1920 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1920 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Monarch – George V
Prime Minister – David Lloyd George

Events

January–November – Experimental radio broadcasts including speech and music are made from a studio at the Marconi Company factory in Chelmsford, Essex.
9 January – The cargo steamer Treveal is wrecked in the English Channel; 35 people lose their lives.
23 February – War Secretary Winston Churchill announces that conscripts will be replaced by a volunteer army of 220,000 men.
10 March – The Ulster Unionist Council accepts the Government's plan for a Parliament of Northern Ireland.
17 March – Queen Alexandra unveils a monument to Nurse Edith Cavell in London.
27 March – Troytown wins the Grand National.
29 March – Sir William Robertson is promoted to Field Marshal, the first man to rise from private to the highest rank in the British Army.
31 March
* In the Second reading, debate in Parliament on the Government of Ireland Bill, Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson opposes the division of Ireland, seeing it as a betrayal of Unionists in the south and west.
* Disestablishment of the Church in Wales comes into effect, under terms of the Welsh Church Act 1914.
5–30 April – 1920 blind march, a protest march of 250 blind men from across Britain to London.
10 April – West Bromwich Albion win the Football League title for the first time.
20 April–12 September – Great Britain and Ireland compete at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and win 15 gold, 15 silver and 13 bronze medals.
24 April – Aston Villa beat Huddersfield Town 1–0 in the first FA Cup Final since 1915.
29 April – Welwyn Garden City established by Ebenezer Howard. The first house is occupied just before Christmas.
7 May – Morecambe F.C. is founded during a meeting at the West View Hotel on the town's promenade.
10 May – Forty Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs are released.
11 May – Oswald Mosley, a Conservative MP, marries Cynthia Curzon, second daughter of ex-Viceroy of India, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London.
13 May – "Hands Off Russia" campaign: London dockers refuse to load the SS Jolly George with munitions intended for Poland in the Polish–Soviet War.
17 May – Sinn Féin supporters and Unionists engage in pitched street battles in Derry.
18 May – Women lecturers are given equal status to their male colleagues at the University of Oxford.
21 May – The UK Government proposes a car tax of £1 per horsepower.
29 May – Louth flood of 1920 in Lincolnshire kills 23.
9 June – King George V opens the Imperial War Museum at The Crystal Palace.
15 June – Australian soprano Nellie Melba becomes history's first well-known performer to make a radio broadcast when she sings two arias as part of the series of Marconi broadcasts from Chelmsford.
20 June – Five people are killed during severe rioting in Ulster.
24 June – Troops are sent to reinforce the Derry garrison.
3 July – The Scenic Railway (roller coaster) at Dreamland Margate amusement park opens, the first in the UK.
5 July – A new airmail service starts from London to Amsterdam.
13 July – London County Council bans foreigners from almost all council jobs.
16 July – World War I is officially declared over with Austria.
21 July – Protestants expel Catholic workers from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
23 July – Fourteen die and one hundred are injured in fierce rioting in Belfast.
24 July – Frank T. Courtney wins the Aerial Derby aircraft race from Hendon at an average speed of.
28 July – The first women jury members in England are empanelled at Bristol quarter sessions.
30 July–8 August – 1st World Scout Jamboree held at Olympia, London.
31 July
* Irish-born Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Daniel Mannix is detained on board ship off Queenstown and prevented from landing in Ireland or from speaking in the main Irish Catholic communities elsewhere in the UK.
* The Communist Party of Great Britain is founded in London.
1 August – The first Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain opens.
3 August – There are Catholic riots in Belfast in protest at the continuing British Army presence.
9 August – The Labour Party says it will call for a general strike if the United Kingdom declares war on Russia.
13 August – The Restoration of Order in Ireland Act receives Royal Assent, providing for Irish Republican Army activists to be tried by court-martial rather than by jury in criminal courts.
16 August
