Events from the year 1920 in the United Kingdom.
Incumbents Monarch – George V Prime Minister – David Lloyd George (Coalition)
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. 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. 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.Hansard debate 31 Mar 1920 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 Newport (Wales), Manchester and Leeds to London organised by the National League of the Blind to campaign for improved working conditions and social provision, with a rally at Trafalgar Square on 25 April. 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 1920 Summer 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. 7 May – Morecambe F.C. is founded during a meeting at the West View Hotel on the town's promenade. 10 May – Forty Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs are released. 11 May – Oswald Mosley, a Conservative MP, marries Cynthia Curzon, second daughter of ex-Viceroy of India, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London. 13 May – "Hands Off Russia" campaign: London dockers refuse to load the SS Jolly George with munitions intended for Poland in the Polish–Soviet War. 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 UK Government proposes a car tax of £1 per horsepower (13 p/kW). 29 May – Louth flood of 1920 in Lincolnshire kills 23. 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 people are killed during 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 UK. 5 July – A new airmail service starts from London to Amsterdam. 13 July – London County Council bans aliens 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 .Results of Fifth Aerial Derby at Hendon Flight: 29 July 1920, p.833. 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 Irish-born Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Daniel Mannix is detained on board 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 years of age, 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 are 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. Hand signals will remain a crucial part of motoring life until the 1970s, when the increased use of indicators on vehicles renders them no longer necessary. 14 October – The first women receive degrees at the University of Oxford, these being awarded retrospectively. Dorothy L. Sayers and Ivy Williams are among them. 16 October – Miners go on strike. 20 October – The suffragette activist 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. 11 November – King George V unveils The Cenotaph in London; The Unknown Warrior is buried in Westminster Abbey. 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 the same 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 on 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. 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. 9 December – The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) is established by the government as a not-for-profit civilian organisation to provide canteens, shops and other recreational facilities for serving other ranks in the British armed forces and their families worldwide; it begins trading in 1921. 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. 15 December – Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending is premiered in its original version for violin and piano with Marie Hall as violinist at Shirehampton near Bristol. 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. December – Madge Easton Anderson becomes the first woman admitted to practice as a professional lawyer in the UK when she qualifies as a solicitor (law agent) in Scotland.
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 (later George VI), having become 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). Huddersfield Corporation buys the leaseholds of much of the town from the Ramsden estate for £1.3M, becoming "the town that bought itself".
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). 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 1 January - Cecily Geraghty, British centenarian (died 2026) 2 January – Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, peer (died 2004) 3 January – Hugh McCartney, Labour MP (died 2006) 5 January – William Ward, 4th Earl of Dudley, life peer (died 2013) 6 January John Maynard Smith, biologist and geneticist (died 2004) Doris Stokes, spiritualist and medium (died 1987) 9 January – Clive Dunn, actor (died 2012) 12 January James Bottomley, diplomat (died 2013) Janet Elizabeth Macgregor, physician and cytologist (died 2005) 20 January Sarah Baring, socialite and memoirist (died 2013) John Maynard Smith, theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist (died 2004) Joyce Waley-Cohen, educationist and public servant (died 2013) 22 January Philippa Pearce, children's author (died 2006) Alf Ramsey, footballer and manager (died 1999) Charlie Stubbs, footballer (died 1984) 24 January – Keith Douglas, poet (killed in action 1944) 26 January – Derek Bond, actor (died 2006) 27 January – John Box, film production designer (died 2005) 28 January – James A. Whyte, priest and theologian (died 2005) 30 January Michael Anderson, film director (died 2018) Patrick Heron, painter, writer and designer (died 1999) 31 January – Bert Williams, footballer (died 2014)