Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

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What is the Budget Box? Why is it red?". Birmingham Mail. 27 October 2021 . Retrieved 4 February 2022. Philip, Viscount Snowden, An Autobiography. Volume One. 1864-1919 (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1934), p. 19. Although he had chaired the ILP for a second time, from 1917 to 1920, Snowden resigned from the party in 1927 because he believed it was "drifting more and more away from... evolutionary socialism into revolutionary socialism". He was also opposed to the new Keynesian economic ideas which provided a rationale for deficit spending, and criticized their expression in the Liberals' manifesto for the 1929 election, titled We can Conquer Unemployment. [3] Chancellor of the Exchequer: 1929–1931 [ edit ] A graph showing the percentage of the popular vote received by major parties in general elections (1832–2005), with the rapid rise of the Labour Party after its founding during the late 19th century being clear as it became one of the two major forces in politics

The growth in Labour's local activist base and organisation was reflected in the elections following the war, the co-operative movement now providing its own resources to the Co-operative Party after the armistice. The Co-operative Party later reached an electoral agreement with the Labour Party. The Communist Party of Great Britain was refused affiliation between 1921 and 1923. [28] The chancellor has considerable control over other departments as it is the Treasury that sets Departmental Expenditure Limits. The amount of power this gives to an individual chancellor depends on their personal forcefulness, their status within their party and their relationship with the prime minister. Gordon Brown, who became chancellor when Labour came into Government in 1997, had a large personal power base in the party. Perhaps as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in the same position throughout his ten years as prime minister; making Brown an unusually dominant figure and the longest-serving chancellor since the Reform Act of 1832. [9] This has strengthened a pre-existing trend towards the chancellor occupying a clear second position among government ministers, elevated above his traditional peers, the foreign secretary and home secretary. One part of the chancellor's key roles involves the framing of the annual year budget. As of 2017, the first is the Autumn Budget, also known as Budget Day which forecasts government spending in the next financial year and also announces new financial measures. The second is a Spring Statement, also known as a "mini-Budget". Britain's tax year has retained the old Julian end of year: 24 March (Old Style) / 5 April (New Style, i.e. Gregorian). From 1993, the Budget was in spring, preceded by an annual autumn statement. This was then called Pre-Budget Report. The Autumn Statement usually took place in November or December. The 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2016 budgets were all delivered on a Wednesday, summarised in a speech to the House of Commons. Main article: Churchill war ministry A graph showing Labour Party individual membership which showcase a large increase in membership after the warAlthough the first Labour government only lasted nine months, it achieved much, including the Wheatley Housing Act that saw half a million council homes built over the next decade. Labour also planned new and improved schools, improved pensions and benefits, and laid the foundations for the extension of voting rights to millions more. Reluctant Chancellor makes a move to keep his mansion out of reach". Archived from the original on 5 June 2011 . Retrieved 24 March 2010. Even its most eloquent critics, Jeremy Corbyn and Bob Marshall-Andrews, remain the same. And Gordon Brown's famous "five economic tests" on the euro bear a striking resemblance to the "five conditions" which underpinned the basis of Labour's approach to membership of the Common Market from 1961. The 1910 election saw 42 Labour MPs elected to the House of Commons, a significant victory since, a year before the election, the House of Lords had passed the Osborne judgment ruling that Trades Unions in the United Kingdom could no longer donate money to fund the election campaigns and wages of Labour MPs. The governing Liberals were unwilling to repeal this judicial decision with primary legislation. The height of Liberal compromise was to introduce a wage for Members of Parliament to remove the need to involve the Trade Unions. By 1913, faced with the opposition of the largest Trades Unions, the Liberal government passed the Trade Disputes Act to allow Trade Unions to fund Labour MPs once more. Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden, PC ( / ˈ s n oʊ d ən/; 18 July 1864 [ citation needed] – 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 that year by the National Government coalition that Snowden supported. He was succeeded as Chancellor by Neville Chamberlain.

Vincent, Nicholas C. "The Origins of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer." English Historical Review 108.426 (1993): 105–121. in JSTOR He set up a royal commission, which, as they say, took minutes and wasted years. "Of all the futile committees on which I have sat none equalled the public schools commission," recalled Noel Annan in his memoir Our Age. Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1922 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Meanwhile, the Liberal Party declined rapidly and the party suffered a catastrophic split that allowed the Labour Party to co-opt much of the Liberals' support. Also in the 1940s, trade union power and authority was extended further than in British history up until that point, with labour's ability to regulate and control work significantly enhanced during this period. This was assisted by developments such as full employment, the growth of union membership, rising from 32% to 45% of the workforce from 1939 to 1950 and increasing workplace representation, as characterised by the large increase in theSnowden unsuccessfully contested the Wakefield constituency in West Yorkshire in a by-election in March 1902, where he received 40 percent of the votes. [5]

During the course of the First World War, while serving both inside and outside of government, the Labour Party was able to influence a number of progressive developments in social policy. At a time when 90% of housing was privately rented, landlords sought to increase rents in the face of rising wartime prices (and in some cases as a means of profiteering). This resulted in a range of largely spontaneous protests in 1915 which were then often co-ordinated by local Labour movements, such as that in Glasgow, where the ILP played a leading role. This forced the government to pass legislation which fixed wartime rents at pre-war levels. This was significant in that it showed labour to be the party that would defend working-class interests in housing, more than its rivals, while also helping Labour to move away from trade union related issues towards areas which had some direct appeal to women, in particular. In addition, as argued by Andrew Thorpe, it also "added credibility to the idea of state action to control market forces which disadvantaged the working class." [13] Yet the pledges contained promises that Labour had been making for decades and had failed in the past to keep. They included the historic demands for a minimum wage and for Scottish and Welsh devolution, to which Labour had been committed by Keir Hardie and had never managed to deliver - though the 1974-79 Labour government had spent a considerable amount of its parliamentary time trying and failing to get devolution on the statute book.I’m saying that we won’t allow that to happen again because the OBR will not be gagged,” Reeves told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday.