PHILIP SNOWDEN
(1864-1937)
British politician and the first Labour Chancellor
of the Exchequer. He married ETHEL ANNAKIN, a prominent member of
the suffragette movement. She was Governor of the
British Broadcasting Corp.
Born to quite a poor family in Middleton, Philip managed to receive a good education through the tenacity
of his father - a Sunday school Superintendent, and due
to the fact that he had two older sisters who started
work and brought in wages for the family, allowing
Philip to continue with his schooling instead of working
half days as most of his peers did. Philip's family
moved to Nelson in search of work when he was fifteen,
due to the mill they worked in going bankrupt. Due to
his good education work as an insurance clerk was easy
to find. Soon he joined the Civil Service and worked
around the country until a cycling accident forced him
to return to his mother in 1891. She had returned to
Cowling two years earlier after the death of Philip's
father. In the two years it took to recuperate, Philip
wrote for local papers, having also attended political
meetings since his time in Nelson. When he was finally
able, after much determined effort towards
rehabilitation, he began public speaking in Keighley and
despite a great following lost his first election in
Burnley in 1900. A year after his marriage to Ethel Annakin
in 1905 Philip became M.P. for Blackburn
and came straight to his mother in Cowling. He was led
into the village by a brass band to give a speech at the
Liberal Club. Village children were given the day off
school.
He began to work for the Independent Labour party. He
was twice chairman of the party, from 1903 to 1906 and
later from 1917 to 1920, but resigned in 1927 in favour
of the Labour party proper as a protest against what he
considered the revolutionary tendencies of the
Independent Labour party. He belonged to the pacifist
minority of the socialist group during World War One.
Snowden served in the House of Commons from 1906 to 1918
and from 1922 until 1931. As an acknowledged specialist
in finance, he became chancellor of the exchequer in the
Labour ministries formed by Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and
1929. He won popularity by his refusal to accept a
reduction in the British share of German reparations in
the Young Plan in 1929. His rigidly orthodox financial
measures, including the maintenance of free trade and
balanced budgets, were insufficient to stem the growing
economic depression. Philip remained chancellor in the
national government of 1931 and announced the suspension
of the gold standard. Created Viscount Snowden of
Ickornshaw in 1931, he served from 1931 to 1932 as lord
privy seal but resigned when free trade was abandoned.
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Viscount Philip Snowden
Memoriam Service Sheet.
Supplied by: Joan
Tindale. |
|
In Memoriam
PHILIP,
VISCOUNT SNOWDEN OF
ICKORNSHAW
Born - 1864
Died - 1937 |
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SATURDAY
AFTERNOON, MAY 21st, 1938.
TWO O'CLOCK.
UNVEILING OF PLAQUE on the
House, at Middleton,
where Viscount Snowden was born.
ORDER OF CEREMONY.
Silence
Unveiling of Plaque by Mr Wright
Snowden, J.P..
Chairman of Cowling Parish
Council.
Prayer if Thanksgiving and
Commemoration.
Rev. William Dickinson.
BLESSING.
THREE O'CLOCK.
UNVEILING OF MEMORIAL at Pad
Cote, on the Ickornshaw Moor.
ORDER OF CEREMONY.
Silence |
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Hymn.
OUR Father, by whom
servants
Our faith was built of
old.
Whose hand hath crowned
her children
With blessing manifold
For Thine unfailing
mercies
Far-strewn along our
way,
With all who passed
before us,
We praise thy name
to-day.
The changeful years
unresting
Their silent course have
sped,
New comrades our
bringing
In comrades` steps to
treat :
And some are long
forgotten,
Long spent their hopes
and fears ;
Safe rest they in Thy
keeping,
Who changest not with
years. |
Tune -
Aurelia.
They reap not where they
laboured
We reap what they have
sown ;
Our harvest may be
garnered
By ages yet unknown.
The days of old have
dowered us.
With gifts beyond all
praise :
Our Father, make us
faithful
To serve the coming
days.
Before us and beside us,
Still holden in Thine
hand,
A cloud unseen of
witness,
Our elder comrades stand
:
One family unbroken,
We join, with one
acclaim,
One heart, one voice
uplifting.
