4 February – RAF Blackburn Iris III seaplane S 238 crashes in Plymouth Sound after a senior officer takes control from the pilot and fails to make a safe landing, resulting in multiple fatalities.[5] One of the first to the rescue is T. E. Lawrence, stationed locally at this time.[6]
June – publication of Report of the Committee on Finance and Industry (the 'Macmillan Committee') on the relationship between the banking and financial system and British trade and industry, largely written by John Maynard Keynes.[9][10][11]
9 June – submarine HMS Poseidon sinks after collision with a Chinese freighter off Weihai, China. Twenty lives are lost but a few submariners become the first to surface using the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus.
31 July – the May Report of the Committee on National Expenditure recommends extensive cuts in government spending. This produces a political crisis as many members of the Labour Party government object to the proposals.
15 October – MI5 ceases to be a section of the War Office, being officially renamed the Security Service, and takes over the counter-subversion section (SSI) from Scotland Yard's Special Branch.[19]
27 October – general election results in victory for the National Government in the country's greatest ever electoral landslide. Ramsay MacDonald remains Prime Minister.[16] This election is held on a Tuesday: all subsequent ones will be held on Thursdays.[20]
Bogdanor, Vernon. "1931 Revisited: The Constitutional Aspects," Twentieth Century British History 1991 2(1): 1-25, argues that George V played a crucial role in the political crisis of August-October 1931.
Somervell, D.C. The Reign of King George V, (1936) 550pp;political, social and economic coverage, online free
Williamson, Philip. "1931 Revisited: the Political Realities." Twentieth Century British History 1991 2(3): 328–338. Disputes Bogdanor, saying the idea of a national government had been in the minds of party leaders for some time and it was they, not the king, who determined when the time had come to establish one.