1930 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – Ramsay MacDonald
• Parliament – 35th

  Events

• 1 January – the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain begins publishing a newspaper, the Morning Star.
• 1 February – The Times publishes its first crossword.
• March – fitness organisation the Women's League of Health and Beauty set up by Mary Bagot Stack; by 1939 it will have over 100,000 members.
• 9 March – the British Broadcasting Corporation opens its second high-power medium-wave transmitter at Brookmans Park, north of London, and with it launches its "Regional Scheme" which sees station 5XX renamed as the National Programme while 2LO becomes the London Regional Programme.
• April – John Gielgud plays the title role of Hamlet for the first time, at The Old Vic in London.
• 1 April – Poor law unions and workhouses abolished under the Local Government Act 1929, responsibility for public assistance transferring to local authorities and workhouses becoming hospitals or public assistance institutions under their control.
• 18 April – BBC radio listeners uniquely hear the announcement "Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news." Piano music follows.
• 22 April – the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
• 30 April – first section of the 132kV AC National Grid, the Central Scotland Electricity Scheme, is switched on in Edinburgh.
• 5 May – an explosion on the eleventh floor of Bibby's oil cake mill in Liverpool leaves five dead and almost one hundred injured.
• 5-24 May – Yorkshire-born Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
• 28 May – the BBC Symphony Orchestra is formed as a permanent full-scale ensemble under the directorship of Adrian Boult. It gives its first concert on 22 October at the Queen's Hall, London.
• 5 July – the of Anglican bishops opens. This conference condones the use of birth control in limited circumstances, a move away from the Christian views on contraception expressed by the Sixth Conference a decade earlier.
• 10 July – Mental Treatment Act 1930 provides for free voluntary treatment for psychiatric conditions and for psychiatric outpatient clinics, replaces the term "asylum" with "mental hospital" and reorganises the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency.
• 14 July – transmission by the BBC of the first experimental television play, The Man With the Flower in His Mouth.
• 29 July – British airship R100 sets out for a successful 78-hour passage to Canada.
• 7 August – two million people are unemployed.
• 16 August – the first British Empire Games open in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
• 29 August – remaining inhabitants of the island of St Kilda, Scotland, are voluntarily evacuated to the mainland.
• 24 September – first performance of Noël Coward's comedy Private Lives at the Phoenix Theatre featuring Coward, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier in the cast.
• 1 October
• * Fourteen miners are killed in an explosion in a coal pit near Cannock, Staffordshire.
• * End of Weihaiwei under British rule as it is returned to China.
• 5 October – British airship R101 crashes in France en route to India on its maiden voyage killing 48 of the 54 on board.
• 6-10 October – annual Labour Party Conference, the first chaired by a woman, Susan Lawrence, M.P. Oswald Mosley unsuccessfully attempts to persuade it to adopt the 'Mosley Memorandum' on tackling unemployment.
• 20 October – the "Passfield white paper" demands restrictions on Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine.
• 12 November – first Round Table Conference on the future status of India opens in London.
• 25 November – Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, achieves the first recorded cure using penicillin.
• December – Youth Hostels Association opens its first hostel, at Pennant Hall near Llanrwst in North Wales.
• 20 December – R v Betts and Ridley'': a landmark case in English criminal law which establishes that it is not necessary for an accessory actually to be present when an offence is carried out in order to be convicted of a crime.
• 24 December – inventor Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his device to project pictures to the clouds in London.

  Undated

• 1930–1935 – unemployment averages more than 18% in Britain.
• Housing Act provides government subsidy for slum clearance, and construction of further new council houses as replacements.
• New offices for Crawford's Advertising Agency at :File:233 High Holborn.jpg|233 High Holborn, London, designed by Frederick Etchells with Herbert A. Welch, are Britain's earliest significant example of the International Style in architecture.
• Start of local authorities' assisted wiring scheme to encourage people to connect their homes to the public electricity supply.
• Poor Prisoners' Defence Act provides for limited extension of legal aid.
• Rosemary Bank is discovered approximately west of Scotland by the survey vessel HMS Rosemary.
• Philco produces the first of its "Baby grand" designs of radio of which it will sell two million.

  Publications

• Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple novel, The Murder at the Vicarage.
• An Anthology of War Poems, compiled by Frederick Brereton.
• T. S. Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday.
• W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Cakes and Ale.
• J. B. Priestley's novel Angel Pavement.
• Arthur Ransome's children's novel Swallows and Amazons.
• W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman's parodic history book 1066 and All That.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies.

