Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden PC 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 in 1931 by the National Government coalition that Snowden supported. He was succeeded by Neville Chamberlain.

Snowden was born in Cowling in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father John Snowden had been a weaver and a supporter of Chartism and then a Gladstonian liberal. Snowden later wrote in his autobiography I was brought up in this Radical atmosphere, and it was then that I imbibed the political and social principles which I have held fundamentally ever since. Although his parents and sisters were involved in weaving at the Ickornshaw Mill he did not join them, after attending a local board school he stayed on as a pupilteacher. When he washe became an insurance office clerk in Burnley. During his seven years as a clerk he studied and then passed the civil service entry examination, and in 1886 he was appointed to a junior position at the Excise office in Liverpool. Snowden moved on to other posts around Scotland and then to Devon.

Source: Wikipedia