To glorify Thy name. |
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Prayer.
Lord's Prayer. Scripture
Reading.
Rev. E. N. Betenson, B.A.
Introduction of The Right
Honourable Viscount Sankey,
P.C.,
by Mr. Wright Snowden, J.P.
Unveiling of Memorial, and
Address by
The Right Honourable Viscount
Sankey, P.C.
Prayer of Dedication. Rev.
Alfred Booth.
Response by The Viscountess
Snowden, J.P.
Mr. Tom Snowden, J.P. |
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Hymm
RISE up, O men of God !
Have done with lesser
things ;
Give heart and soul and
mind and
To serve the King of
Kings. [strength
Rise up, O men of God !
His kingdom tarries long
;
Bring in the day of
brotherhood,
And end the night of
wrong. |
Tune -
Trentham
Rise up, O men of God !
The Church for you doth
wait,
Her strength unequal to
her task ;
Rise up and make her
great.
Lift high the Cross of
Chris !
Treat where His feet
have trod ;
As brothers of the Son
of Man
Rise up, O men of God ! |
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BLESSING
The singing led by the Cowling
Temperance Prize Band,
and the combined Choirs of the
local Churches. |
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FOR THE INFORMATION OF
VISITORS.
Middleton and Pad Cote lie on the either
side of the village of Cowling. The
village is on the main road between
Kildwick and Colne. The former is
the railway station for Yorkshire, and
three miles distant, the latter the
railway station for Lancashire, and five
miles distant.
There is a convenient Bus Service.
Ample provision is make for the parking
of cars.
Tea provided at moderate charges.
Those who have not yet contributed to
the Memorial Fund might like to know
that is it proposed to establish a
Memorial in the village itself, as a
later date, and that the Fund is still
open. Any subscriptions may be paid at
the end of the ceremony, in the marquee,
or forwarded to one of the
following persons :-
Mr. Francis Redman. 19, Sun Street,
Cowling, Keighley.
Mr. J. K. Fletcher, School House,
Cowling. Keighley.
Treasurers.
Miss Mary Smith, Knoll View, Cowling,
Keighley.
Secretary. |
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Centenary
tribute by an old admirer to
Philip Snowden of Ickornshaw
By Arthur
Booth.
From Keighley News, Saturday
July 11 1964 |
The centenary on July 18 of the birth of Philip
Snowden, is a reminder of events in the summer of 1931
that probably shocked more people in and around Keighley
than anywhere else in the country.
Snowden after joining Ramsay MacDonald’s “National
Government.” Turned on his former colleagues venomously.
Castigating them as “little Lenins.” He used his pen
with such effect in the Press, which previously was
always ready to revile him, and his voice over the
radio, that he ensured the virtual extinction,
temporarily, of the Parliamentary Labour Party of which
he was a founder Member.
As one of the humble second wave of propagandists who
followed in the wake of Snowden, Keir Hardie, Bruce
Glasier and all the others of that illustrious band I
well remember coming to Keighley just after that general
Election.
Discussing the bitter campaign that had preceded the
election, Willie Smith, the most stalwart of Keighley
Socialists said “Well Ah’d never of thought it of Ahr
Philip.” And another pioneer of those days, joiner
Ernest Spedding added ”Nor would I, Many’s the time I’ve
heard him speak on ‘For lack of vision, the people
perish.’ And now he’s gone and lost his own vision.”
For Keighley people always had warm feelings and sincere
personnel regard for Philip Snowdon, and these he
reciprocated. After the cycling accident which brought
on acute inflammation of the spine and left him
permanently crippled, he left the cottage at Cowling
after the death of his widowed mother, and settled in
Keighley to serve the cause in which he had come to
believe.
“RELIGION OF SOCIALISM”
While he had lain on his back for almost a year he had
studied the famous Fabian essays and other Socialist
literature, and one evening he surprised the Radical
Methodists of his native village by talking to them on
“The religion of Socialism.”
He celebrated his entry into the recently formed
Independent Labour Party by speaking at the Keighley
branch in 1894. There after he became one of the party’s
most popular propagandists, and never did a man more
thoroughly deserve the pound a week that the ILP could
afford to pay him.
Week after week he hobbled along country lanes and
streets to and from railway stations, often covering
more than a hundred miles a week. That was one reason
why a home at Keighley was more convenient than one at
Cowling.
So to Keighley he came in 1899, and enjoyed the warm
fellowship of the local ILPers. As, indeed I did 30
years later. He served the people of he town on its
council and school board, and his comrades in particular
by editing their local propagandist paper, for which
they rewarded him with an honorarium of 8s weekly.
It was only lack of money that prevented him from
participating in a Parliamentary contest before 1900.
Then he stood for Blackburn and polled the third highest
vote of the 13 candidates sponsored by the Labour
Representation Committee.
VITAL SIX YEARS
The next six years were amongst the busiest and most
vital in his life. In 1902 he failed to secure victory
at a by-election at Wakefield by only a thousand votes,
and from 1903 to 1906 he was national chairman of the
ILP.
In 1905 he married a Fabian teacher from Harrogate.
Ethel Annakin, at Otley – making it secluded and secret
for fear his comrades should turn it into a Socialist
demonstration.
He took his seat on the benches at Westminster as the
member for Blackburn. Twenty-eight other Labour MPs had
also been returned, and so the Parliamentary Labour
Party was born.
With men like Philip in it, it soon became a lust
infant, and he was among the lustiest. His colleagues
enjoyed the shafts of sarcasm he hurled at their
opponents, who in turn neither relished his blunt
Yorkshire speech nor his devastating and remorseless
logic. Never were Parliamentary debates read in Keighley
with more interest, as “Ahr Philip” used his talents to
suit the occasion.
There were two interludes in Philip Snowden’s early
entry into the Parliamentary area that gave immense
delight to his admirers. The first one was in July 1923,
when he opened the full-dress debate in the House of
Commons on a motion: “That in view of the failure of the
capitalist system to adequately utilise and organise
natural resources and productive power, or provide the
necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the
population, and believing that the cause of this failure
lies in the private ownership and control of the means
of production and distribution, that house declares that
legislative effort should be directed to the gradual
super session of the capitalist system by an industrial
and social order based on the public ownership and
democratic control of the instruments of production and
distribution”
“HOUSEWIFE’S BUDGET”
The second occasion was when after the 1924 election,
having been put in charge of the Treasury, he introduced
his “Housewife’s Budget” truly epoch making as iniating
the first real attempt to give the people the food
without making the consumption of it a form of taxation.
But between these two memorable occasions the modern
world had seen its first major holocaust. Snowden had
opposed the 1914-1918 war, not on absolutist pacifist
grounds, but because he considered it was a result of a
false foreign policy, and what diplomacy had done wrong
diplomacy could put right without the massacre of
millions of the human race.
So on every conceivable occasion he urged that peace be
negotiated, and that those who had conscientious
objection to taking part in the slaughter should not be
maltreated.
He never flinched from facing hostile audiences and paid
the price when Lloyd George rushed his “Coupon Election”
in December 1918. With other anti-war MP’s including
MacDonald and Fred Jowett, Snowden was absent from
Westminster for more that four years.
TWOPENNY PAMPHLETS
So it was back to the platform and the pen. There will
doubtless be many in Keighley who treasure the twopenny
pamphlets that he wrote during this time, and appreciate
how he took to heart the advice old Johnny Coe had given
him years before. “Mak it simple, Philip lad, Noa Karl
Marx an’ surplus value an’ that soart o’ stuff.”
When the second minority Labour Government took office
in 1929 he once more became Chancellor and introduced
the second of his four Budgets.
Unfortunately the slump that had devastated the American
economy spread so rapidly to the old world that
old-fashioned remedies were of no avail. The crisis in
Britain grew rapidly worse, and the MacDonald Government
dithered and dallied.
TO THE LORDS
Then came the split which tore the Labour Party in two.
Snowden went with MacDonald into the National Government
and resorted to cuts and taxation increases.
