1912 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – H. H. Asquith
• Parliament – 30th

  Events

• 1 January – General Post Office takes over National Telephone Company.
• 17 January – British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four reach the South Pole to find that Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it.
• 31 January – G. K. Sowerby's drama Rutherford and Son premières at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
• 2 February – With Our King and Queen Through India, a 2½-hour Kinemacolor feature film of the Delhi Durbar of 1911 made by Charles Urban, is first shown at the Scala Theatre, London.
• 26 February–6 April – National coal strike of 1912.
• 1 March – suffragettes smash shop windows in the West End of London, especially around Oxford Street.
• 16 March – Lawrence Oates, ill member of Scott's South Pole expedition leaves the tent saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time". He is not seen again.
• 19 March – minimum wage introduced for miners after national strike.
• 29 March – the remaining members of Scott's expedition die.
• 30 March – the University Boat Race on the Thames in London is abandoned after both crews sink.
• 1 April – the University Boat Race is restarted, and Oxford wins.
• 11 April – Irish Home Rule Bill introduced in the House of Commons, but fails to receive the support of the House of Lords.
• 13 April – the Royal Flying Corps is established by royal charter.
• 14-15 April – the RMS Titanic sinks: The White Star liner strikes an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.
• 15 April – the syndicalist Daily Herald newspaper is first published on a permanent basis.
• 22 April – English aviator Denys Corbett Wilson completes the first aeroplane crossing of the Irish Sea, from Goodwick in Wales to Crane near Enniscorthy in Ireland.
• April/May – thousands of Jewish workers in London's garment trade in the West End strike, followed by thousands more in the East End inspired by Rudolf Rocker.
• May – Liberal Unionist Party formally merges into the Conservative And Unionist Party.
• 2 May - 3 July: Board of Trade inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
• 5 May - 22 July: Great Britain and Ireland compete at the Olympics in Stockholm and win 10 gold, 15 silver and 16 bronze medals.
• 13 May – the Air Battalion Royal Engineers becomes the Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps.
• 15 July – the National Insurance Act 1911 comes into force introducing National Insurance payments.
• 27 July – Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative Party in opposition, makes a defiant speech at a massive Irish Unionist rally at Blenheim Palace against Irish Home Rule implying support for armed resistance to it in Ulster.
• August
• * Cabinet ministers accused of corruption in the Marconi scandal.
• * wettest British August on record.
• 10 August – Frank McClean flies a Short Brothers floatplane up the River Thames between the upper and lower parts of Tower Bridge and underneath London Bridge.
• 25-27 August – the wet summer climaxes in a major rainstorm across England, causing floods particularly in Norfolk and Norwich.
• September – the tradition of the Blackpool Illuminations begins.
• 24 October – formation of the Edinburgh and Leith Branch of the Workers' Educational Association at a meeting addressed by Albert Mansbridge.
• 31 October – Robert Baden-Powell marries Olave St Clair Soames at Parkstone.
• 5 November – establishment of the British Board of Film Censors.
• 12 November – the bodies of Captain Scott and his team are found in the Antarctic.
• 27 November – concerted suffragette attacks on pillar boxes.
• 18 December – Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilised remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human, presented to the Geological Society of London. It is revealed to be a hoax in 1953.

  Undated

• Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General, becomes the first Jew appointed to the Cabinet.
• Judges' Rules are issued by the judges of the King's Bench to give English police forces guidance on the procedures to be followed in detaining and questioning suspects.
• Glucozade, the predecessor of Lucozade, is first produced.

  Publications

• Walter de la Mare's The Listeners, and Other Poems.
• Ethel M. Dell's novels Greatheart and The Way of an Eagle.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World.
• The first Georgian Poetry anthology Georgian Poetry 1911–12 edited by Edward Marsh.
• Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's book Principia Mathematica vol. 2, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.