* Blind Persons Act 1920 passed, the world's first disability-specific legislation, providing a pension allowance for blind persons aged between 50 and 70 years of age, directing local authorities to make provision for the welfare of blind people and regulating charities in the sector.
* First Firearms Act passed.
18 August – The first night bus services are introduced in London.
28 August – The first games in the new Football League Third Division are played by the 22 clubs who were elected to the new division from the Southern League. Among the members of the new division are Southampton, Crystal Palace, Millwall, Norwich City, Queen's Park Rangers and Luton Town. A northern section is planned for next season.
29 August – Eleven die and forty are injured in street battles in Belfast.
September
* First Bentley cars are delivered to customers.
* City of Birmingham Orchestra formed, the UK's first municipally-supported orchestra.
22 September – The Metropolitan Police forms the Flying Squad, following an announcement on 17 February that their horses will be replaced by cars.
7 October – The first one hundred women are admitted to study for full degrees at the University of Oxford.
10 October – It is announced that compulsory hand signals are to be introduced for all drivers. Hand signals will remain a crucial part of motoring life until the 1970s, when the increased use of indicators on vehicles renders them no longer necessary.
14 October – The first women receive degrees at the University of Oxford, these being awarded retrospectively. Dorothy L. Sayers and Ivy Williams are among them.
16 October – Miners go on strike.
20 October – The suffragette activist Sylvia Pankhurst is charged with sedition after calling upon workers to loot the London Docks.
25 October
* The Emergency Powers Bill to counter the miners' strike has its second reading in the House of Commons.
* Terence MacSwiney, jailed Lord Mayor of Cork, dies in Brixton Prison after a 78-day hunger strike.
28 October – Sylvia Pankhurst is jailed for six months.
3 November – The miners' strike ends after only a small majority vote to continue.
8 November – Rupert Bear first appears in a cartoon strip in the Daily Express.
10 November – The body of The Unknown Warrior arrives from France aboard HMS Verdun.
11 November – King George V unveils The Cenotaph in London; The Unknown Warrior is buried in Westminster Abbey.
15 November – First complete public performance of Gustav Holst's suite The Planets given in London by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.
21 November – Bloody Sunday: the Irish Republican Army, on the instructions of Michael Collins, shoot dead the Cairo gang, fourteen British undercover agents in Dublin, most in their homes. Later the same day in retaliation, the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary open fire on a crowd at a Gaelic Athletic Association Football match in Croke Park, killing thirteen spectators and one player and wounding 60. Three men are shot on this night in Dublin Castle "while trying to escape".
28 November – Kilmichael Ambush: the flying column of the 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, led by Tom Barry, ambushes two lorries carrying Auxiliaries at Kilmichael, County Cork, killing seventeen, which leads to official reprisals.
29 November – Rationing imposed during World War I ends when the restriction on availability of sugar is lifted by the Government.
5 December – The Scots vote against prohibition.
9 December – The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes is established by the government as a not-for-profit civilian organisation to provide canteens, shops and other recreational facilities for serving other ranks in the British armed forces and their families worldwide; it begins trading in 1921.
11 December – Irish War of Independence: the Burning of Cork: British forces set fire to of the centre of the city of Cork, including the City Hall, in reprisal attacks after a British auxiliary is killed in a guerilla ambush.
15 December – Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending is premiered in its original version for violin and piano with Marie Hall as violinist at Shirehampton near Bristol.
23 December
* Government of Ireland Act 1920, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, receives Royal Assent from George V providing for the partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland with separate parliaments, granting a measure of home rule.
* Jewish leaders in London launch a £25 million appeal for Palestine.
26 December – Dick, Kerr's Ladies F.C. draw the largest-ever crowd to attend a women's association football match, 53,000 spectators at Goodison Park, Liverpool, for a game against St. Helen's Ladies.

