Events from the year 1945 in the United Kingdom. This year sees the end of World War II and a landslide general election victory for the Labour Party.
Incumbents Monarch – George VI Prime Minister – Winston Churchill (Coalition) (until 26 July), Clement Attlee (Labour) (starting 26 July)
Events 2 January – General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference at Zonhoven describing his contribution to the Battle of the Bulge. 23 January – announcement of the establishment of the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation (ICFC; predecessor of 3i) by the Bank of England and the major commercial banks to provide long-term investment funding for small and medium-sized enterprises. 4 February – Prime Minister Winston Churchill attends the Yalta Conference (ends 11 February). 13 February – the RAF Bomber Command begins the strategic bombing of Dresden in Saxony, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm which kills tens of thousands of civilians. 10 March – sixty-seven German prisoners of war tunnel their way out of Island Farm Camp 198 at Bridgend, the biggest escape attempt by German POWs in the UK during the War. 14 March – the RAF uses the Grand Slam bomb for the first time on the Bielefeld railway viaduct. 17 March – 13 people are killed and 22 injured when a lone Heinkel 111 bomber opens fire and drops bombs on people leaving a cinema in Kingston upon Hull. 19 March – Dennis O'Neill case: the foster father and foster mother of 12-year-old Dennis O'Neill, who died in their care on 9 January in Shropshire, are convicted of manslaughter and neglect respectively, leading to changes in provision of foster care in the UK.. 27 March – last day of V-2 rocket attacks aimed at the UK. One hits Hughes Mansions, Stepney in East London, killing 134 and the last falls in Orpington with one fatality. 29 March – the last V-1 flying bomb attack on the UK takes place. The last enemy action of any kind on British soil occurs when one strikes Datchworth in Hertfordshire without any fatalities or injuries. 13 April – the first Scottish National Party Member of Parliament, Robert McIntyre, is elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom following his victory at the Motherwell by-election. 15 April – British troops liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; Richard Dimbleby reports on it for the BBC. 19 April – Geoffrey Fisher enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury. April – Sybil Campbell is appointed a stipendiary magistrate in London, the first woman to become a professional judge in the UK. 7 May – at 23:00 the is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-2336 off the Firth of Forth with two killed, the last British-flagged merchant ship lost to German action.
8 May – eight days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in Berlin and the collapse of Nazi rule in Europe, V-E Day is celebrated throughout the UK. Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes a victory speech and appears on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with George VI, Queen Elizabeth and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Street parties take place throughout the country. 9 May – German forces in the Channel Islands, the only occupied part of the British Isles, surrender. 18 May – Operation Unthinkable: Churchill secretly requests his military chiefs of staff to consider a plan for British, American and reactivated German forces to attack the Soviet Red Army on July 1 to preserve the independence of Poland. The operation is ruled militarily unfeasible. 23 May – Churchill forms a "caretaker" Conservative Party administration, pending an election, officially ending the wartime Coalition government. 27 May – basic food ration reduced. 28 May – American-born Irish-raised William Joyce, known as "Lord Haw-Haw" is captured on the German border. He is later charged with high treason in London for his English-language wartime propaganda broadcasts on German radio. He is hanged in January 1946. 1 June – the UK takes over administration of Lebanon and Syria. 4 June – Churchill, in a broadcast election speech, claims that a future socialist government "would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo". 7 June – Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes is first performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London with Peter Pears in the title role. 13 June – Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts renamed Arts Council of Great Britain. 15 June – Parliament passes: The Family Allowances Act to provide payments to families with children with effect from 1946. The Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act, allowing an injured person to claim damages even though they were partly at fault, which was previously a complete bar to a claim. The damages may be reduced to reflect the share of responsibility.Text as enacted. 18 June – demobilisation of the wartime armed forces begins. 5 July – polling day for the first general election to be held since 1935; a few constituencies delay polling due to local Wakes weeks and the vote count is not made for another three weeks (see below) so that votes from service personnel overseas can be added to the total. 17 July – Potsdam Conference – the three main Allied leaders begin their final summit of the war. The meeting will end on 2 August.
