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Philip Snowden is a British revolutionary, political dissident, and ex-politician. Once a commemorated speaker in the British socialist movement, he became popular in trade union circles for his denunciation of capitalism as unethical and his promise of a socialist utopia. Snowden went on to serve as a cabinet minister twice: serving as the first (and only) Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position he held in 1923, and later as the Union of Britain's first Minister for Financial Affairs though his impact has been debated. He broke with Labour policy in 1926, and was dismissed from the cabinet the following year, becoming a powerful party leader in the post-revolution political scene. A dominant figure within the Independent Labour Party, he took control of the party in 1930 following John Wheatley's death and shaped it into one of the leading moderate forces in politics.
Snowden underwent an immense fall from grace ultimately culminating in his political downfall in 1932. After having grown increasingly alienated from the British labour movement, he began drawing closer to the Liberal Party and became the foremost leader of the political opposition in the Federal Congress. Having grown increasingly critical of government conduct and the Mann Ministry, Snowden led the opposition into blocking legislative functions bringing the nation to a halt, as part of the 1932 Parliamentary Crisis. His gambit to force the government to collapse and call new elections ultimately failed; the Parliament was dissolved by force during a state of emergency and his Second Union of Democratic Control was banned.
Snowden was arrested and convicted for Grievous Bodily Harm after a scuffle with the President of the TUC caused the latter to break his collarbone. Snowden pled guilty to lesser offence of Actual Bodily Harm, deemed more appropriate by the jury, and was jailed for three years. His sentence was later extended twice to account for seditious activities he had committed inside and outside the prison, totaling a maximum sentence of five years. He remains interned at the Special Offenses Wing of Lincoln Prison, a lighter detachment for political prisoners.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Snowden was born in Cowling in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father John Snowden had been a weaver and a supporter of Chartism, and later a Gladstonian liberal. Snowden would later say: "I was brought up in this Radical atmosphere, and it was then that I imbibed the political and social principles which I have held fundamentally ever since". Although his parents and sisters were involved in weaving at the Ickornshaw Mill, he did not join them; after attending a local board school (where he received additional lessons in French and Latin from the schoolmaster) he stayed on as a pupil-teacher. When he was 15 he became an insurance office clerk in Burnley. During his seven years as a clerk, he studied for then passed the civil service entry examination; in 1886, he was appointed to a junior position at the Excise Office in Liverpool. Snowden moved on to other posts around Scotland and then to Devon.
In August 1891, aged 27, Snowden severely injured his back in a cycling accident in Devon and was paralyzed from the waist down. He learned to walk again with the aid of sticks within two years. His Inland Revenue job was kept open for him for two years following the accident; however, owing to his condition, he decided to resign from the civil service. While convalescing at his mother's house at Cowling he began to study socialist theory and history.
Snowden joined the Liberal Party, and followed his parents in becoming a Methodist and a teetotaller. In 1893, in the aftermath of the formation of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in neighbouring Bradford, he was asked to give a speech for the Cowling Liberal Club on the dangers of socialism. Whilst researching the subject, Snowden instead became convinced by the ideology. He eventually joined the executive committee of the Keighley ILP in 1899, and went on to chair the ILP from 1903 to 1906. He became a prominent speaker for the party, and wrote a popular Christian socialist pamphlet with Keir Hardie in 1903, entitled The Christ that is to Be. His strident rhetoric, well-laced with statistics and evangelical themes, contrasted the evil conditions under capitalism with the moral and economic utopia of future socialism. He condemned as "bloodsuckers and parasites" local textile company executives. In 1898, he launched the Keighley Labour Journal, using it to denounce waste, pettiness, and corruption. However, he ignored the concerns of the trade unions, which he judged to be conservative and fixated on wages. By 1902, he had moved his base to Leeds and toured Britain as a lecturer on politics and corruption, with his own syndicated column and short essays in numerous working class outlets. By the time he was elected Labour MP for Blackburn in 1906, he had become a well-known socialist figure, standing at the national level alongside both Keir Hardie, Professor Arnold Lupton and Ramsay MacDonald.
Snowden married Ethel Annakin, a campaigner for women's suffrage, in 1905. He supported his wife's ideals, and he became a noted speaker at suffragette meetings and other public meetings.
