1930 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

Monarch - George V

Prime Minister - Ramsay MacDonald (Labour)

Events

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.

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.

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 (11,000 miles to landing at Darwin).

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 Seventh Lambeth Conference 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 are held 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 (London) featuring Coward, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier in the cast.

1 October - 14 miners are killed in an explosion in a coal pit near Cannock, Staffordshire.

5 October - British airship R101 crashes in France en route to India on its maiden voyage.

6–10 October - Annual Labour Party Conference (at Llandudno), 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 - British 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 (of an eye infection) 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 to be convicted of a crime, it is not necessary for an accessory actually to be present when the offence is carried out.

24 December - In London, inventor Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his device to project pictures to the clouds.

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.

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 120 km west of Scotland by 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

26 January - John Straffen, serial killer (died 2007)

29 January - John Junkin, actor and screenwriter (died 2006)

6 February - Lionel Blue, rabbi (died 2016)

13 February - Ronald Stretton, track cyclist (died 2012)

7 March - Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, photographer and filmmaker (died 2017)

8 April - Dorothy Tutin, actress (died 2001)

12 April - Bryan Magee, philosopher and politician

17 April - Chris Barber, jazz trombonist

20 April - Antony Jay, writer, television scriptwriter, broadcaster and director (died 2016)

9 May - Joan Sims, actress (died 2001)

1 June - John Lemmon, logician and philosopher (died 1966)

7 June - Michael Baughen, bishop and hymn-writer

8 June - Michael Codron, producer and manager

24 June - William Gaskill, theatre director (died 2016)

18 July - Burt Kwouk, film actor (died 2016)

27 July - Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party

8 August - Barry Unsworth, novelist (died 2012)

13 August - Bernard Manning, comedian (died 2007)

17 August - Ted Hughes, poet laureate (died 1998)

21 August - Princess Margaret Rose, later Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (died 2002)

25 August - Sean Connery, actor

28 August - Windsor Davies, actor

10 October - Harold Pinter, playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2008)

28 October - Bernie Ecclestone, auto racing tycoon

14 November

Shirley Crabtree, "Big Daddy", professional wrestler (died 1997)

Elisabeth Frink, sculptor (died 1993)

15 November - J. G. Ballard, writer (died 2009)

22 November - Peter Hall, theatre director

1 December - Kenneth Box, track and field sprinter

4 December - Ronnie Corbett, comedian (died 2016)

10 December - Michael Jopling, farmer and politician, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

27 December - Wilfrid Sheed, English-born American writer (died 2011)

Deaths

19 January - Frank P. Ramsey, mathematician (born 1903)

2 March - D. H. Lawrence, writer (born 1885)

19 March - Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1848)

21 April - Robert Bridges, poet (born 1844)

25 May - Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1848)

7 July - Arthur Conan Doyle, author (born 1859)

21 August - Aston Webb, architect (born 1849)

29 August - William Archibald Spooner, scholar, Anglican priest and metathesist (born 1844)

4 November - Evelyn Colyer, tennis player (born 1902)

27 November - Johnny Tyldesley, cricketer (born 1873)