Undated

This year sees the all-time highest annual number of live births in the country, over 1.1 million.
Meccano Ltd of Liverpool produce the first Hornby toy train, a clockwork 0 gauge model.
Prince Albert, having become Duke of York earlier in the year, meets Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who will become his wife in 1923.
Huddersfield Corporation buys the leaseholds of much of the town from the Ramsden estate for £1.3M, becoming "the town that bought itself".

Publications

Edmund Blunden's The Waggoner and Other Poems.
John Galsworthy's novels In Chancery and Awakening, part of The Forsyte Saga.
Dean William Inge's Romanes Lecture The Idea of Progress.
Wilfred Owen's collected Poems.
Charles à Court Repington's The First World War, 1914–1918.
The anthology Valour and Vision: Poems of the War, 1914–1918.

Births

January – March

2 January – Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, peer
3 January – Hugh McCartney, Labour MP
5 January – William Ward, 4th Earl of Dudley, life peer
6 January
* John Maynard Smith, biologist and geneticist
* Doris Stokes, spiritualist and medium
9 January – Clive Dunn, actor
12 January
* James Bottomley, diplomat
* Janet Elizabeth Macgregor, physician and cytologist
20 January
* Sarah Baring, socialite and memoirist
* John Maynard Smith, theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist
* Joyce Waley-Cohen, educationist and public servant
22 January
* Philippa Pearce, children's author
* Alf Ramsey, footballer and manager
* Charlie Stubbs, footballer
24 January – Keith Douglas, poet
26 January – Derek Bond, actor
27 January – John Box, film production designer
28 January – James A. Whyte, priest and theologian
30 January
* Michael Anderson, film director
* Patrick Heron, painter, writer and designer
31 January – Bert Williams, footballer
5 February – Frank Muir, actor, comedy writer and raconteur
6 February – Maurice Beresford, historian and archaeologist
10 February – Alex Comfort, physician and scientist
16 February – Tony Crook, racing driver
17 February – Ronald Butt, journalist
19 February – George Rose, actor
21 February – Logan Scott-Bowden, army general
25 February – Antony Duff, diplomat
26 February
* Derek Goodwin, ornithologist
* Kenneth Hubbard, RAF pilot
27 February – Reg Simpson, cricketer
2 March – George Cowling, weatherman
3 March
* Ronald Searle, cartoonist
* Sydney Templeman, Baron Templeman, judge and law lord
5 March – Rachel Gurney, actress
6 March – Lewis Gilbert, film director
9 March
* Michael Brock, historian
* Alison Robins, military communications listener
11 March – D. J. Enright, academic, poet, novelist and critic
14 March – Dorothy Tyler-Odam, high jumper
17 March – John Ehrman, historian
19 March – Jack Odell, inventor of Matchbox Toys
20 March
* Pamela Harriman, née Digby, socialite, dipliomat and political activist in the United States
* Edwin Hunt, waterman, Queen's Bargemaster
* Dudley Savage, theatre organist
* Rosemary Timperley, fiction writer
22 March – Fanny Waterman, pianist and musical educator
23 March – Barbara Low, biochemist
25 March
* Paul Scott, novelist, playwright and poet
* Patrick Troughton, actor
27 March – Robin Jacques, illustrator
31 March – Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, aristocrat, writer and socialite
March – Walter Smith, land surveyor

