Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

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The Treasurership election was seen as particularly important as it was lining up a successor to Attlee, whose retirement was clearly fairly imminent. In a speech at Stalybridge (5 October 1952) Gaitskell alleged that "about one-sixth" of the constituency delegates "appeared to be Communist or Communist-inspired" and attacked "the stream of grossly misleading propaganda with poisonous innuendos and malicious attacks on Attlee, Morrison and the rest of us" published in Tribune.

Gaitskell, unusually, supported the strikers and acted as a driver for people like his Oxford contemporary Evan Durbin and Cole's wife Margaret, who made speeches and delivered the trade union newspaper British Worker. Gaitskell and Wilson met with Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Cripps at Chequers on 19 August, and Bevin and Cripps agreed with some reluctance to devaluation. Philip Snowden, Viscount Snowden, (born July 18, 1864, Ickornshaw, Yorkshire, England—died May 15, 1937, Tilford, Surrey), socialist politician and propagandist and chancellor of the Exchequer in the first two Labour Party governments of Great Britain (1924; 1929–31). Gaitskell thought balance of payments problems should be solved not by realignments of currencies but by asking surplus countries like the US and Belgium to inflate their economies (so they would import more).This period was characterised by factional infighting between the ' Bevanite' left of the Labour party led by Aneurin Bevan, whose strength lay mainly in the constituency Labour Parties ("CLP"s) and the ' Gaitskellite' right who had the upper hand in the Parliamentary Party (Labour MPs – known collectively as the "PLP"). Gaitskell visited Washington in the autumn of 1951, where he thought US Treasury Secretary John Wesley Snyder "a pretty small-minded, small town, semi-isolationist".

It was perhaps too smart-alecky, too clever: sarcasm was not the right tool for a subject that affected all humanity. Gaitskell told a friend that "The leadership came to me so early because Bevan threw it at me by his behaviour", a view shared by Attlee and Harold Wilson. g. Hugh Dalton, of whom he became a protégé, Douglas Jay and Evan Durbin) and City people such as the economist Nicholas Davenport. Gaitskell's political philosophy became known as Gaitskellism, and from the late 1950s brought him into increasing conflict with the trade unions over nationalisation.Dalton was trying to score party points by claiming that he was reasserting political control over the City of London, a far-fetched claim as the Bank was already under political control. This would have been a rare honour as 263 of the 393 Labour MPs in 1945 were newly elected, but did not take place. This was loudly condemned by Bevan's wife Jennie Lee and by Michael Foot, editor of Tribune but out of Parliament at the time. A very angry Bevan saw the charges as a blow to the principle of a free health service, telling a heckler whilst he was making a speech in Bermondsey (3 April 1951) that he would resign rather than accept health charges. In fact it may well have been aimed at Attlee who had the previous day warned against "emotionalism" whilst privately Bevan thought that Gaitskell was highly emotional and, as he had shown in 1951, "couldn't count".

Robert Skidelsky is representative of the Keynesians who have charged that Snowden and MacDonald were blinded by their economic philosophy that required balanced budgets, sound money, the gold standard and free trade, regardless of the damage that Keynesians thought it would do to the economy and the people. Bevan gave a speech to the Tribune party at the conference, declaring that the Labour Leader needed to be a "desiccated calculating machine".

He offered Bevan a public olive branch at the party meeting after the result, promising that he would "not be outdone in generosity" if Bevan accepted the vote. 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. 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.