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 broadcasts 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 broadcasts its first election results programme, however no footage survives due to it being broadcast live and thus, was never recorded in the first place. 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, which 33-year-old Conservative Party candidate Edward Heath seizes from Ashley Bramall. Both Communist Party MP's lose their seats. University constituencies have been abolished at the dissolution. Voter turnout is 83.9%, an all-time high for a UK general election under universal suffrage. 1 March – the 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