. Labour is defending a triple-figure parliamentary majority in government, but their popularity took a plunge last year following the devaluation of the pound and the failure of the groundnuts scheme, with many recent opinion polls showing a comfortable Conservative lead. BBC Television airs its first election results programme, however no footage survives due to it being broadcast live and thus, was never recorded in the first place. University constituencies have been abolished at the dissolution. 24 February – Clement Attlee wins the General Election, giving Labour a second term in government after their election triumph five years earlier, in 1945. However, he retains power with a majority of just five seats, a stark contrast to the 146-seat majority that he gained previously. Among the lost Labour seats is Bexley in Kent where 33-year-old Conservative Party candidate Edward Heath seizes from Ashley Bramall. 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. 1 March – German-born theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, is convicted following a confession of supplying secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. 6–8 March – The World Figure Skating Championships are held in London. 8 March Carmaker Rover tests a revolutionary new turbine-powered concept car. Release of comedy film The Happiest Days of Your Life starring Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford. 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. 16 March – The Gambols comic strip first appears in the Daily Express. c. April? – The best-selling Kenwood Chef food mixer is first introduced. 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. 14 April – The Eagle comic first appears, featuring Dan Dare and Captain Pugwash. 29 April – Arsenal F.C. win the FA Cup with a 2–0 win over Liverpool at Wembley Stadium. 13 May – first Grand Prix held at Silverstone. 20 May – The first package holiday air charter, by Vladimir Raitz of Horizon Holidays, from Gatwick Airport to Calvi, Corsica, for camping. 21 May – A tornado tracks across England from Wendover to Blakeney, Norfolk (), the longest ever such track in Britain. 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. 6 June – The BBC Light Programme first airs the popular radio comedy feature Educating Archie. 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. 24 June – World Cup opens in Brazil with the England national football team competing for the first time.