Philip
Snowden, the son of a weaver, was born in the village of Cowling,
in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 18th July, 1864. His parents were
devout followers of the religious ideas of John
Wesley and as a boy he was brought up as a strict Methodist.
John Snowden was a member of the Temperance
Society and Philip followed his father's example and never drank
alcohol. Philip did well at school and at the age of fifteen was able
to work as a clerk in an insurance office.
Snowden joined the Keightley Liberal Club and he agreed to present
a paper on the dangers of socialism. While researching this paper
Snowden became converted to this new ideology. Snowden left the Liberal
Party and joined the local branch of the Independent
Labour Party (ILP). Snowden soon developed a reputation as a fine
orator and for the next few years he travelled the country making
speeches for the ILP. He drew large crowds and only Keir
Hardie was considered his equal as a platform speaker.
In 1899 Snowden was elected to the Keightley Town Council and the
School Board. He also served as editor of a local socialist newspaper.
Snowden continued to travel the country and in 1903 was elected as
the national chairman of the Independent Labour
Party. Like Keir Hardie, Snowden was
a Christian Socialist, and in 1903 the
two men wrote a pamphlet together on their beliefs, The
Christ that is to Be.
In 1903 Snowden married Ethel Annakin, an active member of the NUWSS.
Ethel converted her husband to the cause of votes for women. Over
the next ten years, Snowden, who was a member of the Men's
League For Women's Suffrageand gave considerable support to the
campaign for equal rights.
Snowden made several attempts to enter the House
of Commons. Snowden was defeated at Blackburn in the 1900
General Election. He also failed at the Wakefield by-election
in 1902. Snowden was finally successful in the 1906
General Election when he was elected as the Labour
MP for Blackburn.
During this period Snowden wrote a great deal about his views on Christian
Socialism, the Temperance Movement
and economics issues. This included The Socialist's
Budget (1907), Old
Age Pensions (1907), Socialism
and the Drink Question (1908), Socialism
and Teetotalism (1909) and the Living
Wage (1909). In the House of Commons
Snowden developed a reputation as an expert on economic issues and
advised David Lloyd George on his 1909
People's Budget.
Snowden was opposed to Britain's involvement in the First
World War and during the conflict provided help to conscientious
objectors. Like other anti-war Labour MPs, Snowden was defeated in
the 1918 General Election. Snowden was eventually
forgiven and was elected to represent Colne Valley in the 1922
General Election.
When Ramsay MacDonald formed the first
Labour Government in January, 1924, he appointed Philip Snowden as
his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Snowden reduced taxes on various
commodities and popular entertainments, but was criticised by members
of the Labour Party for not introducing
any socialist measures. Snowden replied that this was not possible
as the Labour government had to rely on the support of the Liberal
Party to survive. When Stanley Baldwin,
the leader of the Conservative Party,
became Prime Minister later that year, Snowden's period in office
came to an end.
Snowden returned as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour
Government of 1929. This coincided with an economic depression
and Snowden's main concern was to produce a balanced budget. However,
he did manage to make changes to the tax system that resulted in the
wealthy paying more and the poor paying less. The economic situation
continued to deteriorate and in 1931 Snowden suggested that the Labour
government should introduce new measures including a reduction in
unemployment pay. Several ministers, including George
Lansbury, Arthur Henderson and Joseph
Clynes, refused to accept the cuts in benefits and resigned from
office.
Ramsay MacDonald now formed a National
Government with Conservative and Liberal
politicians. Snowden remained Chancellor and now introduced the measures
that had been rejected by the previous Labour Cabinet. Labour MPs
were furious with what MacDonald and Snowden had done, and both men
were expelled from the Labour Party.
Snowden did not stand in the 1931 General Election
and instead accepted the title that enabled him to sit in the House
of Lords. Philip Snowden died on 15th May, 1937.
David
Low, Evening Standard, (5th
September, 1929)
(1)
In his book An Autobiography, Philip Snowden described what
Cowling was like in the 1860s.
The industrial revolution was late in penetrating this parish.
