Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

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He profoundly believed in the morality of the balanced budget, with rigorous economy and not a penny wasted. Harold Wilson ( President of the Board of Trade) and George Strauss ( Minister of Supply) warned Gaitskell that the burden of rearmament was too much for the shortage of raw materials and manufacturing capacity, but Gaitskell ignored them as they were friends of Bevan.

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden ( 18 July 1864 – 15 May 1937) was a British politician, and the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let’s mark the centenary of the first Labour government by electing another with Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. g. Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers but not Anthony Crosland or Douglas Jay – became supporters of British membership of the EEC, an issue on which Labour was split in the 1970s and which helped to precipitate the SDP split of 1981. In September 1950, with Britain's balance of payments now in surplus, Gaitskell negotiated British membership of the European Payments Union, meaning that instead of bilateral clearing, European currencies were to be convertible against one another even if not against the US dollar. 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.

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".

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. Gaitskell visited Washington in October 1950, his first visit there, just before becoming Chancellor. Crossman noted that this forced Bevan to be loyal to Gaitskell (15 December 1956), making the two men allies of a kind. He died suddenly in 1963, when he appeared to be on the verge of leading Labour back into power and becoming the next Prime Minister. When Crossman interjected that Bevan "was only half wanting" to be leader, had not made any conspiracy against Attlee and was mainly concerned at voicing protests against Morrison and Gaitskell, the latter replied that "there are extraordinary parallels between Nye and Adolf Hitler.In 1860, William Ewart Gladstone carried his speech in a red brief case and today the Chancellor still carries one to his annual speech.

Although some Conservative MPs spoke against the measure it was not opposed by Churchill, then Leader of the Opposition, who had had an ambivalent view of the Bank since his own time as chancellor in the 1920s. However, Snowden's use appears to have predated those of Johnson while being more consistent with the now-common, "Truth is the first casualty of war. Frank Cousins became General Secretary of the TGWU in 1956, beginning the process whereby the unions began to shift left. In the election the previous month, Labour secured its best result up until that point, pushing the Liberals into third.The Conservatives failed to get an overall majority and Labour, tacitly supported by the Liberals, formed a minority government.