Illness having previously decided him against contesting
another election he transferred to the House of Lords as
Viscount Snowden of Ickornshaw.
He soon discovered that his new allies were alien to his
own basic ideas. They threw out the land values clauses
of his Finance Bill and they threw out his purist Free
Trade theories at the Ottawa conference. So he quitted
the political arena and retired to Tilford Surrey where
he died on May 15, 1937
At least one of his critics and a former comrade can
still be grateful that he lived and worked amongst us
West Riding folk. Particularly do I honour him for his
insistence that Socialism is impossible without
industrial democracy. |
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WHEN “LOCAL LAD“ WAS HONOURED
This photograph was taken outside the Methodist Church
on May 17, 1924 when Cowling folk honoured the “local
lad” who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. The future
Viscount and Lady Snowden were presented with a silver
rose bowl and two vases. It was one of the greatest days
of his life. |
The Weaver's
Lad who became a Viscount
The Dalesman:
Febuary 1984. Supplied by: Dr
John Laycock, Hants. |
PHILIP
SNOWDEN, who was born
and spent his early
years in the Pennine
village of Cowling,
beside a major road
leading from the West
Riding into Lancashire,
was a man without
frills. Blunt, shrewd,
at times obstinate, he
was no better, no worse,
than his forebears, who
over the long years had
to fight for everything
they wanted. His father,
John Snowden, was one of
many hundreds of
handloom weavers robbed
of their independent way
of life by
industrialisation.
Philip, the weaver's lad
who became Viscount
Snowden of Ickornshaw,
was a fighter himself.
He fought against
poverty,against ill
health, and against a
system in which there
did not appear to him
any relationship between
work and its rewards. He
was a Socialist in an
old Liberal stronghold.
He did not like the idea
of revolution or class
war; his was a moral
creed, developed in the
fervent worship of
Wesleyan Methodism at
Ickornshaw.
Snowden called himself a
"stolid, unimaginative,
unpoetical, truthful
Yorkshireman" ! At first
glance, he did not seem
to have
anything heroic about
him. He was small,
spare, with a lean,
ascetic face (someone
likened the face to that
of Cardinal Manning!). A
frail body was supported
on sticks for over 40
years.
Cowling straddles at the
sides of the main road.
It consists mainly of
mills and terraced
houses that over the
years have soaked up
grime as well as rain. I
was there on a bright
day. The masonry, with
sunshine full upon it,
and a blue sky beyond,
looked black. It gives
the impression that
Cowling is a dirty
place, which it is not.
Local people, "forever
scrattin' ", keep the
interiors of their homes
immaculate. They cannot
be held responsible
for over a century of
industrial pollution.
Cowling is, in fact, the
modern bit, dating back
to the Industrial
Revolution, and there
were no planners then to
object to linear
development. Ickornshaw,
the older place,
snuggles in a hollow.
Middleton, on the
hilltop beyond, is a
curiosity - a single
busy street in a country
setting. Once there were
shops as well as houses:
now Middleton is
entirely residential.
Philip Snowden was born
in a house at the end of
the street.
A Busy Street. It was
something of an
adventure to walk down
Middleton for this
street was full of
interesting people, with
lots of children at
play. I found the
variety of architectural
styles quite
breathtaking, and I got
the impression that
Middleton had grown
piecemeal. A local lady
mentioned the stone
quarries. Some of the
quarrymen would be
accommodated in this
busy little street which
juts into the
countryside.
Middleton narrows into a
ginnel. The last house
on the right, as a
plaque proclaims, was
the birthplace of Philip
Snowden. I wandered down
the ginnel and entered a
large field, where
cattle were grazing, and
a party of Pennine
Wayfarers were striding
briskly southwards.
John and Matha Snowden,
their two daughters and
young Philip had four
rooms at their disposal.
Their small home also
had a large outbuilding
where the winter fuel
could
be stored. John Snowden
had a lively mind. He
immersed himself in good
literature, and he
enjoyed meeting his
friends, discussing
politics, promoting
radical ideas. John
Snowden had |
been a
handloom weaver, and was
now weaving at a loom in
one of the impersonal
sheds that had sprung up
at Cowling.
