Philip Snowden

Overview

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden (18 July 1864 – 15 May 1937) was a British Labour politician and the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, holding the post in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1931.[1] Like many in the early Independent Labour Party, Snowden's economic thinking was shaped in part by the lecture tours and writings of Henry George, and as Chancellor he revived the land-value-taxation project that David Lloyd George's 1909 People's Budget had begun and seen collapse.[2][3] Snowden's 1931 Finance Act put a land value tax on the UK statute books for the first time since the Lloyd George duties, but the National Government that replaced Labour's minority administration later that year suspended the tax in 1932 and repealed it outright in the Finance Act 1934, before it ever raised revenue.[1][4]

The 1931 Land Value Tax and Its Repeal

Snowden's 1931 budget legislated a new land value tax, intended to require valuation of land on an unimproved basis as a step toward taxing site value directly — the same underlying approach the Lloyd George duties had attempted, and failed at administratively, two decades earlier.[3][4] Political conditions immediately turned against it: the financial crisis of 1931 split the Labour government, Snowden left the party to serve as Chancellor in the Conservative-dominated National Government, and the incoming administration moved to unwind the tax. Clause 24 of the 1932 Finance Bill suspended the land value tax before it took effect, and Clause 25 of the Finance Act 1934 formally repealed it.[4] Fred Harrison, in Boom Bust, cites the episode as one of a recurring pattern in which UK land taxation reached the statute book only to be reversed by the following government — grouping Snowden's 1931 tax with Lloyd George's 1909 duties as parallel political failures.[3]

See Also

• Henry George — the theorist whose ideas influenced Snowden and the early Labour movement
• David Lloyd George — Chancellor whose 1909 land value duties were the precedent Snowden's tax revived
• The 1909 People's Budget — the earlier, similarly short-lived land tax episode
• Boom Bust (book) — discovery source situating Snowden's tax within a pattern of political reversal
• Power in the Land (book) — a second Harrison book covering the same 1931 episode

Sources

1. "Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden," Wikipedia — used for birth/death dates, the 1924 and 1929–31 chancellorships, and his 1931 break with the Labour Party. Wikipedia
2. UK Parliament, Historic Hansard, "Clause 24.—(Suspension Of Land Value Tax.)," House of Commons debate, 26 May 1932 — used to confirm the 1932 suspension of the tax before it took effect. Hansard
3. Fred Harrison, Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010 (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2005), Ch. 12 §4 — the discovery source for this page; covers Snowden's Henry George-influenced land valuation and food-tax proposals and their reversal. See the wiki book page. Also see Fred Harrison, The Power in the Land (1983), Ch. 13, pp. 182–183, for a parallel account of the 1931 budget.
4. UK Parliament, Hansard, "Clause 25—(Repeal Of Land Value Tax)," House of Commons debate, 5 June 1934 — used for the formal 1934 repeal of the land value tax legislated in 1931. Hansard
5. UK Public General Acts, Finance Act 1931 (21 & 22 Geo. 5, c. 28), Part III — Land Value Tax (sections 10–25). legislation.gov.uk — the primary statutory text of the land value tax clauses Snowden's 1931 budget enacted; Part III groups the tax's charging, valuation, and supplemental provisions (the operative sections were later repealed, and appear struck through in the current consolidated text).