Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

Product Information

During the Second World War, from the formation of Churchill's coalition government in May 1940 Gaitskell worked with Noel Hall and Hugh Dalton as a senior civil servant for the Ministry of Economic Warfare, giving him experience of government. Gaitskell played an important role steering the Coal Nationalisation Bill through the House of Commons, bearing the brunt of the committee stage and winding up the final debate. Gaitskell passionately condemned the eventual Anglo-French military intervention to secure the Suez Canal, supposedly launched to enforce international law and to separate the Egyptian and Israeli combatants; the Israeli attack had in fact been launched in collusion with the British and French to supply a pretext for the invasion. Philip Snowden, Viscount Snowden, (born July 18, 1864, Ickornshaw, Yorkshire, England—died May 15, 1937, Tilford, Surrey), socialist politician and propagandist and chancellor of the Exchequer in the first two Labour Party governments of Great Britain (1924; 1929–31).

Gaitskell appears to have largely ignored this sum of capital, and his wife had no idea of his wealth. Gaitskell roused his supporters by promising to "Fight and Fight and Fight Again" to reverse the decision. After the Conservatives cut the armament plans in 1952 Crosland told people that Gaitskell had made him look like "a complete idiot" for supporting the budget in public. 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. 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.In a speech to the party conference in October 1962, Gaitskell argued that if the aim was for Britain to participate in a Federal Europe, this would mean "the end of Britain as an independent European state, the end of a thousand years of history! He was attached to the University of Vienna for the 1933–34 academic year and witnessed first-hand the political suppression of the social democratic workers movement by the conservative Engelbert Dollfuss's government in February 1934. Bevan was furious at Gaitskell being promoted over him, even though, as Gaitskell correctly guessed in his diary, he probably did not want the job himself. In a speech at Stalybridge (5 October 1952) Gaitskell alleged that "about one-sixth" of the constituency delegates "appeared to be Communist or Communist-inspired" and attacked "the stream of grossly misleading propaganda with poisonous innuendos and malicious attacks on Attlee, Morrison and the rest of us" published in Tribune.

He argued that higher interest rates would be perceived as generating profits for the banks, which would not sit well with trade unions, and he was only prepared to consider demanding that the banks restrict credit. The Conservatives not only attacked Gaitskell as unpatriotic for failing to support British troops in action, but also tried to exploit perceived differences between Gaitskell and Bevan, who had rejoined the Shadow Cabinet earlier in the year and who had now been promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary. In 1898, he launched the Keighley Labour Journal, using it to denounce waste, pettiness, and corruption. Britain still preferred to encourage trade in pounds sterling within the Commonwealth, and Gaitskell wanted to preserve Britain's ability to avoid downturns like the US downturn of 1948–9, which Britain had largely escaped because of devaluation.The perceived similarity in his outlook to that of his Conservative Party counterpart Rab Butler was dubbed "Butskellism", initially a satirical term blending their names, and was one aspect of the post-war consensus through which the major parties largely agreed on the main points of domestic and foreign policy until the 1970s. Gaitskell visited Washington in October 1950, his first visit there, just before becoming Chancellor. He told Crossman (19 October) that Bevan simply wanted to succeed Jim Griffiths as deputy leader and had shown no inclination to resist moderate policies. Gaitskell was prepared to offer a delay in the introduction of charges but rejected the Tomlinson formula, despite Attlee's urgings, as the ceiling could not be achieved without charges. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden ( 18 July 1864 – 15 May 1937) was a British politician, and the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer. Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden, PC ( / ˈ s n oʊ d ən/; 18 July 1864 [ citation needed] – 15 May 1937) was a British politician.The election had also seen the election of the first three female Labour MPs: Margaret Bondfield, Dorothy Jewson and Susan Lawrence.

Gaitskell was educated at the Dragon School from 1912 to 1919, where he was a friend of the future poet John Betjeman. All British Chancellors of the Exchequer have yielded themselves, some spontaneously, some unconsciously, some reluctantly to that compulsive intellectual atmosphere. Douglas Jay and others attempted in vain to persuade Gaitskell to compromise, but he refused, arguing that two members of the Cabinet should not be allowed to dictate to eighteen, although he agreed not to specify just yet the date at which the charges would come into effect.

e. a meeting of Labour MPs) on 11 April as "sheer relief" that it had not been worse; the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) strongly supported the budget. It was during that year he had prostate gland surgery, following which his health and mobility declined. In 1956 the Egyptian ruler Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, beginning the Suez Crisis. His official biographer wrote, "He was raised in an atmosphere which regarded borrowing as an evil and free trade as an essential ingredient of prosperity". By 1951 inflation was beginning to increase, the government budget surplus had disappeared, and in another sign of an overheating economy unemployment was down to 1945 levels.