Entering Politics and the MacDonald Ministry[]
Snowden unsuccessfully contested the Wakefield constituency in West Yorkshire in a by-election in March 1902, where he received 40 percent of the votes. In 1906, he became the Labour MP for Blackburn. He continued his writing and lectures, and now was advocating more radical measures than the ruling Liberals were implementing. He even devised his own "Socialist budget" to rival David Lloyd George's 1909 "People's Budget".
Snowden was in Australia on a worldwide lecture tour when the Great War broke out in August 1914; he did not return to Britain until February 1915. Though not a pacifist, he did not support recruiting for the armed forces, and he campaigned against conscription. His stance was unpopular with the public through the war though following the Treaty of Versailles he saw something of an upswing in support and successfully defended his Blackburn seat in the 1919 and 1923 elections. Upon Ramsay MacDonald's appointment as Prime Minister in 1923, Snowden was chosen as the Labour Party's first ever Chancellor of the Exchequer and sworn of the Privy Council.
In his budget, Snowden lowered the duties on tea, coffee, cocoa, chicory and sugar, reduced spending on armaments, and provided money for council housing. However, he did not implement the capital levy. Snowden claimed that because of the lowering of duties on foodstuffs consumed by the working class, the budget went "far to realize the cherished radical idea of a free breakfast table". He profoundly believed in the morality of the balanced budget, with rigorous economy and not a penny wasted. He grasped how serious unemployment was becoming, but differed with the rising belief in deficit spending as a way to combat it. His budget is widely regarded as Gladstonian in nature by academics. In his first budget, Snowden earmarked £38 million for the reduction of food taxes, the introduction of pensions for widows, and a reduction in the pensionable age to 65. However, only the first of these measures was realized during the first Labour Government's time in office.
The National Government, Arrest and the Civil War[]
With the collapse of the McDonald government in 1924 and its replacement by Austen Chamberlain's national coalition, Snowden returned to the opposition. He was broadly supportive of George Lansbury's leadership and was quietly pegged for a return to the office of the Chancellorship had should Labour win another election. This marked a period of rising tensions within Britain and Snowden would likewise follow Lansbury in being vague. While supportive of the general ethos of this growing opposition, he condemned the SPGB for being revolutionary in nature, at one point calling them a 'violent gang of thugs and robbers.'
Snowden was likewise quick to condemn the rising violence beginning at Plymouth but broadly allied with the mutinous sailors and striking workers. This was primarily out of his fears that the riots were revolutionary in nature and could spell the end of Britain. Ultimately he would call for moderation and propose a 'committee of reconciliation' to be formed. Likewise Snowden would again speak in minor favour of the Port Talbot strikers while being quick to condemn their revolutionary violence and once more called for moderation and an end to the hostilities. Despite this, he was be of the MPs arrested on the floor of parliament for sedition and conspiracy.
Snowden was then transported to a military prison though a mutiny of the guards would see him and other prisoners released by the soldiers, as the civil war had gone into full swing. Snowden would flee for enemy lines with sympathetic soldiers and was later present at the declaration of the Union of Britain, being a signatory to both the Republican Proclamation and the Liverpool Manifesto. He would be quickly asked to head up the Ministry of Finance of the provisional government, a position he would readily agree to. Despite suspicion from the syndicalist elements of Labour he maintained the post due to personal interference from President Lansbury.
The ILP, Reconstruction and the Wilderness[]
Following the end of the Civil War, Snowden would re-emerge in ILP politics and successfully contest the hegemony of George Wheatley's revolutionary loyalists. While in no way an opponent of the new order, Snowden held dreams for a 'post-revolution evolution' and talked of the new Britain being that of a 'Great Society' for other nations to aspire to mimic. This would attract the support of many disenfranchised Fabians, moderates and reconverted National Labourites who flocked to Snowden's wing of the ILP and would allow it to organise as a powerful alternative to the syndicalist dominated Lansbury Labour.
Still the Minister for Finance, Snowden was one of the main figures involved in the Reconstruction of Britain as well as negotiating economic aid from the country's new French partners. Under Snowden's leadership, the British economy would begin its recovery and he would be instrumental in the establishment of various provisions
In 1927 with the conclusion of the Constitutional Congress and the dissolution of the Ministerial Council, Snowden was removed from his office when the position was dissolved.
Political Imprisonment[]
WIP