April – June

2 April – Jack Stokes, animation director
5 April – Arthur Hailey, novelist
9 April – Alex Moulton, mechanical engineer and inventor
11 April – Peter O'Donnell, fiction and comic strip writer
14 April – Ivor Forbes Guest, historian of dance
16 April – Alan Pegler, English businessman
17 April – Arnold Yarrow, actor
18 April – Roy Paul, Welsh footballer
21 April – Ronald Magill, actor
23 April – Eric Yarrow, businessman
27 April – Edwin Morgan, Scottish poet and translator
28 April – Hugh Bentall, surgeon
30 April
* Alexander Lamb Cullen, electrical engineer
* Tom Moore, World War II soldier and NHS fundraiser
* William Ralph Turner, painter
2 May – Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson, Scottish pianist, composer and broadcaster
4 May – Ronald Chesney, harmonica player and comedy scriptwriter
5 May – Glanmor Williams, geographer
9 May
* Richard Adams, novelist
* Michael Dauncey, brigadier
10 May
* Helen Crummy, social activist
* Bert Weedon, guitarist and composer
13 May – Gareth Morris, flautist
16 May – Geoffrey Page, air ace
18 May – Anthony Storr, psychiatrist and author
20 May
* William Bulmer, businessman
* Betty Driver, actress
21 May
* John Chadwick, cryptanalyst and classical scholar
* Anthony Steel, actor
23 May – P. N. Furbank, writer and literary critic
28 May – Jim Russell, racing driver
30 May – Reginald Harland, Royal Air Force commander
2 June – Johnny Speight, television comedy scriptwriter
6 June – Aubrey Richards, actor
9 June – Sheila Keith, actress
11 June – Diana Armfield, artist
12 June – Peter Jones, actor
17 June
* Patrick Duffy, Labour politician and economist
* John Waddy, British Army colonel
18 June – Ian Carmichael, actor
19 June
* Johnny Douglas, composer and musician
* Geoffrey Lewis, Turkologist
22 June – Marea Hartman, athletics administrator
23 June – Henry Chadwick, theologian
24 June – John Coplans, artist, curator and museum director
28 June
* Reginald Coates, civil engineer
* Clarissa Eden, born Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, wife of Prime Minister Anthony Eden
* Irene Thomas, radio personality

July – September

1 July – Geoffrey Lees, cricketer
2 July – Annette Kerr, actress
4 July – Anthony Barber, Conservative politician
10 July – Leslie Porter, businessman
12 July – Randolph Quirk, linguist
13 July – Bill Towers, footballer
14 July – Tom Neil, RAF pilot
17 July – Kenneth Wolstenholme, sports commentator
19 July – George Dawkes, cricketer
20 July – Jasper Blackall, racing yachtsman
21 July – John Horsley, actor
24 July
* Tamar Eshel, Israeli diplomat and politician
* Toby Graham, Olympic cross country skier and university professor
* Charles Suckling, biochemist
25 July – Rosalind Franklin, crystallographer
29 July – Jack Richardson, chemical engineer
30 July
* Bob Cobbing, poet
* Michael Crawford, cricketer
* Lady Brigid Guinness, nurse and noblewoman
31 July – Peter Thomas, politician
2 August – Hugh Hickling, lawyer, colonial civil servant
3 August
* Norman Dewis, test driver and development engineer
* P. D. James, writer of crime fiction
* Hugh Lunghi, military interpreter
10 August – Tony Tenser, film producer
12 August – Peter West, sports commentator
13 August – Forbes Howie, businessman
15 August – Glyn Gilbert, major-general
17 August – Emrys Jones, geographer
18 August – David Lacy-Scott, amateur cricketer
19 August – Hugh Manning, actor
21 August – Christopher Robin Milne, author and bookseller
23 August – W. I. B. Crealock, yacht designer
27 August
* Michael Giddings, air marshal
* James Molyneaux, Ulster Unionist Party leader
* Peter Vansittart, writer
3 September – Les Medley, footballer
6 September – Trevor Morris, footballer
7 September – Brian Pippard, physicist
9 September – Michael Aldridge, actor
12 September – Cornel Lucas, photographer
17 September – Dinah Sheridan, actress
21 September – Kenneth McAlpine, English racing driver
22 September – Nathaniel Fiennes, 21st Baron Saye and Sele, peer and businessman
24 September – Leo Marks, author and cryptographer
27 September – Alan A. Freeman, record producer
29 September – Peter D. Mitchell, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

