Henry Snell, the son of an agricultural labourer, was born at Sutton-on-Trent,
Nottinghamshire, in 1865. He was educated at the local school until
he reached the age of twelve when he was hired at Newark Fair as an
indoor servant for a farmer named Doncaster.
Snell disliked his employer and left to work as a farm labourer. After
a while Snell found employment as a french-polisher in Nottingham.
Although lacking education, Snell was intellectually curious and in
1881 Snell heard Charles Bradlaugh speak
at a National Secular Society meeting in
Nottingham. He later recalled that:
"The impact of his personality reached me just at the moment
when I was ready to respond to any plausible call to service, and
my capitulation to his resounding appeal was immediate and enduring.
I have never been so influenced by a human personality as I was by
Charles Bradlaugh." Snell joined the National
Secular Society and became an avid reader of the National
Reformer.
Snell no longer believed in the "verbal inspiration of the Bible,
in miracles, the biblical story of creation" but he retained
a strong interest in religion. Snell was now attracted to the the
local Unitarian chapel because of its
"scholarly approach" to these issues. Snell also admired
"its tolerance for those other faiths and its record as a progressive
force in the civic life of the town". He attended the Unitarian
Sunday School where the teacher, John Kentish-Wright, a local solicitor,
introduced him to the work of Thomas Carlyle,
Lord Byron and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge.
Snell was also a member of the Nottingham
Temperance Society where he met John Anderson, a local businessman.
Anderson lent him books and helped him find temporary work during
long periods of unemployment. Eventually, a contact at the Unitarian
Sunday School, obtained work for him as a clerk at the head office
of the Midland Institution for the Blind in London.
Living in London gave Snell the opportunity
to study. He joined the Mechanics' Institution and used the University
College reference library. Books that deeply influenced him at this
time included books The Age of Reason
by Tom Paine, Progress
and Poverty by Henry George and
Towards Democracy by Edward
Carpenter. Other writers that impressed him included William
Morris, John Ruskin and John
Stuart Mill.
Snell attended lecturers given by leaders of the National
Secular Society in London. This gave
him the chance to hear and meet national figures such as Annie
Besant, George Holyoake and Edward
Aveling. Snell was particularly impressed by Besant who he later
described as his "spiritual mother". Besant converted Snell
to socialism and as a result of her influence joined the Social
Democratic Federation. He was especially impressed with John
Burns and helped him in his unsuccessful attempt to become elected
as the MP for Nottingham West in the
1885 General Election.
Snell gradually became an orator of some talent and every Sunday morning
would speak on the same platform in Beresford Square with H.
H. Hyndman, John Burns, Tom
Mann, Ben Tillett, Will
Thorne, Eleanor Marx, Edward
Aveling and Harry Quelch. Snell like
the others gave support to the important industrial disputes that
took place during that period such as the 1888 Matchgirls
Strike and the 1889 London Dockers Strike.
In 1894 Snell joined the Fabian Society.
As a result of money made available by the Henry Hutchinson Trust,
Snell joined Ramsay MacDonald, Graham
Wallas, Catherine Glasier and Bruce
Glasier in travelling around the country giving lecturers on subjects
such as 'Socialism', 'Trade Unionism', 'Co-operation' and 'Economic
History'. Snell was also employed as a lecturer by the British Ethical
Union.
Snell was also a early member of the Labour
Party and made several attempts to represent the party in the
House of Commons. After failing to be elected
in Huddersfield in 1910 and 1918 he was eventually elected to represent
Woolwich in London in the 1922
General Election.
Ramsay MacDonald granted Snell a title
in March 1931 and asked him to serve as Under Secretary of State for
India in his government. Although asked to continue in this post when
MacDonald formed his National Government six months later, Lord Snell
refused. Snell continued in politics and between 1935 and 1940 was
leader of the Labour Party in the House
of Lords. Henry Snell died on 21st April 1944.
(1)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
My parents were agricultural workers,
and the household in which I was reared was composed of two sets of
children; for my mother, who was a widow, had married a neighbour
with a large family. I was eight years of age when I began to work
in the fields, and the tasks through which I first began to experience
the "dignity of labour" were the care of grazing cattle,
and the frightening of rooks and pigeons from newly-sown fields of
corn or peas, or from the ripening crops.
(2)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself
(1936)
Among the recollections of my childhood are those worthy old
men and women, friends and neighbours of my parents, who, after perhaps
fifty or sixty years of labour, had been compelled to take the dreaded
journey "over the hill to the poorhouse". No human institution
was ever more hated and feared by free men than the English workhouse
of sixty years ago was hated and feared by those proud peasants, and
no one without personal knowledge of them, and without experience
of the conditions under which they lived, can appreciate the stern
thrift, born of fear and the pride of independence, with which a few
coppers were preserved from each week's scanty income for payments
to the Friendly Society, the pig-club, or the savings bank. The aged
and sick would forgo every comfort, cling despairingly to their damp
and often derelict cottage, and pray that death would save them from
the crowning indignity of the workhouse.
