1920 in the United Kingdom

1919 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922

British and Irish current events

Sport

1920 English cricket season

Football England | Scotland

Events from the year 1920 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – David Lloyd George (Liberal leader, wartime coalition government)

Events

• 10 January - The 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 Northern Ireland Parliament.
• 17 March - Queen Alexandra unveils a monument to Nurse Edith Cavell in London.
• 27 March - Troytown wins the Grand National.
• 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 southern and western unionists.^[1]
  • Disestablishment of the Church in Wales comes into effect, under terms of the Welsh Church Act 1914.^[2]
• 10 April - West Bromwich Albion win the Football League title for the first time.^[3]
• 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.^[4]
• 10 May - Forty Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs are released.
• 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 Oxford University.
• 21 May - The Government proposes a car tax of £1 per horsepower (13 p/kW).
• 30 May - At least twenty people drown in serious floods in Lincolnshire.
• 9 June - King George V opens the Imperial War Museum at The Crystal Palace.
• 20 June - Five die in severe rioting in Ulster.
• 24 June - Troops are sent to reinforce the Derry garrison.
• 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.
• 23 July - Fourteen die and one hundred are injured in fierce rioting in Belfast.
• 24 July - Frank T. Courtney wins the Aerial Derby air race from Hendon at an average speed of 153.5 mph (247.0 km/h).^[5]
• 28 July - The first women jury members in England are empanelled at Bristol Quarter Sessions.^[6]
• 30 July–8 August - 1st World Scout Jamboree held at Olympia, London.^[7]
• 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.^[8]
  • The Communist Party of Great Britain is founded in London.
• 1 August - The first Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain opens.
• 2 August - The Government introduces a new bill to "restore order" in Ireland which allows for suspension of jury trials.
• 3 August - There are Catholic riots in Belfast in protest at the continuing British military presence.
• 9 August - The Labour Party says it will call for a general strike if the United Kingdom declares war on Russia.
• 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.^[9]A northern section is planned for next season.^[10]
• 29 August - Eleven die and forty are injured in street battles in Belfast.
• 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 Oxford University.
• 10 October - It is announced that compulsory hand signals are to be introduced for all drivers.
• 14 October - The first women receive degrees at Oxford University, these being awarded retrospectively. Dorothy L. Sayers is among them.^[11]
• 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.^[12]
• 10 November - The body of The Unknown Warrior arrives from France for burial in Westminster Abbey.
• 11 November - King George V unveils the Cenotaph; The Unknown Warrior is buried.^[12]
• 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: Irish Republicans kill 14 British agents in Dublin; later that day 13 spectators and one player at a gaelic football match at Croke Park in Dublin are shot by the paramilitary Auxiliary Division.^[13]
• 5 December - The Scots vote against prohibition.
• 11 December - Irish War of Independence: 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.
• 23 December
  • Government of Ireland Act comes into effect, providing for the partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland with separate parliaments.^[13]
  • Jewish leaders in London launch a £25 million appeal for Palestine.

Undated

• This year sees the all-time highest annual number of live births in the country, over 1.1 million.^[14]
• Sir William Robertson is promoted to Field Marshal, the first man to rise from private to the highest rank in the British Army.^[15]
• Arthur Eddington's observation of a total eclipse of the Sun seems to confirm the "bending of light" in Einstein's theory of Special Relativity.
• Meccano Ltd of Liverpool produce the first Hornby toy train, a clockwork 0 gauge model.
• Prince Albert (later George VI), who became Duke of York this year, meets Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who will become his wife in 1923 (and later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother).^[16]

Publications

• Edmund Blunden's The Waggoner and Other Poems.
• John Galsworthy's novels In Chancery and Awakening, part of The Forsyte Saga.
• Wilfred Owen's collected Poems (posthumous).
• The anthology Valour and Vision: Poems of the War, 1914-1918.

Births

• 3 January - Hugh McCartney, Labour Party MP (died 2006)
• 9 January - Clive Dunn, actor
• 22 January - Alf Ramsey, footballer, (died 1999)
• 25 March - Paul Scott, novelist, playwright and poet (died 1978)
• 9 May - Richard Adams, author
• 21 May - Anthony Steel, actor, (died 2001)
• 25 March - Patrick Troughton, actor (died 1987)
• 22 June - Marea Hartman, athletics administrator (died 1994)
• 24 July - Tamar Eshel, Israeli diplomat and politician
• 3 August - P. D. James, writer of crime fiction
• 21 August - Christopher Robin Milne, author and bookseller (died 1996)
• 11 November - Roy Jenkins, politician (died 2003)

Deaths

• 5 June - Rhoda Broughton, novelist (born 1840)
• 10 July - John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, admiral (born 1841)

References

See also