October – December

1 October – David Jamieson, Army officer
2 October – Norman Whiting, cricketer
3 October
* Philippa Foot, née Bosanquet, philosopher
* Philip Knights, Baron Knights, police officer and life peer
5 October
* Ronald Leigh-Hunt, actor
* Richard Wood, Baron Holderness, politician
8 October – Alf Bellis, footballer
9 October – Michael Shaw, Baron Shaw of Northstead, politician
12 October – Steve Conway, singer
13 October – Donald Russell, classicist
15 October – Daniel Everett, RAF pilot
16 October – Arthur Worsley, ventriloquist
18 October – Alexander Young, operatic tenor
19 October – Harry Alan Towers, film producer and screenwriter
25 October – J. Denis Summers-Smith, ornithologist and tribologist
31 October – Dick Francis, steeplechase jockey and crime novelist
1 November – Ted Lowe, snooker commentator
3 November
* Ursula Dronke, medievalist
* William Goodreds, cricketer
* John Westcott, computer scientist
4 November – Peter Ayerst, World War II RAF fighter and test pilot
5 November – Tommy Godwin, cyclist
11 November – Roy Jenkins, politician
13 November – Ian Gourlay, Army general
15 November
* Colin Collindridge, footballer
* Daphne Pochin Mould, author and photographer
16 November – Laurence Stark, World War II air ace
18 November – Jerry Roberts, codebreaker and businessman
20 November – Ian McHarg, architect
22 November – Anne Crawford, film actress, in Mandatory Palestine
25 November
* Shelagh Fraser, actress
* Bernard Weatherill, politician and Speaker of the House of Commons
27 November – Buster Merryfield, character actor
28 November
* Cecilia Colledge, Olympic figure skater
* Ethel Lote, English World War II nurse and yoga instructor.
* Patrick Rodger, Scottish-born Anglican bishop
3 December – Sheila K. McCullagh, author
6 December – George Porter, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
7 December – Frank Taylor, sports journalist
10 December – Alfred Goldie, mathematician
11 December – William Elliott, Baron Elliott of Morpeth, politician
12 December – Dick James, singer and record producer
14 December – Rosemary Sutcliff, novelist
16 December
* Les Leston, racing car driver
* David Seely, 4th Baron Mottistone, naval officer and life peer
18 December
* Ian Edward Fraser, World War II sailor
* Merlyn Rees, Labour politician, Home Secretary
23 December – Tim Elkington, RAF pilot
24 December – John Barron, actor
30 December – David Fraser, Army general

Deaths

6 January – Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe, banker
11 January – Pryce Pryce-Jones, Welsh entrepreneur
18 January – John McClure, admiral in the Imperial Chinese Navy
24 January – William Plunket, 5th Baron Plunket, diplomat and administrator
7 February – Dollie Radford, poet
19 February – Ernest Hartley Coleridge, literary scholar and poet
13 March – Charles Lapworth, geologist
15 March – Edith Holden, nature artist, drowned
21 March – Evelina Haverfield, suffragette
26 March – Mary Augusta Ward, novelist
14 April – John George Bartholomew, cartographer
17 April – Alex Higgins, Scottish international footballer
20 April – Briton Rivière, painter
7 May – Hugh Thomson, illustrator
14 May – Ronald Montagu Burrows, archaeologist
18 May – Frank Matcham, theatrical architect and designer
28 May – Hardwicke Rawnsley, clergyman, hymnodist and conservationist
4 June – John Bruce Glasier, Scottish-born socialist politician
5 June – Rhoda Broughton, novelist
10 July – John ("Jackie") Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, admiral
17 July – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, studio potter
2 August – George W. Anson, actor
10 August – Erskine Beveridge, textile manufacturer and antiquarian
16 August – Sir Norman Lockyer, astronomer and science editor
5 October – William Heinemann, publisher
17 October – Reginald Farrer, botanist, in China
24 October – Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, member of the royal family, in Switzerland
23 November – Sir George Callaghan, admiral
3 December – William de Wiveleslie Abney, astronomer and photographer
20 December – Linton Hope, Olympic yachtsman and yacht and aircraft designer