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1920 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1920 in the United Kingdom.

George V

Monarch

David Lloyd George (Coalition)

Prime Minister

January–November – Experimental radio broadcasts including speech and music are made from a studio at the factory in Chelmsford, Essex.

Marconi Company

9 January – The cargo Treveal is wrecked in the English Channel; 35 people lose their lives.

steamer

11 February – The Council of the meets for the first time in London.

League of Nations

23 February – Winston Churchill announces that conscripts will be replaced by a volunteer army of 220,000 men.

War Secretary

10 March – The Council accepts the Government's plan for a Parliament of Northern Ireland.

Ulster Unionist

17 March – unveils a monument to Nurse Edith Cavell in London.

Queen Alexandra

27 March – wins the Grand National.

Troytown

29 March – Sir is promoted to Field Marshal, the first man to rise from private (enlisted 1877) to the highest rank in the British Army.[1]

William Robertson

Second reading

5–30 April – , a protest march of 250 blind men from across Britain to London.

1920 blind march

10 April – win the Football League title for the first time.[4]

West Bromwich Albion

20 April–12 September – compete at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and win 15 gold, 15 silver and 13 bronze medals.

Great Britain and Ireland

24 April – beat Huddersfield Town 1–0 in the first FA Cup Final since 1915.

Aston Villa

29 April – established by Ebenezer Howard. The first house is occupied just before Christmas.[5]

Welwyn Garden City

7 May – is founded during a meeting at the West View Hotel on the town's promenade.

Morecambe F.C.

10 May – Forty prisoners on hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs are released.

Irish republican

11 May – , 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.

Oswald Mosley

13 May – "" campaign: London dockers refuse to load the SS Jolly George with munitions intended for Poland in the Polish–Soviet War.[6]

Hands Off Russia

17 May – supporters and Unionists engage in pitched street battles in Derry.

Sinn Féin

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 (13 p/kW).

horsepower

29 May – in Lincolnshire kills 23.

Louth flood of 1920

9 June – King opens the Imperial War Museum at The Crystal Palace.

George V

15 June – Australian soprano 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.

Nellie Melba

20 June – Five people are killed during severe rioting in .

Ulster

24 June – Troops are sent to reinforce the garrison.

Derry

3 July – The at Dreamland Margate amusement park opens, the first in the UK.

Scenic Railway (roller coaster)

5 July – A new service starts from London to Amsterdam.

airmail

13 July – bans foreigners from almost all council jobs.

London County Council

16 July – is officially declared over with Austria.

World War I

21 July – Protestants expel Catholic workers from the shipyard in Belfast.[7]

Harland and Wolff

23 July – Fourteen die and one hundred are injured in fierce rioting in .

Belfast

24 July – Frank T. Courtney wins the aircraft race from Hendon at an average speed of 153.5 mph (247.0 km/h).[8]

Aerial Derby

28 July – The first women members in England are empanelled at Bristol quarter sessions.[9]

jury

30 July–8 August – held at Olympia, London.[10]

1st World Scout Jamboree

Daniel Mannix

1 August – The first of the Communist Party of Great Britain opens.

Congress

3 August – There are riots in Belfast in protest at the continuing British Army presence.

Catholic

9 August – The says it will call for a general strike if the United Kingdom declares war on Russia.

Labour Party

13 August – The receives Royal Assent, providing for Irish Republican Army activists to be tried by court-martial rather than by jury in criminal courts.[12]

Restoration of Order in Ireland Act

Blind Persons Act 1920

18 August – The first night services are introduced in London.

bus

28 August – The first games in the new 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.[13] A northern section is planned for next season.[14]

Football League Third Division

29 August – Eleven die and forty are injured in street battles in .

Belfast

Bentley

22 September – The forms the Flying Squad, following an announcement on 17 February that their horses will be replaced by cars.

Metropolitan Police

7 October – The first one hundred women are admitted to study for full at the University of Oxford.

degrees

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. and Ivy Williams are among them.[16]

Dorothy L. Sayers

16 October – Miners go on .

strike

20 October – The activist Sylvia Pankhurst is charged with sedition after calling upon workers to loot the London Docks.

suffragette

Emergency Powers Bill

28 October – is jailed for six months.

Sylvia Pankhurst

3 November – The miners' ends after only a small majority vote to continue.

strike

8 November – first appears in a cartoon strip in the Daily Express.[17]

Rupert Bear

10 November – The body of arrives from France aboard HMS Verdun.

The Unknown Warrior

11 November – King George V unveils in London; The Unknown Warrior is buried in Westminster Abbey.[17]

The Cenotaph

15 November – First complete public performance of 's suite The Planets given in London by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.

Gustav Holst

21 November – : 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.[12][18] Three men are shot on this night in Dublin Castle "while trying to escape".

Bloody Sunday

28 November – : the flying column of the 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, led by Tom Barry, ambushes two lorries carrying Auxiliaries at Kilmichael, County Cork, killing seventeen (with three of its men also dying), which leads to official reprisals.[12]

Kilmichael Ambush

29 November – imposed during World War I ends when the restriction on availability of sugar is lifted by the Government.[19]

Rationing

5 December – The vote against prohibition.

Scots

11 December – : the Burning of Cork: British forces set fire to 5 acres (20,000 m2) 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.

