Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden
Overview
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign in the United Kingdom...
(18 July 1864 – 15 May 1937) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
politician and the first Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
, a position he held in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931.
Snowden was born in Cowling
Cowling, Craven
Cowling is a village and civil parish in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England.It is a village consisting of 1,000 to 2,000 residents. The village is expanding due to new housing built around the outskirts of the village...
in the West Riding of Yorkshire
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
. His father John Snowden (1830/1 – 1889) had been a weaver and a supporter of Chartism
Chartism
Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...
and then a Gladstonian liberal. Snowden later wrote in his autobiography: "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".
In August 1891 Philip Snowden became ill and was paralysed from the waist down.
Quotations
It is no part of my job as Chancellor of the Exchequer to put before the House of Commons proposals for the expenditure of public money. The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance.
To the House of Commons (30 July 1924, H.C. Deb. Vol. 176, Cols 2091-2.)
I would like to see the word 'nationalization' banned from the socialist vocabulary.
The Daily Herald (15 October, 1928).
I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party...this is not socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad.
BBC radio broadcast (17 October, 1931).