Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden
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The Right Honourable The Viscount Snowden PC |
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|---|---|
 |
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| Chancellor of the Exchequer | |
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In office 7 June 1929 – 5 November 1931 |
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| Prime Minister | Ramsay MacDonald |
| Preceded by | Winston Churchill |
| Succeeded by | Neville Chamberlain |
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In office 22 January 1924 – 3 November 1924 |
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| Prime Minister | Ramsay MacDonald |
| Preceded by | Neville Chamberlain |
| Succeeded by | Winston Churchill |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 18 July 1864 Cowling, Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 15 May 1937 (aged 72) Tilford, Surrey, England |
| Political party |
Labour Party (c. 1894-1931) National Labour (1931-1932) None (1932-1937) |
| Spouse(s) | Ethel Annakin (m. 1905; his death 1937) |
Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden PC (/ˈsnoʊdən/; 18 July 1864 – 15 May 1937) was a British politician. A strong speaker, he became popular in trade union circles for his denunciation of capitalism as unethical and his promise of a socialist utopia. He was the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position he held in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931. He broke with Labour policy in 1931 and was expelled from the party and excoriated as a turncoat, as the Party was overwhelmingly crushed in 1931 by the National Government coalition that Snowden supported. He was succeeded as Chancellor by Neville Chamberlain.
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 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". 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 and then passed the civil service entry examination, and 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 in Devon when he was aged 27, Snowden severely injured his back in a cycling accident and was paralysed from the waist down. He learned to walk again with the aid of sticks within two years. Following the accident his Inland Revenue job was kept open for him for two years but due to his condition he decided to resign from the civil service. While he was convalescing at his mother's house at Cowling he began to study Socialist theory and history.
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