It was not until about twenty years before my birth that handloom
weaving disappeared. In my boyhood all the older people had been handloom
weavers. The industry had been carried on mainly in the cottages in
which the families lived. It was quite common thing for the bedroom
of the cottage to contain five or six handlooms, and in this room
the weaving was done; and in this room the whole family, which was
often very large, had to sleep.
(2)
Philip Snowden's father was a Chartist in the 1840s.
I have heard my father relate how a number of handloom weavers contributed
a halfpenny a week to buy a copy of the weekly Leeds Mercury,
which was then sevenpence, and with these coppers he was sent to a
village four miles away each week to get the paper; and then the subscribers
to this newspaper met in a cottage and he read the news to them.
The Leeds Mercury in those days was a Radical journal. Those
were times of great political and social excitement. The Chartist
movement was affecting the industrial population, and the agitation
was affecting the industrial population, and the agitation for the
Repeal of the Corn Laws was at its height. They were dangerous times
for those known to harbour Radical opinions. Throughout the West Riding,
as well as other parts of England, men were being arrested and sentenced
to long terms of imprisonment for alleged sedition and political conspiracy.
This group of Radical-Chartists in Cowling had to take precautions
against the attentions of the constable, and when they gathered together
to discuss politics and hear my father read the paper for them they
shuttered the window and sometimes placed a scout outside to watch
for the constable.
(3)
As a child Philip Snowden signed the pledge that he would never drink
alcohol.
The vicar of the parish was the Reverend George Bayldon. He was the
vicar of the parish for forty years. The only active part he took
in the life of the village was in connection with the Temperance Movement.
He was the man to whom the boys went when they wanted "to sign
teetotal". Mr. Bayldon was the only person in the village who
took a daily newspaper, and when the boys wanted paper for their kites
it was to Mr. Bayldon they went on the pretext of signing teetotal,
but really to beg for old newspapers.
(4)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
After the passing of Mr. Forster's Education Act, a few progressive
persons in the village started an agitation for the adoption of the
Act. The Act was adopted, and the school I attended was taken over
by the newly formed School Board. Steps were taken at once to build
new school premises. A trained master was appointed, and a new era
in child education in the village was opened up. I was between ten
and eleven years old when this change took place. It brought me into
a new world of learning. We were taught in a new schoolroom, which
by comparison with the dingy old place we left seemed like a palace
to us. The walls were covered with maps and pictures. Our curriculum
was extended to include grammar, geography, history, elementary mathematics,
and the simple sciences. We were not troubled with the religious question,
for, in order to avoid all controversy, the Board from the beginning
banished the Bible from the school, not because they were irreligious,
but because they believed that the teaching of religion was best carried
out by the sects in their own Sunday Schools.
(5)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
In my youth there still survived a few men who had been leaders in
the Chartist movement. One of these was George Lomax, a Manchester
man, who was a very popular Temperance and Radical speaker. I often
heard him. As a young man he had been an eye-witness of the massacre
of Peterloo. I heard him tell the story, and he finished a graphic
description of the affair by saying: "As I saw the cavalry striking
down unarmed and peaceful people I swore eternal enmity to Toryism
and all its ways."
Another of the Chartist leaders I heard was Thomas Cooper, who had
been a prominent figure in the movement in the forties. He was a very
old man when I heard him. He had gone quite blind. His hair fell upon
his shoulders, and he looked a patriarchal figure.
(6)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
The Trades Unions were very dissatisfied with the attitude of the
Liberal Government to the legal position of Trade Unionism. In 1869,
at the instigation of John Stuart Mill, an organisation was formed
under the name of the Labour Representation League to carry out a
national campaign to secure the return of working men to Parliament.
It does not appear to have been the intention of this League to form
a party which could be permanently in opposition to the Liberal Party.
Mills' idea was that, if the working classes put forward working-men
candidates and threatened the Liberal majority, the Liberals would
be glad to come to terms and provide opportunities for the return
of working men. After the election of 1874 the League placed twelve
working men in the field, and of these Thomas Burt and Alexander MacDonald
were elected at Morpeth and Stafford respectively.
