Events from the year 1914 in the United Kingdom. This year saw the start of the First World War, ending the Edwardian era.
Incumbents Monarch – George V Prime Minister – H. H. Asquith (Liberal)
Events
January–February – Leeds rent strike. 20 February – the Fethard-on-Sea life-boat capsizes on service off the County Wexford coast: nine crew are lost. 9 March – the prime minister proposes to allow the Ulster counties to hold a vote on whether or not to join a home rule parliament in Dublin. 10 March – suffragette Mary Richardson damages the Velázquez painting the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, London, with a meat cleaver. 15 March – cover price of The Times halved to one penny. 20 March – Curragh incident: British Army officers stationed in Ireland at the Curragh Camp resign their commissions rather than be ordered to resist action by Unionist Ulster Volunteers if the Government of Ireland Act 1914 ("Third Home Rule Bill"} is passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The government backs down and they are reinstated. 29 March – Katherine Routledge and her husband arrive in Easter Island to make the first true study of it (departing August 1915). 9 April – showing of the first colour feature film in Britain: The World, the Flesh and the Devil. 11 April – first British performance of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion at His Majesty's Theatre in London. 17 April – suffragette arson attack on Britannia Pier, Great Yarmouth. 24–25 April – Larne gun-running: 35,000 rifles and over 3 million rounds of ammunition from a German dealer are landed at Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee for the Unionist Ulster Volunteers. 28 April – suffragette arson attack on the Bath Hotel, Felixstowe. 4 May – suffragette Mary Wood attacks John Singer Sargent's portrait of Henry James at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1914 in London with a meat cleaver. At the same exhibition on 12 May, Gertrude Mary Ansell attacks the recently deceased Hubert von Herkomer's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and on 26 May 'Mary Spencer' (Maude Kate Smith) attacks George Clausen's painting Primavera. 9 May – J. T. (Jack) Hearne becomes the first bowler to take 3000 first-class wickets. 21 May – a women's suffrage march on Buckingham Palace with a petition is thwarted by police. 25 May – the House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Irish Home Rule Bill. 30 May makes her maiden voyage. An explosion at Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery in the South Yorkshire Coalfield kills 11. 5 June – All Saints' Church, Breadsall, Derbyshire, gutted by fire, blamed on a suffragette arson attack. 23 June The Royal Naval Air Service is established. Kiel Canal is reopened (following deepening) by the Kaiser: visit of the British Fleet under Sir George Warrender; the Kaiser inspects the Dreadnought . 29 June – international exhibition opens at the "White City", Ashton Gate, Bristol. It closes on 15 August and the site is used as a military depot. 30 June – Among those addressing Parliament on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand are Lords Crewe and Lansdowne in the House of Lords, and Messrs Asquith and Law in the Commons. 14 July – the Government of Ireland Bill completes its passage through the House of Lords. It allows Ulster counties to vote on whether or not they wish to participate in Home Rule from Dublin. 18–20 July – fleet review by the King at Spithead. 21–24 July – a conference at Buckingham Palace (called by the King on 19 July) fails to resolve differences between Irish unionists and nationalists over Home Rule. 26 July – Howth gun-running: former British civil servant and novelist Erskine Childers and his wife Molly sail into Howth in Ireland in his yacht and land 2,500 guns for the nationalist Irish Volunteers from a German dealer. Troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, returning to Dublin having been called out to assist police in attempting to prevent the Volunteers from moving the arms to the city, perpetrate the Bachelor's Walk massacre, firing on a crowd of protestors at Bachelors Walk, killing three; a fourth man dies later from bayonet wounds and more than 30 others are injured. 31 July – London Stock Exchange closes until 4 January 1915.