  Births

• 16 January – Norman Gash, historian
• 17 January – Edward Fennessy, electrical engineer
• 20 January – Reg Smith, footballer and football manager
• 3 February – John Bryan Ward-Perkins, archaeologist
• 8 February – Ann Lambton, historian
• 12 February – Gabrielle Brune, actress
• 13 February – Margaretta Scott, actress
• 11 February – Roy Fuller, poet and novelist
• 27 February – Lawrence Durrell, writer
• 4 March – Judith Furse, character actress
• 5 March – David Astor, editor of The Observer newspaper
• 10 March – Muriel Angelus, actress
• 19 March – Bill Frankland, immunologist
• 23 March – Betty Astell, actress
• 25 March – Melita Norwood, née Sirnis, secret agent
• 27 March
• * James Callaghan, Prime Minister
• * John Crofton, medical pioneer
• 5 April – John Le Mesurier, actor
• 18 April – Sandy Glen, explorer
• 22 April – Kathleen Ferrier, contralto
• 4 May – Frith Banbury, actor and theatre director
• 7 May – Frank Reginald Carey, fighter pilot
• 17 May – Percy M. Young, musicologist and composer
• 19 May – Noel Mander, organ builder
• 22 May – Herbert C. Brown, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 28 May – Derek Cooper, soldier and campaigner for refugees
• 31 May – Alfred Deller, countertenor
• 8 June – Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, artist
• 10 June – William Gordon Harris, civil engineer
• 16 June – Enoch Powell, politician
• 19 June – Archie Butterworth, racing car designer
• 20 June – Anthony Buckeridge, author
• 23 June – Alan Turing, mathematician
• 24 June
• * Brian Johnston, BBC cricket commentator
• * Mary Wesley, novelist
• 11 July – Peta Taylor, cricketer
• 17 July – Michael Gilbert, lawyer and crime fiction writer
• 21 July – Tommy Butler, Detective Chief Superintendent
• 13 August – Terence Wilmot Hutchison, economist
• 16 August – Ted Drake, footballer
• 16 August – Wendy Hiller, actress
• 1 September – Gwynfor Evans, politician
• 2 September – David Daiches, literary critic
• 11 September – Robin Jenkins, novelist
• 18 September – Frank Farmer, physicist
• 28 September – Peter Finch, actor
• 2 October – Eric Wilson, soldier
• 24 October – Peter Gellhorn, composer and conductor
• 28 October – Richard Doll, physiologist
• 30 October – Ian Robertson, Lord Robertson, judge
• 7 November – Alex Henshaw, test pilot
• 13 November – John Hill, politician
• 25 November – Francis Durbridge, playwright and author
• 27 December
• * Conroy Maddox, painter
• * Cyril Philips, historian

  Deaths

• 14 January – Samuel W. Johnson, railway engineer
• 10 February – Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, surgeon
• 17 February – Edgar Evans, Welsh-born naval officer, member of the Scott expedition to the South Pole
• 21 February – Osborne Reynolds, physicist
• 1 March – George Grossmith, actor and comic writer
• 17 March – Lawrence Oates, army officer, member of the Scott expedition
• 29 March – remaining members of the Scott expedition:
• * Henry Bowers, Scottish-born naval officer
• * Robert Falcon Scott, naval officer and explorer
• * Edward Wilson, physician and naturalist
• 15 April – some victims of the sinking of the RMS Titanic:
• * Thomas Andrews, Jr., shipbuilder
• * Thomas Byles, Catholic priest
• * Wallace Hartley, ship's band leader and violinist
• * Jack Phillips, ship's senior wireless officer
• * Edward Smith, ship's captain
• * William Thomas Stead, campaigning journalist
• 20 April – Bram Stoker, writer
• 21 May – Julius Wernher, art collector
• 2 July – Tom Richardson, cricketer
• 13 August – Octavia Hill, social reformer
• 20 August – William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army
• 1 September – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, composer
• 8 November – Dugald Drummond, railway engineer
• 17 November – Richard Norman Shaw, architect