Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

Product Information

By the second half of 1951 the overseas sterling area was importing from North America at double the 1950 rate. Cripps, whose health was still failing, had notified Attlee of his intention to resign as Chancellor of the Exchequer on 26 April 1950. With Labour in opposition from 1951, Gaitskell won bitter leadership battles with Bevan and his supporters to become the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition in 1955. He had died from complications following a sudden flare-up of lupus, an autoimmune disease which had affected his heart and kidneys. He recommended devaluation by 4 September, but rejected the idea that currencies become fully convertible – in the way that John Maynard Keynes had advocated at the Bretton Woods Conference – as this might prevent governments protecting full employment.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. At the party meeting Bevan refused to agree to toe the party line, but the issue was defused by a conciliatory motion by the centrist "Keep Calm" group, passed against the wishes of the platform. Lord Snowden died of a heart attack at his home, Eden Lodge, Tilford, Surrey, on 15 May 1937, aged 72. But in 1956 he published a Fabian pamphlet "Socialism and Nationalisation" (actually written three years earlier), arguing that there was no need for greater public ownership, and that his goals were full employment, industrial democracy and a greater spread of economic power. So far what Nasser has done amounts to a threat, a grave threat to us and to others, which certainly cannot be ignored; but it is only a threat, not in my opinion justifying retaliation by war.

In the late 1950s, in the teeth of opposition from the major trade unions, he attempted in vain to remove Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution, which committed Labour to nationalisation of all the means of production.

Gaitskell's death left an opening for Harold Wilson in the party leadership; Wilson narrowly won the next general election for Labour 21 months later. Along with Dalton Gaitskell was moved to the Board of Trade in February 1942, where for the first time he came into contact with the leaders of the miners' unions, who were later to support him in his struggles against Aneurin Bevan in the 1950s. In his letter of 10 August, Gaitskell wrote: "Lest there should be any doubt in your mind about my personal attitude, let me say that I could not regard an armed attack on Egypt by ourselves and the French as justified by anything which Nasser has done so far or as consistent with the Charter of the United Nations.On 4 January 1963 he was admitted to Middlesex Hospital in Marylebone, where, despite enormous efforts by doctors to save his life, he died on 18 January, with his wife at his bedside. By 1902, he had moved his base to Leeds and toured Britain as a lecturer on politics and corruption, with his own syndicated column and short essays in numerous working class outlets. 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.