Timeline of Key Dates

Here is a timeline of some key and significant events occurring after 1945 taken from Religion and Change in Modern Britain.

1948 The Empire Windrush docks at Tilbury from Jamaica bringing migrants who had responded to the invitation to come from within the Empire to work in post-war Britain

1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II through which she becomes Head of the Commonwealth

1954 The Reverend Billy Graham launches his first large-scale mission in Britain

1955 Margaret Knight of the University of Aberdeen gives two talks making the argument for humanism on the BBC Home Service

1957 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan refers to Communism as a ‘doctrinaire nightmare’ in a speech at a Conservative rally in Bedford

1966 TV comedy about a cathedral clerical team All Gas and Gaiters first broadcast on the BBC

1970 First music festival held at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury

1970 Special Constable Harbans Singh Jabbal is the first British policeman allowed to go on duty wearing a turban

1971 Ian Paisley co-founds the Democratic Unionist Party and so becomes leader of a political party as well as the Free Presbyterian Church

1972 United Reformed Church founded

1976 Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association bring a successful private prosecution for blasphemy libel against the magazine Gay News         

1979 Margaret Thatcher elected Prime Minister

1981 Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp established in protest against nuclear deterrence and the arrival of US Tomahawk cruise missiles

1985 The Church of England’s Faith in the City report launched

1987 The Inter Faith Network comes into being

1988 Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses published

1994 The Church of England begins to ordain women priests

1997 Majorities in Wales and Scotland vote for devolution

1997 The funeral of Princess Diana held at Westminster Abbey

1998 The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is signed in Northern Ireland

1998 Human Rights Act ratified

2000 The Millennium Dome opens including the ‘Faith Zone’

2001 Riots occur in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford

2001 The National Census asks a question about religion for the first time in 150 years

2003 A Muslim chaplain becomes first minority-faith Head of Chaplaincy in a British hospital

2004 Non-statutory National Framework for Religious Education in England published

2005 Four young, male, Muslim suicide bombers attack London

2006 Burnley and Pendle Faith Centre established

2006 The NHS Trusts’ Association launches its online Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners

2007 People begin to line the main street of Wootton Bassett as hearses bring the coffins of the dead from RAF base Lyneham

2010 250th anniversary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews

2010 Pope Benedict XIV visits the UK

2010 the Shree Sanatan Mandir in Wembley is finally opened