1920 in the United Kingdom

1920 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

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 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 (enlisted 1877) to the highest rank in the British Army.^[1]
• 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.^[2]
  • Disestablishment of the Church in Wales comes into effect, under terms of the Welsh Church Act 1914.^[3]
• 10 April - West Bromwich Albion win the Football League title for the first time.^[4]
• 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.^[5]
• 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 severe 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.
• 3 July - The Scenic Railway (roller coaster) 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.
• 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 153.5 mph (247.0 km/h).^[6]
• 28 July - The first women jury members in England are empanelled at Bristol Quarter Sessions.^[7]
• 30 July–8 August - 1st World Scout Jamboree held at Olympia, London.^[8]
• 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.^[9]
  • 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.^[10]
• 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.^[11] A northern section is planned for next season.^[12]
• 29 August - Eleven die and forty are injured in street battles in Belfast.
• September
  • First Bentley cars delivered to customers.^[13]
  • City of Birmingham Orchestra formed.
• 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.^[14]
• 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.^[15]
• 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]
• 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.^[10][16] 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 (with three of its men also dying), which leads to official reprisals.^[10]
• 29 November - Rationing imposed during World War I ends when the restriction on availability of sugar is lifted by the government.^[17]
• 5 December - The Scots vote against prohibition.
• 11 December - Irish War of Independence: 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.
• 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.^[10][16]
  • 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.^[18]

Undated

• This year sees the all-time highest annual number of live births in the country, over 1.1 million.^[19]
• Publication of Arthur Eddington's observation of the "bending of light" during the total solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, giving a confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity.^[20]
• 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 earlier in the year, meets Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who will become his wife in 1923 (and later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother).^[21]

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 (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 (died 2012)
• 22 January - Alf Ramsey, footballer (died 1999)
• 5 February - Frank Muir, actor, comedy writer and raconteur (died 1998)
• 3 March - Ronald Searle, cartoonist (died 2011)
• 14 March - Dorothy Tyler-Odam, high jumper (died 2014)
• 25 March
  • Paul Scott, novelist, playwright and poet (died 1978)
  • Patrick Troughton, actor (died 1987)
• 9 April - Alex Moulton, mechanical engineer and inventor (died 2012)
• 16 April - Alan Pegler, English businessman (died 2012)
• 9 May - Richard Adams, novelist
• 21 May - Anthony Steel, actor (died 2001)
• 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 (died 2014)
• 21 August - Christopher Robin Milne, author and bookseller (died 1996)
• 27 August - James Molyneaux, Ulster Unionist Party leader (died 2015)
• 15 October - Daniel Everett, RAF pilot (killed in action 1945)
• 11 November - Roy Jenkins, politician (died 2003)

Deaths

• 11 January – Pryce Pryce-Jones, entrepreneur (born 1834)
• 18 January - John McClure, admiral in the Imperial Chinese Navy (born 1837)
• 24 January - William Plunket, 5th Baron Plunket, diplomat and administrator (born 1864)
• 13 March - Charles Lapworth, geologist (born 1842)
• 14 April - John George Bartholomew, cartographer (born 1860)
• 17 April - Alex Higgins, Scottish international footballer (born 1863)
• 14 May - Ronald Montagu Burrows, archaeologist (b. 1867)
• 5 June - Rhoda Broughton, novelist (born 1840)
• 10 July - John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, admiral (born 1841)
• 10 August - Erskine Beveridge, textile manufacturer and antiquarian (born 1851)
• 5 October - William Heinemann, publisher (born 1863)
• 23 November - George Callaghan, admiral (born 1852)
• 3 December - William de Wiveleslie Abney, astronomer and photographer (born 1843)

See also

References

1. Woodward, David R. (September 2004). "Robertson, Sir William Robert, first baronet (1860–1933)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35786. Retrieved 2007-12-07. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
2. Hansard debate 31 Mar 1920
3. Price, D.T.W. (1990). A History of the Church in Wales in the Twentieth Century. Penarth: Church in Wales Publications. ISBN 0-85326-026-5.
5. Review of C. B. Purdom, The Building of Satellite Towns, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1925
6. Results of Fifth Aerial Derby at Hendon Flight: 29 July 1920, p.833.
7. Robertson, Patrick (1974). The Shell Book of Firsts. London: Ebury Press. p. 203. ISBN 0-7181-1279-2.
8. "1st World Jamboree". The Pine Tree Web. 1998. Retrieved 2011-02-23.
9. O'Farrell, Patrick (2004). "Mannix, Daniel (1864–1963)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55446. Retrieved 2011-11-11. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
10. Cottrell, Peter (2009). The War for Ireland, 1913-1923. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-9966.
13. Georgano, N. (2000). Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. London: HMSO. ISBN 1-57958-293-1.
14. Hibbert, Christopher (1988). The Encyclopædia of Oxford. London: Macmillan. p. 427. ISBN 0-333-39917-X.
15. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
16. Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 488–490. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
17. Cooper, Charlie (2014-06-24). "Britons are forced to tighten their belts". The Independent. London. p. 17. Retrieved 2014-06-24.
18. "Trail-blazers who pioneered women's football". BBC News. 3 June 2005. Retrieved 2010-02-19.
19. Blastland, Michael (2 February 2012). "Go Figure: When was the real baby boom?". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 2012-02-05.
20. Dyson, F. W.; Eddington, A. S.; Davidson, C. R. (1920). "A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Solar eclipse of May 29, 1919". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Physical, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences. 220 (571-581): 291–333. Bibcode:1920RSPTA.220..291D. doi:10.1098/rsta.1920.0009.
21. Walker, Andrew (29 January 2003). "Profile: King George VI". BBC News.