26 July – general election results are announced; Winston Churchill resigns as prime minister after his Conservative Party is soundly defeated by the Labour Party, who have a majority of 146 seats, and Clement Attlee becomes the new prime minister. However, Churchill will remain as Leader of the Conservative Party, in opposition. It will be the first time that a Labour government with a majority in the House of Commons has governed Britain. Among the new Labour members of parliament is 29-year-old Harold Wilson, MP for Ormskirk in Lancashire, who will become the next Labour Prime Minister in 1964. A notable casualty of the election is Harold Macmillan, who has now lost the Stockton-on-Tees seat twice for the Conservative Party. Ernest Brown, leader of the National Liberal Party, loses his seat at Leith to Labour and Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, comes third in the poll at Caithness and Sutherland, while their parties are reduced to 11 and 12 seats respectively; Liberal William Beveridge loses his seat. Robert McIntyre loses his newly won Scottish National Party seat. The largest number of women MPs to date is elected (41, but only 1 Conservative). On 27 July, Alfred Dobbs, newly elected as Labour MP for Smethwick, near Birmingham, is killed in a car crash. (Two other Labour MPs die before the end of the year.) 29 July – the BBC Light Programme radio station is launched, concentrating on the broadcasting of mainstream light music and entertainment, superseding the BBC General Forces Programme within the UK using its longwave frequency from the Droitwich Transmitting Station. 2 August – Clement Davies replaces Sir Archibald Sinclair as leader of the Liberal Party. 5 August – the Giles family cartoon first appears in the Sunday Express. 13 August – Zionist World Congress approaches the British government to talk about the establishment of the state of Israel. 14 August The 1945 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours are announced, to mark the resignation of Winston Churchill.The Times, 14 August 1945, p. 4. Polish-Jewish orphans liberated from Theresienstadt concentration camp arrive in England for rehabilitation. Late this evening, the new prime minister, Clement Attlee, and his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, broadcast news of the surrender of Japan to the nation and Empire, speaking from 10 Downing Street. 15 August – V-J Day is celebrated in the UK as the first of two days of national holiday, marking the end of World War II. 16 August – in the House of Commons, Leader of the Opposition Winston Churchill speaks of an "Iron Curtain" descending across Europe. 17 August – George Orwell's political allegory Animal Farm is published. 30 August – British sovereignty of Hong Kong restored following the end of the Japanese occupation of the territory. 1 September – clothes ration reduced. 2 September Press censorship ends. Lend-Lease from the United States terminates. September – J. B. Priestley's drama An Inspector Calls is premièred (in Russian translation) in Leningrad. 2 October – Piccadilly Circus tube station becomes the first to be lit by fluorescent light. 24 October – the British government signs the United Nations Charter. 7 November – RAF Group Captain Hugh J. Wilson sets a new official world airspeed record (the first for a jet aircraft) of in a Gloster Meteor, flying from RAF Manston. 14 November – Harold Macmillan begins his third term as a Conservative MP, after winning the by-election in Bromley, Kent. 15 November – Gainsborough Pictures releases the period melodrama The Wicked Lady starring Margaret Lockwood, Patricia Roc and James Mason. 26 November – J. Arthur Rank releases David Lean's film of Noël Coward's Brief Encounter starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. 28 November – British fascist John Amery pleads guilty to treason and is immediately sentenced to hang. December Alexander Fleming and Ernst Boris Chain win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Howard Florey "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases".The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 John Maynard Keynes secures a fifty-year $3,750,000,000 Anglo-American loan for the Government from the United States at 2%, effective from 1946. Bernard Lovell establishes the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire. 10 December – forced repatriation of Liverpool Chinese seamen begins. 31 December – Britain receives its first shipment of bananas since the beginning of the war. Undated – the grammar school at Windermere reorganises itself to become Britain's first comprehensive school.
Publications Rev. W. V. Awdry's children's book The Three Railway Engines, first of The Railway Series (12 May). Agatha Christie's detective novel Sparkling Cyanide. E. B. Ford's book Butterflies, first of the New Naturalist series. Winston Graham's novel Ross Poldark, first of the Poldark Novels. Henry Green's novel Loving. C. S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength. Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love. George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. Karl Popper's book The Open Society and its Enemies. Bertrand Russell's book History of Western Philosophy. Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited.
Births 3 January – David Starkey, English historian 6 January – Barry John, Welsh rugby union footballer (died 2024) 10 January Jennifer Moss, actress (died 2006) Rod Stewart, rock singer 15 January – Princess Michael of Kent, German-born wife of Prince Michael of Kent 18 January – Rocco Forte, hotelier 21 January – Martin Shaw, English actor 23 January – Richard Dearlove, English intelligence officer 25 January – Dave Walker, rock musician 26 January Jacqueline du Pré, English cellist (died 1987) Marti Caine, actress and musician (died 1995) Ashley Hutchings, folk rock musician 29 January – Jim Nicholson, Northern Irish Unionist politician and MEP for Northern Ireland 30 January – Mike Kenny, paralympian swimmer 31 January – Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom 3 February – Roy 'Chubby' Brown, born Royston Vasey, stand-up comedian 5 February – Charlotte Rampling, English actress 7 February – Gerald Davies, Welsh rugby player 13 February Keith Nichols, jazz musician and manager (died 2021) Simon Schama, historian 14 February – Martin Sorrell, businessman 15 February – John Helliwell, English saxophonist and keyboard player 16 February – Jeremy Bulloch, actor (died 2020) 20 February – Alan Hull, English folk rock singer-songwriter (died 1995) 25 February – Elkie Brooks, English singer 26 February – Michael Marmot, English epidemiologist 22 March – Peter Williams, English physicist and academic