(3)
Henry Snell, Men Movements
and Myself (1936)
Another abiding memory concerns the tireless industry of these agricultural
workers. I doubt whether men and women ever worked harder, and I do
not believe that necessary and honourable toil was ever more inadequately
rewarded. They had no recreation beyond a perhaps weekly and half-ashamed
visit to the public house, or an occasional social event at one of
the local chapels.
If the position of the agricultural labourer today is an improvement
upon the prevailing fifty years ago, it is in no small degree due
to the organization started by Joseph Arch. The farm labourer today
enjoys the full rights of British citizenship; he can take part in
the local or national government of his country; he is, in so far
as he is organised, a part of the labour movement; his social status
has been raised; he is entitled to receive compensation for accidents;
he has the consoling assurance of the old-age pension; he enjoys some
little improvement in housing and sanitation, medical treatment, and
sick pay for himself, though not for his wife and children.
(4)
Henry Snell, Men Movements
and Myself (1936)
The instruction given at the village church school, during the short
time that I attended it, was of course helpful, but it was far inferior
to that which children of the present day enjoy. The idea that the
children of the workers should be educated for the nation's good had
not at that time been widely accepted. The general attitude towards
such education was that voiced by the pious Hannah More, who "wished
the poor to be able to read their Bibles, and to be qualified for
domestic duties, but not to write or be enabled to read Tom Paine.
or to be encouraged to rise above their station".
Among the influences which gave to the village something of an independent
and radical tome, were three or four small workshops in which baskets
were made. These were the political centres of the place, and those
employed in them were Liberals and Radicals to a man. Some of them
were local preachers, Sunday School teachers, and choir-leaders, and
their work was frequently accompanied by the singing of favourite
hymns and ballads. I spent many profitable hours in listening to their
talk, and they counted among the influences which later turned my
mind towards political and social ideas.
(5)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
At twelve years of age I had to leave the parental home and face life
on my own account, I stood for hire in the market-place at Newark-on-Trent,
at the Michaelmas Fair in the year 1877, hen I was engaged as an indoor
servant by a farmer named Doncaster, who lived at the village of Caunton.
(6)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
The controversy which had arisen over the question of Charles Bradlaugh's
claim to be admitted to Parliament had made his name a household word
throughout the country, and when it was announced that he would shortly
visit Nottingham I determined that I would try and see him and hear
him speak. The subject of his lecture was Ireland. Bradlaugh was already
speaking when I arrived, and I remember, as clearly as though it were
only yesterday, the immediate and compelling impression made upon
me by that extraordinary man. I have never been so influenced by a
human personality as I was by Charles Bradlaugh. The commanding strength,
the massive head, the imposing stature, and the ringing eloquence
of the man fascinated me, and from that hour until the day of his
death, ten years later, I was one of his humblest but most devoted
of his followers.
Taking him all in all - as man, orator, as leader of unpopular causes,
and as an incorruptible public figure, he was the most imposing human
being that I have ever known, and I do not expect to look upon his
like again. I have seen strong men, under the storm of his passion,
rise from their seats, and sometimes weep with emotion. Like a prodigal
he threw away with both hands the energies of a precious life, and
he died, exhausted, by the early age of fifty-seven.
(7)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
Although I had become a member of the National Secular Society, and
no longer believed in the verbal inspiration of the bible, in miracles,
the biblical story of creation, or several other orthodox doctrines,
I had arrived at no settled opinions concerning the mystery of life,
or of the origin, nature, and government of the universe. Consequently,
the Unitarian chapel with its scholarly approach to these great problems,
with its tolerance for those of other faiths, and with its record
as a progressive force in the civic life of the town, made a quick
and strong appeal to me, and I entered into its gates with thanksgiving.
(8)
Henry Snell, Men
Movements and Myself (1936)
It was William Morris who first made me
consciously aware of the ugliness of a society which so arranged its
affairs that its workers were deprived of the beauty which life should
give. I remember him as a bluff, vital, and challenging personality,
whose influence upon those who knew him was both marked and lasting.
(9)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
I was one of the many thousands of young men whose political and
social views were greatly stimulated by Henry George's famous book
Progress and Poverty, which, if measured by the breadth and
the depth of its influence on the thoughtful workmen of the eighties,
must be considered as one of the greatest political documents of that
generation.
(10)
Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
The Independent Labour Party was avowedly and uncompromisingly
Socialist, and those of us who were its advocates attacked capitalism
in every speech that we made. The Sunday meetings of the I.L.P. held
in a thousand halls, suggested religious revival meetings rather than
political demonstrations. The fervour of the great audiences that
assembled in centres like Glasgow, Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield,
Birmingham, and Bristol, was quite without precedent in British political
history. Men who had grown old in years had their youthful enthusiasms
renewed under the glow and warmth of a new spiritual fellowship. They
were born again; they joyfully walked many miles to listen to a favourite
speaker; they sang Labour hymns; and they gave to the new social faith
an intensity of devotion which lifted it far above the older political
organizations of the day.
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