MR. PHILIP SNOWDEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19833, 31 December 1927, Page 8

MR. PHILIP SNOWDEN.

Mr. Philip Snowden has resigned from the Independent Labour Party, in the affairs of which he has played so conspicuous a for many years. The controversy already begun by his declaration that it has outlived its usefulness, and that the greater Labour Party may not only include, but engulf, the less or Independent Labour Party, can be left for settlement to him and his former colleagues. Wider interest lies in the prominence this move has again given to one of the outstanding personalities of the whole Labour movement. Mr. Snowden was long marked as a man who would be prominent when Labour attained office. Even the aggressive pacifism he displayed during the war could not keep him long in the background, though it did cost him his seat in the 1918 election. Labour's accession to the Treasury benches was speedily followed by Mr. Snowden's appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He produced its only Budget, a document which, as the critics immediately said, might have been produced by a Liberal, or, indeed, a Conservative, Chancellor. Mr. Snowden is a determined and convinced Socialist, but he is also a financier by instinct and self-train-ing; no determination to bring at one stroke the social millennium he preaches would have induced him to frame an extreme or revolutionary budget. So those who have studied his character say. This reveals another side to him; h§ is as ready'to oppose those of hie associates who would go faster than he thinks right as to attack opponents who do not subscribe to his philosophy. In either event, his outstanding powers of debate make him an opponent to to be respected. So he will prove if his old associates in the Independent Labour Party try seriously to break a lance with him over his decision to leave its ranks.