14 March – The Birmingham Six are freed after the Court of Appeal quashes their convictions over the 1974 pub bombings in Birmingham which killed 21 people and injured more than 160 others.[4]
28 March – An inquest in Sheffield into the Hillsborough disaster records a verdict of accidental death on the 95 people who died as a result of the tragedy almost two years ago. Many of the victims' families criticise the verdict, as many of them had been hoping for a verdict of unlawful killing against the police officers who patrolled the game.[5]
April
8 April – The Football Association announces plans for a new "super league" of 18 clubs to replace the Football League First Division as the highest division of English football. The move is attacked by smaller Football League clubs, who fear that they could go out of business if TV revenue was confined to the proposed super league.
22 May – Nearly six months after the breakthrough in the Channel Tunnel service tunnel, the breakthrough in the North rail tunnel is achieved. On the same day, road links to the English terminal are improved when the final section of the M20 motorway is opened between Maidstone and Ashford, meaning that the Chunnel's unbroken motorway link with London has already been completed an estimated three years before the first trains move between Great Britain and France.[6][7]
29 May – Martin Blatchford, a disabled 31-year-old father-of-three from Dudley in the West Midlands, is sentenced to 14 days in prison for his refusal to pay the Poll Tax.
8 July – Two suspected IRA terrorists shoot their way out of Brixton Prison in London.
11 July – Labour Party MP, Terry Fields, joins the list of people jailed for refusal to pay the poll tax after he receives a 60-day prison sentence. He is the first MP to be jailed for refusing to pay the controversial tax which was introduced early last year.[9]
19 July – Dean Saunders, 27-year-old Welsh international striker, becomes the most expensive player to be signed by a British club when a £2.9million fee takes him from Derby County to Liverpool, who have broken the record fee in British football for the third time in four years.[10]
31 July – The High Court gives its approval for the formation of a new Premier League in English football, which is expected to begin next year.
August
30 August – The father of 20-year-old Tony Bland, who has been in a Persistent vegetative state since suffering brain damage in the Hillsborough disaster in April 1989, says that his son should be allowed to die.[12]
17 October – £1million worth of cannabis is found near London, prompting the arrest of six people in the West Midlands
November
7 November – Labour retains its control of Hemsworth in the by-election, with the new MP being Derek Enright. Another by-election sees the Conservatives lose Langbaurgh to Labour, who gain a new MP in 35-year-old Indian born Ashok Kumar.
9 November – First ever controlled and substantial production of fusion energy achieved at the Joint European Torus in Oxford.[14]
25 November – Winston Silcott has his conviction for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock quashed. Silcott had been jailed for life in 1987 for the murder of PC Blakelock in the Tottenham riots of 1985, but he will remain imprisoned as he is serving a second life sentence for another unconnected crime.[15]
29 November – England footballer Gary Lineker announces that his eight-week-old son George is suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia, an illness which has a survival rate of 25%.
10 December – English-born Ronald Coase wins the Nobel Prize in Economics "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy".[17]
