Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

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Until then Gaitskell had shared concerns that some countries might stay in permanent deficit and thus effectively use their neighbours for free borrowing, or conversely that Belgium's surplus would enable her to suck gold and dollars from Britain. The Shadow Cabinet elections (elected by Labour MPs when the party was in opposition) were topped by Jim Griffiths and Chuter Ede. In 1930 he rejected the Mosley Manifesto issued by junior Labour ministers led by Oswald Mosley proposing a programme of high spending on public works and autarkic Imperial Preference to combat unemployment. on armaments, although most of his speech was a warning not to rearm too fast and that communism would be defeated through democratic socialism not through arms.

Gaitskell told George Brown in 1960: "It was a battle between us for power – he knew it and so did I". The men and women who formed Labour’s government included many of the greats who had led Labour in its first quarter-century. Moreover, by the end of 1959 Bevan was seriously unwell; he withdrew from the public eye and died in July 1960.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. Gaitskell's position became more cautious during the summer, and he suggested the dispute with Egypt should be referred to the United Nations. Gaitskell played an important role steering the Coal Nationalisation Bill through the House of Commons, bearing the brunt of the committee stage and winding up the final debate.

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.It was difficult for the Treasury to take tough measures given the government's small majority and the likelihood of another election soon. He did not reject public ownership altogether, but also emphasised the ethical goals of liberty, social welfare and above all equality, and argued that they could be achieved by fiscal and social policies within a mixed economy. He was really a tender-hearted man, who would not have hurt a gnat unless his party and the Treasury told him to do so, and then only with compunction. After initially expressing surprise, Gaitskell accepted Crossman's advice that Bevan be allowed a veto over any change to nationalisation policy. After her divorce, hard to obtain prior to the passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937, they were eventually married on 9 April 1937, Gaitskell's thirty-first birthday, with Evan Durbin as best man.

In 1931 he established Sir George May’s economy committee, which, by its recommendation that benefits for depression-induced unemployment be decreased, brought about the fall of the Labour ministry that year. He had committed a gaffe during the municipal election campaign in Hastings earlier that year, when he recommended that people save fuel by taking fewer baths, adding that he had never taken all that many himself; in the House of Commons in late October Churchill joked that it was no wonder that the Government were "in bad odour" and asked the Speaker if he might be permitted to describe Labour ministers as "lousey", normally an unparliamentary expression, as it would be a simple statement of fact. Herbert Morrison, who was chairing the Cabinet whilst Attlee was being treated in hospital, again proposed a compromise that there be an agreed ceiling on public spending but no NHS charges. 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".

Early in 1950 Cripps backed off from a plan to introduce further charges, this time on false teeth and spectacles, after Bevan threatened to resign, but Gaitskell was put on a committee to monitor Bevan's agreement to a ceiling on NHS spending. Gaitskell won the admiration of Treasury officials for his stance: on the morning of the budget Sir Edward Bridges came to tell him of the respect he had earned in the department and that it was "the best day we have had in the Treasury for ten years".

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 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. Gaitskell was given his first ministerial appointment in May 1946 as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Fuel and Power, serving under Emmanuel "Manny" Shinwell. In early July 1949 Gaitskell shared Chancellor of the Exchequer Stafford Cripps' worries that Treasury officials were too "liberal" and too reluctant to implement socialist measures. He argued that higher interest rates would be perceived as generating profits for the banks, which would not sit well with trade unions, and he was only prepared to consider demanding that the banks restrict credit.After the budget Tony Benn, who was on the right of the Labour Party at that time, recorded the atmosphere at the party meeting (i. There were also very real worries that the Soviets might invade western Europe (which was unarmed, with strong communist influence in many countries) and that the US would not help Britain if she did not help herself. In the ensuing reshuffle Gaitskell was appointed Minister for Economic Affairs, effectively Deputy Chancellor but still outside the Cabinet. Bevan's ally Michael Foot wrote an editorial in Tribune comparing Gaitskell to Philip Snowden (the Chancellor whose cuts in 1931 had brought down the Second Labour Government, after which he and other leading members of the Cabinet entered into the Tory-dominated National Government). However, Dell argues that all chancellors have to make sticking points or they would have to give in to everybody.