1911 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – H. H. Asquith
• Parliament – 30th

  Events

• 3 January – in London, in what becomes known as the Siege of Sidney Street, the Metropolitan Police and the Scots Guards engage in a shootout with a criminal gang of Latvian anarchists holed up in a building in the East End. The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, attends in person.
• March-April – eleven thousand workers at the Singer Manufacturing Co. sewing machine factory on Clydebank in Scotland go on strike in solidarity with twelve female colleagues protesting against work process reorganisation. Four hundred alleged ringleaders are dismissed.
• 2 April – the 1911 census is taken. One out of every seven employed persons is a domestic servant. Suffragette Emily Davison hides in a cupboard in the crypt of the Palace of Westminster so that she can legitimately be recorded as resident on census night at the House of Commons; several thousand women evade being recorded in the census as a protest against the lack of women's suffrage.
• 4 April – work begins on construction of Castle Drogo, Devon, to the design of Edwin Lutyens.
• May-September – hottest British summer on record.
• 12 May – Festival of Empire opens at The Crystal Palace, London, to celebrate the Coronation.
• 31 May – launching of the ocean liner in Belfast. Her sister sails for Liverpool the same day to take up transatlantic service.
• 14 June – Liverpool general transport strike begins.
• 22 June
• * Coronation of George V and Queen Mary at Westminster Abbey, London.
• * Completion of the Royal Liver Building, Liverpool, is marked by starting the clocks in its towers at the same moment as the Coronation and in New York Harbor is decorated for the occasion.
• July-September – severe heat wave and associated drought.
• 13 July – the future Edward VIII is invested as Prince of Wales in a ceremony at Carnarvon Castle devised by David Lloyd George.
• 14 July – new buildings of the University College of North Wales, Bangor, opened.
• 22 July-5 August – first Daily Mail Circuit of Britain air race.
• 9 August – Raunds, Northamptonshire, records a temperature of 98 °F, the highest UK temperature until 1990.
• 10 August – British MPs vote to receive salaries for the first time.
• 13 August – Liverpool general transport strike: "Bloody Sunday" – the centre of Liverpool is rocked by violence when a meeting of striking transport workers is broken up by police and soldiers and a number of policemen and many strikers are seriously injured.
• 15 August – Liverpool general transport strike: two men are shot dead on Liverpool's Vauxhall Road by mounted troops during continued unrest following "Bloody Sunday".
• 17-20 August – national railway workers' strike.
• 18 August – the Parliament Act removes the House of Lords' power regarding budgets and restricts their power over other bills to a two-year suspensive veto.
• 19 August – Llanelli riots: During demonstrations in support of the national railway strike, two men are shot dead by soldiers of the Worcestershire Regiment in Llanelli. Magistrates' homes are attacked and four more of the crowd are killed outright when explosive material stored on railway property ignites.
• 22 August – the Official Secrets Act 1911 comes into effect.
• 9-26 September – the world's first scheduled airmail post service is flown between Hendon, North London, and Windsor, Berkshire.
• 20 September – the new liner RMS Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic, collides with Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke off Southampton; there is no loss of life or serious injury.
• 24 September – Britain's first rigid airship, HMA No. 1, built for the Royal Navy, breaks in half and is wrecked during a pre-commissioning ground test at her builders, Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness.
• 4 October – the first electric escalators to be introduced to the public, at Earl's Court tube station in London.
• 6 October – the British Seafarers' Union is formed in Southampton.
• November – Virginia Stephen begins to share her brother Adrian Stephen's London house at 38 Brunswick Square with other members of the Bloomsbury Group: Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Duncan Grant.
• 8 November – the first rugby league football Test of the 1911–12 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain is played between Australasia and Great Britain at Newcastle upon Tyne.
• 21 November – suffragettes storm Parliament in London. All are arrested and choose prison terms.
• 24 November – an explosion starting in the basement of Bibby's Oil cake mill in Liverpool leaves thirty-nine dead and one hundred and one injured.
• 11 December – George V and Queen Mary are crowned as Emperor of India and Empress consort of India, respectively, at the Delhi Durbar in New Delhi.
• 16 December – National Insurance Act 1911 passed.

  Undated

• Shops Act 1911 allows a weekly half holiday for shop staff.
• Camden Town Group of post-Impressionist artists established in London.
• English Folk Dance Society formed by Cecil Sharp.
• Completion of Westminster Central Hall as a Wesleyan Methodist church.

  Publications

• Encyclopædia Britannica eleventh edition published under American management by Cambridge University Press.
• Concise Oxford English Dictionary first edition.
• Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Secret Garden.
• G. K. Chesterton's short story collection The Innocence of Father Brown.
• Joseph Conrad's novel Under Western Eyes.
• Woman's Weekly magazine launched.

  Births

• 2 January – Sunny Lowry, first woman to swim the English Channel
• 4 January – David Shoenberg, physicist
• 8 January – Tom Delaney, racing driver and businessman
• 10 January – Norman Heatley, biologist
• 22 January – Mary Hayley Bell, actress and dramatist, wife of Sir John Mills
• 24 January – Evelyn Barbirolli, oboist, wife of Sir John Barbirolli
• 26 January – William Fox, actor
• 29 January – Bryan Coleman, actor
• 19 February – Merle Oberon, actress
• 1 March – Harry Golombek, chess grandmaster
• 14 March – James "Speedy" Hill, army brigadier
• 15 March – Ursula Vaughan Williams, author
• 27 March – Erich Heller, philosopher
• 3 April – Michael Woodruff, pioneering transplant surgeon
• 15 April – Leonard Redshaw, shipbuilder
• 19 April
• * Frank Barlow, historian
• * Ursula Moray Williams, children's author
• 23 April – Ronald Neame, film cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and director
• 7 May – David Leach, potter
• 28 May – Thora Hird, comic actress
• 10 June – Terence Rattigan, playwright
• 15 June – Wilbert Awdry, children's writer
• 7 July – Gretchen Franklin, actress
• 9 July – Mervyn Peake, writer and illustrator
• 14 July – Terry-Thomas, actor
• 15 July – Juliet Pannett, portrait painter
• 17 July – Ted Anderson, footballer
• 29 July – Leslie Scarman, judge
• 20 August – J. H. Plumb, historian
• 27 August – Kay Walsh, actress
• 29 August – John Charnley, orthopaedic surgeon
• 19 September – William Golding, novelist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 3 October – Michael Hordern, actor
• 10 October – Clare Hollingworth, journalist
• 7 November – Alethea Hayter, writer
• 12 November – Chad Varah, priest and humanitarian
• 7 December – J. Gwyn Griffiths, poet and Egyptologist
• 11 December – Val Guest, film director
• 27 December – Anna Russell, comedian and singer

  Deaths

• 17 January – Sir Francis Galton, explorer and biologist
• 8 February – Frederick Campbell, 3rd Earl Cawdor, politician,
• 3 March – Jacob Thomas, Victoria Cross recipient
• 21 May – Williamina Fleming, astronomer
• 29 May – W. S. Gilbert, dramatist
• 12 July – Harry Day, Wales international rugby player
• 13 August – Thomas Thomas, boxer
• 18 August – Henry James, 1st Baron James of Hereford, politician
• 28 August – Jack Williams, Wales international rugby player
• 29 August – Hildegard Werner, musical conductor and journalist
• 16 September – Edward Whymper, explorer
• 7 October – John Hughlings Jackson, neurologist
• 22 November – William George Aston, consular official
• 10 December – Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist
• 11 December – Rowland Ellis, bishop
• 20 December – William McGregor, founder of the English Football League