Martha Snowden was "a
fair-haired little
woman, something of a
chatterbox - and faddy."
This assessment was
given to me by a
lady who had heard it
uttered by her mother.
"Faddy" means
fastidious, and in this
Martha was typical of
women in the mill towns.
It was as though they
were determined that
none of the filth from
the mill would cross
their threshholds.
Martha was"always clean,
always scrattin' about."
She also had wanderlust.
It took her no further
than her native
district, but it meant
that the Snowden family
did not spend much time
in one spot. They moved
regularly. Most cottages
were rented in those
days.
Philip Snowden did not
remember much about
Middleton; his formative
years were spent in a
cottage on Nan Scar,
where he lived with his
mother. It was here,
under the kitchen lamp,
that he and some young
cronies could gather of
a night. It is said that
when a friend told
Philip they must have
moved 29 times, he
lapsed into his broadest
dialect and said: "Nay,
th'art wrang. It's
nobbut twenty-four."
A Top-ender. Having been
born in Middleton,
Philip was a Top-ender,
as compared to the
native of Cowling
proper, who was a
Low-ender. Middleton has
declined in status,
for once it had four
shops - a Co-operative
store, "Mrs. Hill's"
(which was also the
area's first post
office), a butcher's
shop and - for a time -
a fish and chip shop.
A resident of the street
mentioned the occasion,
just 60 years before,
when Philip Snowden
returned to his native
village in triumph,
having become Chancellor
of the
Exchequor in the Labour
Government. There must
have been some
misgivings at that time,
for most of the local
people were staunchly
Liberal. To the credit
of all, the local lad
was made welcome.
The lady who mentioned
the visit, and who was
just 10 years old at the
time, said that Philip
was driven up the street
in a fine car.
Theschoolroom of Bar
Chapel, largest meeting
place in the village,
was packed for the
speeches of welcome and
Philip Snowden's
response. Many people
could not be
accommodated, and some
of those inside
afterwards complained
that they could not hear
all that was said.
The United Methodists
built Bar Chapel - a
huge structure, now
demolished, that had
been intended to cater
for a village of much
greater size. Philip
Snowden's family went to
Ickornshaw Chapel.
Indeed, Philip was 11
years old when the
present chapel was
built. Though it was
constructed at a low
level, near the stream,
it dominates Ickornshaw
by its sheer bulkiness.
Philip's father was the
Sunday School
superintendent; the
whole family was
expected to attend the
Sunday services and
mid-week meetings,
helping to sustain the
lusty hymn-singing,
offering prayer and
testimony in a way that
characterised the
Methodism of the times.
It is said that Philip,
as a child, was "a
little monkey". He was
not always keen to go to
chapel, and so was given
the choice ofattending
or staying at home. If
he remained at home, he
would be locked in! They
had known he was "up to
something" since the day
he had stood on the wall
of the Chapel and made
his first political
speech!
Stayed at School. The
1870 Education Act led
to the establishment of
a school at Cowling.
Hitherto, if parents
wished their children to
receive some education
they took them to the
Baptist chapel on the
hill, or to the Quakers
at Lothersdale. When the
council school was
erected, the weekly
charge was 2d for a
young child and 3d for
an older child.
The certificated
teacher, John Heaton,
later commented that
Philip was the best
scholar he had ever had.
Such a comment would not
be unexpected in view of
Philip's rise to
distinction, though as a
small boy he refused to
leave school and go to
the mill, and in due
course he became a pupil
teacher at Cowling,
being taught by Mr.
Heaton from 7.a.m. until
school time; taking a
class of children during
the day: and spending
his evenings on extra
study.
By the age of 15, Philip
Snowden was familiar
with a wide range of
subjects, including
Latin and French. Then
theSnowdens left the
village, not because
they had grown weary of
the place but because
the mill |
at
which father, mother and
daughters worked closed
through bankruptcy. Work
was sought in Nelson.