3 August Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, makes a speech which encourages the House of Commons to support going to war with Germany. This evening, looking from the Foreign Office windows, he observes, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Banks remain closed until 7 August. English language teacher Henry Hadley is shot in an altercation with a Prussian officer on a train at Gelsenkirchen in Germany, dying two days later, just 3 hours after the UK declares war on Germany. 4 August World War I: German invasion of Belgium – At 08:02 (local time) Imperial German Army troops enter Belgium, bringing the July Crisis to a climax. At 23:00 (GMT) the British entry into World War I takes place when the King in London declares war on Germany for this violation of Belgian neutrality (protected by the Treaty of London (1839)) and especially to defend France. This means a declaration of war by the whole British Empire against the German Empire. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the newly designated Grand Fleet, based at Scapa Flow. 5 August – Imperial German Navy minelayer , laying a minefield about off the Thames Estuary (Lowestoft), is intercepted by the Royal Navy's 3rd Destroyer Flotilla. Destroyer fires the first British shot of the war (using her 4" Vickers gun) at her and light cruiser sinks her, the first German naval loss of the war. 6 August strikes mines laid by the Königin Luise and is sunk with some loss of life, the first British casualties of the war. , stationed in the West Indies, becomes the first Royal Navy ship to engage with the enemy when she pursues the (which escapes). Currency and Bank Notes Act gives wartime powers of banknote issue to HM Treasury; the first notes, with the signature of John Bradbury, are issued on 7 August. The sovereign rapidly vanishes from circulation. 8 August First Defence of the Realm Act passed. Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition sets sail on the Endurance from Plymouth in an attempt to cross Antarctica. 9 August – World War I: rams and sinks German Navy submarine U-15 off Fair Isle, the first U-boat claimed by the Royal Navy. 10 August – all suffragette prisoners released unconditionally. 12 August – World War I: formal declaration of war by the United Kingdom on Austria-Hungary. 13 August – World War I: twelve Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 observation aircraft from No. 2 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, flying from Swingate, Kent, become the first British aircraft to arrive in France to join the British Expeditionary Force. 21 August – World War I: reconnaissance cyclist Private John Parr (aged 17) becomes the first British soldier to be killed by the enemy on the Western Front, at Obourg in Belgium. 22 August – World War I: the British Expeditionary Force reaches Mons. Just after 06:30 British cavalryman Captain Hornby is reputed to have become the first British soldier to kill a German soldier using his sword, and Drummer Edward Thomas of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards is reputed to have fired the British Army's first shot of the War near the Belgian village of Casteau, the first British shot fired in anger in combat on mainland Europe since the Battle of Waterloo 99 years earlier. 23 August – World War I: in the first major action for the British Expeditionary Force, they hold the German forces at the Battle of Mons but then begin a month-long fighting Great Retreat to the Marne. 26 August World War I: The German West African colony of Togoland surrenders to Britain and France. Rutland Boughton's fairy opera The Immortal Hour is first performed in Glastonbury Assembly Rooms at the inaugural Glastonbury Festival co-founded by the socialist composer and opening on 5 August. 28 August – World War I: the Battle of Heligoland – British cruisers under Admiral Beatty sink three German cruisers. 30 August – World War I: "Amiens Dispatch" – in a special Sunday edition The Times newspaper publishes the first news of the Great Retreat (from its war correspondent Arthur Moore). August – World War I: the Order of the White Feather is established by Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald, RN (retd), in Folkestone, aiming to persuade women to offer white feathers to men not in uniform to shame them into enlisting.
September J. R. R. Tolkien writes a poem about Eärendil, the first appearance of his mythopoeic Middle-earth legendarium. Eärendil will much later appear in The Silmarillion. At this time Tolkien is an Oxford undergraduate staying at Phoenix Farm, Gedling near Nottingham. Rumours spread that Russian troops, landed on the east coast of Scotland, have passed on trains through England en route to the Western Front. The Neptune Film Company opens the Neptune Studios (the first "dark stage" in England) at Borehamwood in Hertfordshire. 5 September London Agreement: no member of Triple Entente (Britain, France, or Russia) may seek a separate peace with Central Powers. Scout cruiser is sunk by German submarine U-21 in the Firth of Forth, the first ship ever to be sunk by a locomotive torpedo fired from a submarine. Cover of magazine London Opinion first carries the iconic drawing by Alfred Leete of Lord Kitchener with the recruiting slogan Your Country Needs You. 5–12 September – World War I: First Battle of the Marne begins: Northeast of Paris, the British Expeditionary Force and the French 6th Army under General Maunoury attack German forces nearing Paris. Over 2 million fight (500,000 killed/wounded) in the Allied victory. 8 September – World War I: Private Thomas Highgate becomes the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during the War, suffering execution by firing squad in France. 13–28 September – World War I: the First Battle of the Aisne involving British, French forces against those of the German Empire, ending indecisively. 18 September – the Government of Ireland Act, granting home rule to the whole of Ireland, and the Welsh Church Act, disestablishing the Church in Wales, receive royal assent (although George V has contemplated refusing the Irish act) but implementation of both is postponed for the duration of World War I by the simultaneous Suspensory Act. The Government of Ireland Act in practice never comes into effect in its original form, and Welsh disestablishment is deferred until 1920. 20 September – in a speech at Woodenbridge, County Wicklow, John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, calls on members of the Irish Volunteers to enlist in the National Volunteers as part of the British New Army. The majority do so, fighting in the 10th and 16th (Irish) Division alongside their Ulster Volunteer counterparts from the 36th (Ulster) Division (formed this month); the rump Irish Volunteers split off on 24 September. 22 September – World War I: Action of 22 September 1914: German submarine U-9 torpedoes three Royal Navy armoured cruisers, Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue, with the death of more than 1,400 men, in the North Sea. 8 October – "Keep the Home Fires Burning" (music by Ivor Novello; words by Lena Guilbert Ford) is first published (as "Till the Boys Come Home") in London. 14 October – World War I: the Canadian Expeditionary Force arrives on 32 ocean liners in Plymouth Sound. 15 October – World War I: is torpedoed by German submarine U-9 in the North Sea and sinks in less than 10 minutes with the loss of 524 lives. 17 October – London anti-German riots break out in Deptford.
19 October–22 November – World War I: First Battle of Ypres: British and French forces are victorious against the Germans at Ypres in Belgium.