The Early Years
This is Cowling where Philip Snowden was born, as it looks today.
Philip Snowden was born on the 18th July 1864 in Ickornshaw, a textile community in the village of Cowling near to the West Yorkshire town of Keighley. Both his father John, and his mother Martha were weavers in the local mill, as were later his two elder sisters. His family were very much involved in village life, mainly through the Wesleyan Chapel. John, his father later became Superintendent of the Sunday school, where at five Snowden started his education. At ten he moved to the local Board School, not to the mill as was usual. He said that he refused to start work in the mill. By thirteen he was a pupil teacher being taught by the headmaster before he taught the younger children. He was also a teacher at the Sunday school, and together with most of the village took “the pledge”. His family expected him to become a schoolteacher but this was not to be; the mill closed in 1879, and the family moved to Nelson. Snowden’s full-time education ended.
Nelson at the time was a Radical centre, and soon Snowden was drawn towards politics. He obtained a job with an insurance company in Burnley. During the next six years he went to practical meetings and lectures, his opinions tended towards the Radical Liberals. He did however take up the idea of ‘Free Trade’, and his views on this were maintained throughout his life. In 1885 at the age of twenty-one he took, and passed the entrance exam for the Civil Service. Twelve months later he accepted the position of Assistant Revenue Officer, in the Customs and Excise Service, at a salary of £50 per year, plus 2s. 0d. (10p) per day expenses. His first posting was Liverpool, then Aberdeen; he was seconded from there to the Orkneys. In 1891 he was working in Redruth on £67 a year, plus his two shillings a day expenses. Whilst in Redruth he bought a cycle for work and pleasure. He began to suffer from back pain and sometimes had difficulty walking. That August he became paralysed from the waist down, the result, he said, of a fall from his bicycle. It was thought, however, that he was suffering from “Potts Disease”, tuberculosis of the spine. He was placed on sick leave returning to Cowling to be nursed by his mother. He was walking again within three months. The speed of the recovery caused a relapse, and he spent most of the next twelve months flat on his back. He put the time to good use by reading political books and writing for the local newspapers. Revival was slow; in fact he was never to fully recover, needing the help of sticks for walking for the rest of his life. On the 14th November 1893 he was discharged from the Civil Service with a gratuity of £30 16s.
For the next seven years Snowden’s income came from doing the accounts of neighbouring farmers, and small businessmen, writing for newspapers, and giving political lectures. He joined the I.L.P. (Independent Labour Party) in 1894 and secured his first public office, membership of the Cowling Parish Council. He came to the notice of the Labour and Socialist activists of Keighley, and was soon speaking at their meetings; he also began to speak at public meetings in other towns. In the summer of 1895 he won a seat on the Cowling School Board campaigning as a Socialist. The I.L.P. had gone national at a conference in Bradford in 1893, at which Keir Hardie had been elected leader. Snowden was to stand for the I.L.P. at Keighley in the 1895 election, but funds ran low and he withdrew. He continued to give public speeches for the I.L.P. about the north of England, and in 1898 became a member of its National Administration Council. The same year he took over the editorship of the Keighley Labour Journal at a salary of 8s. 0d. (40p) a week, no wonder he continued to write for other newspapers. In 1899 he was elected to Keighley Town Council, and the School Board. On the outbreak of the South African war the I.L.P. condemned the policy of the British Government, Snowden’s Keighley journal entered the so-called Boer camp. He thought that a war was alien to the Socialist creed. It was a mean war he said, the power of a mighty empire used to crush the independence of a farmer state. He was against the cost of the war, and distrusted the government’s imperial adventure. In February 1900, Snowden was part of the I.L.P. delegation to the conference of Socialist organisations, and trade unions held in the Memorial Hall, Farrington Street, London who set up the Labour Representative Committee, the immediate predecessor of the Labour Party. At this meeting he became cautious to the Labour Party, and had little respect for the trade union leadership. Though he been prospective I.L.P. candidate for Keighley for sometime, he agreed to fight the General Election of autumn 1900 in Blackburn.
Gerald Schofield
The cottage in which Philip Snowden was born is at the top of this lane.
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