(7)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
By the end of 1892 it was felt that the various Labour Unions
should be merged into a National Party. So steps were taken to call
a Conference, which met at Bradford in January 1893. To this Conference
delegates from the local unions, the Fabian Society (which at the
time was doing considerable propaganda work among the Radical Clubs),
and the Social Democratic Federation, were invited. There were 115
delegates present at this conference, and among them was Mr. George
Bernard Shaw, representing the Fabian Society. He played a conspicuous
part in the Conference. Mr. Keir Hardie, fresh from his success at
West Ham, was elected Chairman of the Conference.
(8)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
I brought and carefully studied, among other works, Hyndman's
England for All and his Historical Basis of Socialism,
which he claimed were the first works on scientific socialism published
in English. They were based on Marx's Capital. I did not find
these books so interesting and instructive as other volumes on the
subject which I read. I derived much help and information from the
Fabian Essays and the Fabian Tracts, and from the books of Edward
Carpenter - England's Ideal and Civilisation, its Causes
and Cure. I collected quite a library of old radical and socialist
books and periodicals and pamphlets dating from the days of Hunt and
Owen down to modern times.
I have never read Karl Marx. I have read many synopses of his teaching,
and that has been quite enough for me. I have met a few men who claim
to have read and studied the three huge volumes of Das Kapital,
but the fact that they were still alive makes one inclined to cast
some doubt about their claim. Neither Keir Hardie nor William Morris
derived their socialism from Karl Marx.
(9)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
Under capitalism it was greatly to the benefit of the individual
to spend his wages on useful things instead of upon drink, though
temperance alone would not touch the rot causes of low wages and poverty.
The way I put the case in after years, when I often publicly discussed
this question, was that drink is an aggravation of every social evil,
and, in a great many cases, the prime cause of industrial misery and
degradation. The economic waste of expenditure on drink lowers the
standard of living and reduces a great many families to destitution,
who, if their incomes were usefully spent, would enjoy a reasonable
degree of comfort. Universal temperance would undoubtedly bring incalculable
benefits and blessings, but so long as the social system is based
upon exploitation the mass of the people will remain comparatively
poor.
(10)
The Weekly Sun (July, 1907)
Philip Snowden is small of stature and frail of frame, with a
limp that compels him to lean heavily on a stick as he walks, he regards
the world unblinkingly out of a pair of piercing eyes deep-sunken
beneath an overhanging brow, across which wisps of lank hair are drawn.
The skin is pallid, the cheeks hollow, giving an additional sharpness
to the hawk-like nose and the tight-drawn inscrutable lips. and then
the hands! Long, thin, and nervous, their fingers twist and writhe
and contort themselves like the serpents on the head of Medusa, till
shudderingly one draws back instinctively out of their reach.
(11)
In his book An Autobiography, Philip Snowden criticised the
WSPU.
So long as these women confined their activities to such ingenuous
performances as tying themselves to street lamps and park railings,
throwing leaflets from the Gallery of the House on the heads of members,
or getting themselves arrested for causing obstruction, the public
were more amused than angry, though the opponents of women suffrage
never failed to point to these antics as proof of the unfitness of
women to vote. When they began to destroy property and risk the lives
of others than themselves the public began to turn against them. The
National Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies, whose gallant educational
and constitutional work for women's freedom had been carried on for
more than fifty years, publicly dissociated themselves from these
terrorist activities.
(8)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
I have always been an advocate of what is called 'Gradualism'
in social progress. 'Gradualism' does not mean that progress must
necessarily be slow. The rate of advance must depend upon the intelligence
of the democracy. But I do insist, and have done so from my earliest
days of my Socialist teaching, that every step forward must carry
with it the approval of public opinion, and that every change must
be consolidated before the next step is taken.
(9)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
During the nine days of the strike I remained silent. From one
point of view I was not sorry that this experiment had been tried.
The Trade Unions needed a lesson of the futility and foolishness of
such a trial of strength. A general strike could in no circumstances
be successful. A general strike is an attempt to hold up the community,
and against such an attempt the community will mobilize all its resources.
