1922 in The United Kingdom - Events

Events

• January - The year begins with the British Empire at its largest extent, covering a quarter of the world and ruling over one in four people on earth.
• 1 January - Transport and General Workers' Union formed by merger of fourteen smaller unions under its first general secretary Ernest Bevin, forming by far the largest trade union.
• 7 January - In Ireland the Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
• 12 January
  • British government releases remaining Irish prisoners captured in the War of Independence.
  • HMS Victory permanently dry docked at Portsmouth.
• 13 January - Flu epidemic has claimed 804 victims in Britain.
• 24 January - Façade – An Entertainment, poems by Edith Sitwell recited over an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton, first performed, privately in London.
• 1 February - Formal handing over of Beggars Bush Barracks takes place in Dublin, marking the first act of British military withdrawal from Ireland.
• 6 February - Washington Naval Treaty signed between the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy.
• 28 February - Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence by the United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt and grants the country nominal independence, reserving control of military and diplomatic matters.
• 29 April - Huddersfield Town win the FA Cup with a 1-0 win over Preston North End in the final at Stamford Bridge, London. From next year, the final will be played at the new stadium being built at Wembley, North London.
• 1 March - The British Civil Aviation Authority is established.
• 16 May - The final group of British troops leave the Curragh Camp in Ireland.
• 29 May - British Liberal MP Horatio Bottomley jailed for seven years for fraud.
• 1 June - Official founding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• 22 June - Irish Republican Army agents assassinate Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in Belgravia; the assassins are sentenced to death on 18 July.
• 17 July - County Hall, London opened, as the new headquarters of the London County Council.
• 20 July - Infanticide Act effectively abolishes the death penalty for a woman who deliberately kills her newborn child while the balance of her mind is disturbed as a result of giving birth, by providing a partial defence to murder.
• 17 August - Dublin Castle is formally handed over to the Irish Republican Army as the last British Army troops leave.
• 5 September - An underground explosion at Haig Pit, Whitehaven, in the Cumberland Coalfield, kills 39.
• 7 October - Speaking on the radio station 2LO, the Prince of Wales becomes the first Royal to make a public broadcast.
• 17 October - First Hunger March sets out, from Glasgow to London.
• 18 October - The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is formed.
• 19 October - David Lloyd George's Coalition Ministry resigns over the Chanak Crisis.
• 23 October - Bonar Law's Conservative government takes office.
• 1 November - A broadcasting licence fee of ten shillings is introduced.
• 2 November - Archaeologist Leonard Woolley begins excavations at the Sumerian city of Ur.
• 4 November - In Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
• 14 November - The British Broadcasting Company begins radio service in the United Kingdom, broadcasting from station 2LO in London.
• 15 November
  • General election, the first following the partition of Ireland, won by the Conservative Party under Bonar Law. The Labour Party overtakes the Liberal Party as Britain's second largest political party.
  • First BBC broadcasts from Birmingham (station 5IT) and Manchester (station 2ZY).
• 5 December - UK Parliament enacts the Irish Free State Constitution Act, by which it legally sanctions the new Constitution of the Irish Free State.
• 6 December - The Irish Free State officially comes into existence. George V becomes the Free State's monarch.
• 7 December - The Parliament of Northern Ireland votes to remain part of the United Kingdom.
• 10 December - Francis William Aston wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule".
• 11 December - End of the trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters at the Old Bailey in London for the murder of Thompson's husband. Both found guilty and sentenced to death.
• 18 December - Carrie Morrison becomes the first woman solicitor admitted to practice in England.
• 24 December - First BBC broadcast from Newcastle upon Tyne (station 5NO).