1920 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – David Lloyd George
• Parliament – 31st

  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.
• 11 February – the Council of the League of Nations meets for the first time in London.
• 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 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.
• 10 May – forty Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs are released.
• 11 May – Oswald Mosley marries Cynthia Curzon, second daughter of ex-Viceroy of India, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London.
• 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 Government proposes a car tax of £1 per horsepower.
• 30 May – at least twenty people drown in severe floods in Lincolnshire.
• 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 die in severe rioting in Ulster.
• 24 June – troops are sent to reinforce the Derry garrison.
• 3 July – the Scenic Railway at Dreamland Margate amusement park opens, the first in the U.K.
• 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
• * Bishop Daniel Mannix is detained onboard 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, 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 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.
• 14 October – the first women receive degrees at the University of Oxford, these being awarded retrospectively. Dorothy L. Sayers is among them.
• 16 October – miners go on strike.
• 20 October – suffragette 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 for burial in Westminster Abbey.
• 11 November – King George V unveils the Cenotaph; The Unknown Warrior is buried.
• 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 this 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The British Empire, the largest empire ever in history, reaches its peak of 33 million square miles and a population of 423 million people.

  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
• 6 January – John Maynard Smith, biologist and geneticist
• 9 January – Clive Dunn, comic actor
• 12 January – Janet Elizabeth Macgregor, physician and cytologist
• 20 January – John Maynard Smith, theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist
• 22 January
• * Philippa Pearce, children's author
• * Alf Ramsey, footballer and manager
• 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
• 5 February – Frank Muir, actor, comedy writer and raconteur
• 6 February – Maurice Beresford, historian and archaeologist
• 26 February
• * Derek Goodwin, ornithologist
• * Kenneth Hubbard, RAF pilot
• 2 March – George Cowling, weatherman
• 3 March – Ronald Searle, cartoonist
• 5 March – Rachel Gurney, actress
• 6 March – Lewis Gilbert, film director
• 11 March – D. J. Enright, academic, poet, novelist and critic
• 14 March – Dorothy Tyler-Odam, high jumper
• 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
• March – Walter Smith, land surveyor

  April – June

• 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
• 21 April – Ronald Magill, actor
• 23 April – Eric Yarrow, businessman
• 27 April – Edwin Morgan, Scottish poet and translator
• 30 April – Tom Moore, World War II soldier and NHS fundraiser
• 4 May – Ronald Chesney, harmonica player and comedy scriptwriter
• 5 May – Glanmor Williams, geographer
• 9 May
• * Richard Adams, novelist
• * Michael Dauncey, brigadier
• 13 May – Gareth Morris, flautist
• 21 May
• * John Chadwick, cryptanalyst and classical scholar
• * Anthony Steel, actor
• 28 May – Jim Russell, racing driver
• 2 June – Johnny Speight, television comedy scriptwriter
• 9 June – Sheila Keith, actress
• 17 June
• * Patrick Duffy, Labour politician and economist
• * John Waddy, colonel
• 19 June – Geoffrey Lewis, professor
• 22 June – Marea Hartman, athletics administrator
• 23 June – Henry Chadwick, theologian
• 28 June
• * Reginald Coates, civil engineer
• * Clarissa Eden, born Anne Spencer-Churchill, wife of Prime Minister Anthony Eden

  July – September

• 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
• 19 July – George Dawkes, cricketer
• 20 July – Jasper Blackall, racing yachtsman
• 24 July – Tamar Eshel, Israeli diplomat and politician
• 25 July – Rosalind Franklin, crystallographer
• 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
• 10 August – Tony Tenser, film producer
• 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
• 7 September – Brian Pippard, physicist
• 9 September – Michael Aldridge, actor
• 21 September – Kenneth McAlpine, English racing driver
• 22 September – Nathaniel Fiennes, 21st Baron Saye and Sele, peer and businessman
• 29 September – Peter D. Mitchell, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

  October – December

• 3 October – Philippa Foot, née Bosanquet, philosopher
• 5 October – Ronald Leigh-Hunt, actor
• 9 October – Michael Shaw, Conservative politician
• 13 October – Donald Russell, classicist
• 15 October – Daniel Everett, RAF pilot
• 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
• 11 November – Roy Jenkins, politician
• 15 November – Colin Collindridge, footballer
• 16 November – Laurence Stark, World War II air ace
• 22 November – Anne Crawford, film actress, in Mandatory Palestine
• 25 November – Bernard Weatherill, politician and Speaker of the House of Commons
• 27 November – Buster Merryfield, character actor
• 28 November
• * Cecilia Colledge, Olympic figure skater
• * Patrick Rodger, Scottish-born Anglican bishop
• 6 December – George Porter, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 10 December – Alfred Goldie, mathematician
• 12 December – Dick James, singer and record producer
• 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

  Deaths

• 6 January – Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe, banker
• 11 January – Pryce Pryce-Jones, 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
• 5 June – Rhoda Broughton, novelist
• 10 July – John 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
• 23 November – George Callaghan, admiral
• 3 December – William de Wiveleslie Abney, astronomer and photographer