Irish War of Independence

15 December – ' The Lark Ascending is premiered in its original version for violin and piano with Marie Hall as violinist at Shirehampton near Bristol.

Vaughan Williams

Government of Ireland Act 1920

26 December – 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.[20]

Dick, Kerr's Ladies F.C.

's The Waggoner and Other Poems.

Edmund Blunden

's novels In Chancery and Awakening, part of The Forsyte Saga.

John Galsworthy

Dean 's Romanes Lecture The Idea of Progress.

William Inge

's collected Poems (posthumous).

Wilfred Owen

's The First World War, 1914–1918.

Charles à Court Repington

The Valour and Vision: Poems of the War, 1914–1918.

anthology

2 January – , peer (died 2004)

Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire

3 January – , Labour MP (died 2006)

Hugh McCartney

5 January – , life peer (died 2013)

William Ward, 4th Earl of Dudley

6 January – , biologist and geneticist (died 2004)

John Maynard Smith

9 January – , actor (died 2012)[24]

Clive Dunn

James Bottomley

Sarah Baring

Philippa Pearce

24 January – , poet (killed in action 1944)

Keith Douglas

26 January – , actor (died 2006)

Derek Bond

27 January – , film production designer (died 2005)

John Box

28 January – , priest and theologian (died 2005)

James A. Whyte

Michael Anderson

31 January – , footballer (died 2014)

Bert Williams

5 February – , actor, comedy writer and raconteur (died 1998)

Frank Muir

6 February – , historian and archaeologist (died 2005)

Maurice Beresford

10 February – , physician and scientist (died 2000)

Alex Comfort

16 February – , racing driver (died 2014)

Tony Crook

17 February – , journalist (died 2002)

Ronald Butt

19 February – , actor (died 1988)

George Rose

21 February – , army general (died 2014)

Logan Scott-Bowden

25 February – , diplomat (died 2000)

Antony Duff

Derek Goodwin

27 February – , cricketer (died 2013)

Reg Simpson

2 March – , weatherman (died 2009)

George Cowling

Ronald Searle

5 March – , actress (died 2001)

Rachel Gurney

6 March – , film director (died 2018)

Lewis Gilbert

Michael Brock

11 March – , academic, poet, novelist and critic (died 2002)

D. J. Enright

14 March – , high jumper (died 2014)

Dorothy Tyler-Odam

17 March – , historian (died 2011)

John Ehrman

19 March – , inventor of Matchbox Toys (died 2007)

Jack Odell

Pamela Harriman

22 March – , pianist and musical educator (died 2020)

Fanny Waterman

23 March – , biochemist (died 2019)

Barbara Low

Paul Scott

27 March – , illustrator (died 1995)

Robin Jacques

31 March – , aristocrat, writer and socialite (died 2014)

Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

March – , land surveyor (died 2018)

Walter Smith

6 January – , banker (born 1856)

Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe

11 January – , Welsh entrepreneur (born 1834)

Pryce Pryce-Jones

18 January – , admiral in the Imperial Chinese Navy (born 1837)

John McClure

24 January – , diplomat and administrator (born 1864)

William Plunket, 5th Baron Plunket

7 February – , poet (born 1858)

Dollie Radford

19 February – , literary scholar and poet (born 1846)

Ernest Hartley Coleridge

13 March – , geologist (born 1842)

Charles Lapworth

15 March – , nature artist, drowned (born 1871)

Edith Holden

21 March – , suffragette (born 1867)

Evelina Haverfield

26 March – (Mrs. Humphry Ward), novelist (born 1851 in Tasmania)

Mary Augusta Ward

14 April – , cartographer (born 1860)

John George Bartholomew

17 April – , Scottish international footballer (born 1863)

Alex Higgins

20 April – , painter (born 1840)

Briton Rivière

7 May – , illustrator (born 1860)

Hugh Thomson

14 May – , archaeologist (born 1867)

Ronald Montagu Burrows

18 May – , theatrical architect and designer (born 1854)

Frank Matcham

28 May – , clergyman, hymnodist and conservationist (born 1851)

Hardwicke Rawnsley

4 June – , Scottish-born socialist politician (born 1859)

John Bruce Glasier

5 June – , novelist (born 1840)

Rhoda Broughton

10 July – , admiral (born 1841)

John ("Jackie") Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

17 July – , studio potter (born 1846)

Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet

2 August – , actor (born 1847)

George W. Anson

10 August – , textile manufacturer and antiquarian (born 1851)

Erskine Beveridge

16 August – Sir , astronomer and science editor (born 1836)

Norman Lockyer

5 October – , publisher (born 1863)

William Heinemann

17 October – , botanist, in China (born 1880)

Reginald Farrer

24 October – (Duchess of Edinburgh), member of the royal family, in Switzerland (born 1853)

Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia

23 November – , admiral (born 1852)

Sir George Callaghan

3 December – , astronomer and photographer (born 1843)

William de Wiveleslie Abney

20 December – , Olympic yachtsman and yacht and aircraft designer (born 1863)

Linton Hope

List of British films of 1920