1920 in the United Kingdom
Events from the year 1920 in the United Kingdom.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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)
13 July – bans foreigners from almost all council jobs.
London County Council
23 July – Fourteen die and one hundred are injured in fierce rioting in .
Belfast
Daniel Mannix
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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)