There is no country in the world which has proportionally such a large
middle-class population as Great Britain. They with the help of governmental
organisation, with a million motor-cars at their service, could defeat
any strike on a large scale which threatened the vital services.
(10)
Ramsay MacDonald
appointed Clement Attlee as Postmaster
General in 1929. He wrote about MacDonald's government in his autobiography,
As It Happened (1954)
In the old days I had looked up to MacDonald as a great leader. He
had a fine presence and great oratorical power. The unpopular line
which he took during the First World War seemed to mark him as a man
of character. Despite his mishandling of the Red Letter episode, I
had not appreciated his defects until he took office a second time.
I then realised his reluctance to take positive action and noted with
dismay his increasing vanity and snobbery, while his habit of telling
me, a junior Minister, the poor opinion he had of all his Cabinet
colleagues made an unpleasant impression. I had not, however, expected
that he would perpetrate the greatest betrayal in the political history
of this country. I had realised that Snowden had become a docile disciple
of orthodox finance, but I had not thought him capable of such virulent
hatred of those who had served him loyally. The shock to the Party
was very great, especially to the loyal workers of the rank-and-file
who had made great sacrifices for these men.
Instead
of deciding on a policy and standing or falling by it, MacDonald and
Snowden persuaded the Cabinet to agree to the appointment of an Economy
Committee, under the chairmanship of Sir George May of the Prudential
Insurance Company, with a majority of opponents of Labour on it. The
result might have been anticipated. The proposals were directed to
cutting the social services and particularly unemployment benefit.
Their remedy for an economic crisis, one of the chief features of
which was excess of commodities over effective demand, was to cut
down the purchasing power of the masses. The majority of the Government
refused to accept the cuts and it was on this issue that the Government
broke up. Instead of resigning, MacDonald accepted a commission from
the King to form a so-called 'National' Government.
(11)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions
(1969)
In February
1931, Philip Snowden made a speech in the House which created a sensation.
He hinted at large economy measures, including cuts in the social
services and unemployment benefit, in order to balance the coming
Budget and maintain the gold standard. Meanwhile wholesale prices
continued to fall on a world scale, businesses were losing money in
some cases and making very little in others, so that revenue from
taxes was declining. A big budget deficit was foreseen. In this debate
I remember Lloyd George spoke and referred to the Chancellor sitting
on ice surrounded by 'the penguins of the City'. Having received Snowden's
speech with stony silence, we on the Labour benches roundly cheered
Lloyd George.
The next
day there was a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Snowden
soundly rated us like naughty schoolboys for having done this. I remember
many of us, including myself, replied that we would applaud anyone
who talked sense, but we did not get that from some of our leaders.
(12)
In his autobiography Philip Snowden described telling the Trade
Union Congress about his plans in 1931 to cut wages and unemployment
benefits (1934)
The spokesman of the Trade Unions was Mr. Bevin and Mr. Citrine,
the Secretary of the Trade Union Committee. This deputation took up
the attitude of opposition to practically all the economy proposals
which had been explained to them. They opposed any interference with
the existing terms and conditions of the Unemployment Insurance Scheme,
including the limitation of statutory benefit to 26 weeks. We were
told the Trade Unions would oppose the suggested economies on teachers'
salaries and pay of the men in the Fighting Services, and any suggestions
for reducing expenditure on works in relief of unemployment. The only
proposal to which the General Council were not completely opposed
was that the salaries of Ministers and Judges should be subjected
to a cut!
(13)
David
Kirkwood, My Life of Revolt
(1935)
On August
1, 1931, a National Government was formed. In November the country
was thrown into the turmoil of a general election. What an election!
I was terribly upset, more than tongue can tell, at the attack made
upon the Labour Party by its former leaders.
Admitting
that the Party had failed as a Government, it was Ramsay MacDonald,
Philip Snowden, and J. H. Thomas who had been the three strongest
leaders. But they blamed the rank and file. Some of us were worthy
of blame. Our attitude had undoubtedly weakened the Government. But
to attack the whole Party and the whole Movement was unjust.
The speeches
of Philip Snowden made me think of a case in Glasgow where a man threw
vitriol in the face of the girl he had jilted. It was inexcusable.
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