  Births

• 4 January – Iain Cuthbertson, actor
• 12 January – Bruce Lansbury, British-American television producer, television writer and screenwriter
• 20 January
• * Richard Coleman, actor
• * Christopher Elrington, historian
• 29 January – John Junkin, actor and screenwriter
• 1 February – Peter Tapsell, politician, Father of the House
• 6 February – Lionel Blue, reform rabbi
• 13 February – Ronald Stretton, track cyclist
• 16 February – Peter Adamson, actor
• 20 February
• * Ken Jones, actor
• * Richard Lynn, English psychologist and author
• 25 February – Wendy Beckett, contemplative nun and art historian
• 27 February – John Straffen, serial killer
• 28 February – Diane Holland, actress
• 7 March – Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, photographer and filmmaker
• 11 March – David Gentleman, English artist and illustrator
• 12 March – Antony Acland, diplomat
• 30 March – Nick Browne-Wilkinson, judge
• 2 April – Roddy Maude-Roxby, actor
• 7 April – Jane Priestman, designer
• 8 April – Dorothy Tutin, actress
• 9 April – Ian Walters, sculptor
• 11 April – Clive Exton, screenwriter
• 12 April – Bryan Magee, philosopher and politician
• 16 April – Alan Truscott, Anglo-American bridge player
• 17 April – Chris Barber, jazz trombonist
• 20 April – Antony Jay, writer, television scriptwriter, broadcaster and director
• 21 April – Alec Bregonzi, actor
• 23 April – Michael Bowen, Gibraltarian-English archbishop
• 3 May – David Harrison, chemist
• 4 May – Bill Eyden, jazz drummer
• 7 May – John Smith, Baron Kirkhill, politician
• 8 May – Heather Harper, Northern Irish operatic soprano
• 9 May – Joan Sims, actress
• 11 May – Tony Church, actor
• 28 May – Julian Slade, composer
• 1 June
• * John Lemmon, logician and philosopher
• * Edward Woodward, actor and singer
• 4 June – John Wall, judge
• 5 June – Peter Landin, computer scientist
• 7 June – Michael Baughen, bishop and hymn-writer
• 8 June – Michael Codron, producer and manager
• 11 June – Roy Fisher, poet and jazz pianist
• 15 June – John Fretwell, English soldier and diplomat, British Ambassador to France
• 21 June – Gerald Kaufman, politician, Father of the House
• 22 June – Patricia Nielsen, swimmer
• 23 June – John Elliot, historian
• 24 June – William Gaskill, theatre director
• 29 June – Frank Johnston, Anglican priest, military chaplain
• 1 July – Ron Hughes, footballer
• 7 July – Hamish MacInnes, Scottish mountaineer, mountain search and rescuer, author and advisor
• 8 July – John Little, Scottish football defender
• 12 July- Paul Briscoe, Writer and Schoolteacher
• 13 July – Richard D. Lewis, polyglot, cross-cultural communication consultant and author
• 17 July
• *Ray Galton, scriptwriter
• *Brian Statham, cricketer
• 18 July
• *Burt Kwouk, film actor
• *Ted Paige, physicist
• 22 July
• * Jill Adams, actress and model
• * Jeremy Lloyd, actor and screenwriter
• 27 July
• * Bomber Wells, cricketer
• * Shirley Williams, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party
• 8 August – Barry Unsworth, novelist
• 13 August – Bernard Manning, comedian
• 14 August – Liz Fraser, actress
• 17 August – Ted Hughes, poet laureate
• 20 August – Michael Green, theologian
• 21 August – Princess Margaret Rose, later Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
• 24 August – Ian Nairn, journalist and writer
• 25 August – Sean Connery, actor
• 28 August – Windsor Davies, actor
• 21 September
• * Dawn Addams, actress
• * Bob Stokoe, footballer and football manager
• 26 September – Joe Brown, climber
• 29 September – Colin Dexter, detective fiction writer
• 5 October – David Mellor, designer, manufacturer and retailer
• 10 October – Harold Pinter, playwright, Nobel Prize laureate
• 11 October – Ronnie Simpson, footballer
• 18 October
• * Trevor Bell, artist
• * David Tomblin, film director
• 27 October – Leo Baxendale, comic artist
• 28 October – Bernie Ecclestone, auto racing tycoon
• 30 October – Stanley Sadie, musicologist
• 3 November – John Biffen, politician
• 11 November – Vernon Handley, orchestral conductor
• 14 November
• * Shirley Crabtree, "Big Daddy", professional wrestler
• * Elisabeth Frink, sculptor
• 15 November – J. G. Ballard, China-born fiction writer
• 22 November
• * Peter Hall, theatre director
• * Peter Hurford, organist
• 29 November – Dennis Weatherstone, banker and businessman
• 1 December – Ken Box, track and field sprinter
• 4 December – Ronnie Corbett, comic performer
• 8 December – Stan Richards, English actor
• 10 December – Michael Jopling, farmer and politician, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
• 11 December – David Plowright, television producer
• 12 December – Gwyneth Dunwoody, politician
• 26 December – Donald Moffat, actor
• 27 December – Wilfrid Sheed, English-born American writer
• 28 December – Gladys Ambrose, actress

  Deaths

• 19 January – Frank P. Ramsey, mathematician, died of jaundice
• 21 January – Hugh Longbourne Callendar, physicist
• 22 January – Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher, politician and courtier
• 27 February – Joseph Wright, philologist and lexicographer
• 2 March – D. H. Lawrence, writer, died of complications from tuberculosis in France
• 19 March – Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 24 March – Henry Faulds, Scottish-born medical missionary, pioneer in the forensic study of fingerprints
• 10 April – Alfred Williams, "hammerman poet"
• 21 April – Robert Bridges, poet laureate
• 1 May – Richard Bell, Labour politician
• 25 May – Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury
• 13 June – Sir Henry Segrave, land and water speed record holder, killed in speedboat accident on Windermere
• 7 July – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish-born fiction writer
• 12 August – Horace Smith-Dorrien, general
• 21 August – Sir Aston Webb, architect
• 22 August – Christopher Wood, painter, suicide
• 24 August – Tom Norman, showman
• 29 August – William Archibald Spooner, scholar, Anglican priest and metathesist
• 6 September – Sir James Guthrie, Scottish painter
• 4 November – Evelyn Colyer, tennis player
• 27 November – Johnny Tyldesley, cricketer
• 17 December – Peter Warlock, composer, probable suicide
• 22 December – Neil Munro, Scottish humorist, fiction writer and critic