Philip Snowden avoided a
job in the mill; he
began work as an
insurance clerk. He also
attended some political
meetings in a townwhich
was so politically
charged it was being
called Little Moscow.
Philip joined the Civil
Service; and eventually
he was stationed in
Plymouth. He fell off
his cycle became
dreadfully lame and
spent the next year
lying on his back at the
home in Cowling to which
his mother had returned.
(It may be that the
lameness was caused by
an obscure disease of
the spine; it was
convenient to attribute
his lameness to the
accident).
The year spent lying on
what the Methodists
would have called "a bed
of sickness" was well
spent. Philip who deeply
respected work
andachievement, studied
hard, and persevered
with his disability. In
due course, he managed
to walk with difficulty.
His long political
career began when he
joined the Independent
Labour Party in its
formative period; he
married Ethel Annakin,
apolitical campaigner;
he became M.P. for
Blackburn. Returning to
Cowling to visit his
mother, he was preceded
by a brass band playing
"See the Conquering Hero
Comes". He gave a speech
- in the Liberal Club.
The school was closed
for the day.
Philip Snowden, the
apostle of Socialism and
Peace. He leant heavily
on a stick, and his face
was twisted with pain.
He had only recently
come from a sick bed,
and it was during this
period of enforced
leisure that he had
mastered the contents of
Socialist text-books and
become a passionate
convert.
" He brought to politics
something of the
emotional quality of
religion. The weavers of
Blackburn crowded to his
meetings, held by the
spell of his oratory,
and although he had no
party organisation to
help him, and no party
funds, and was the
representative of a
party Which seemed to
consist of a few wild
voices crying in the
wilderness, he put up a
fierce and memorable
fight . . ."
H. G. Wells was to write
of "a slender, twisted
figure supporting itself
on a stick and speaking
with a fire that was
altogether
revolutionary. It was
Mr. Philip Snowden, the
Member for Blackburn."
Philip's political
convictions, and his
puritan austerity,
derived from religious
teaching. When he was
Chancellor, not a drop
of intoxicating liquor
crossed the threshhold
of No. 11. Yet he was
not without a sense of
humour. In 1932, when
addressing the Press
Club in London, he said:
"I have often been
criticised by you
gentlemen for my
pronunciation of certain
words." And he told the
story of a Southern
schoolmistress who took
up a positon in
Yorkshire. She did not
care for the way in
which a child would say
"putten" instead of
"put", and declared:
"Tom has |
putten
putten where he should
have putten put ."
Philip Snowden had many
loyal friends, and many
confirmed enemies. A
political writer of the
1930s noted: "Mr.
Snowden gives the
impression of being a
kindly man
notwithstanding his
splenetic phrases. He
will project his
envenomed darts with a
wistful and disarming
smile." It it said that
when he was a civil
servant in the Excise, a
lady lodged a complaint
against him for
incivility. He pleaded
in defence that he had
never said a word. "No,"
replied the lady, "that
was the worst of it, but
you looked it!"
His final years in
politics - which have
been well documented
elsewhere - were
confused and bitter, as
were the years of Labour
Governments of the time.
He was raised to the
peerage and became Lord
Snowden of Ickornshaw.
He died in 1937,
following a heart
attack, at the age of
72.
The Memorial Cairn.
Philip Snowden's ashes
were scattered on
Ickornshaw Moor, and
when his wife Ethel died
in 1951 her ashes were
scattered in the same
area.
I motored along byroads,
and parked the car 300
yards from the memorial
cairn. The last 100
yards was across typical
Yorkshire moor, with a
little heather, much
coarse grass and "rush
bobs" from which a snipe
sprang with a sneeze of
alarm.
I roused a sheep and its
lamb from the shady side
of the cairn, on which
was written : " In this
place, mingled with the
soil, and near
thefriends he loved, are
the ashes of Philip
Snowden, 1st Viscount of
Ickornshaw, who lived
his whole life in the
service of the common
people, and died in the
love of his native land,
on May 15th, 1937."
W. R. Mitchell
With acknowledgements
to the older folk of
Cowling who spoke so
interestingly about
Philip Snowden. |
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