Henry Snell, 1st Baron Snell (1 April 1865 – 21 April 1944), was a British socialist politician and campaigner. He served in government under Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill, and as the Labour Party's leader in the House of Lords in the late 1930s. Background Born in Sutton-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire, the son of agricultural workers, Harry Snell was educated at his local village school before beginning work as a farm hand at the age of eight. He worked full-time from the age of ten and became an indoor servant at the farm aged twelve. Dissatisfied with this work, Snell left and travelled around the county, taking a variety of jobs including work as a groom and ferryman at an inn on the River Trent and as a French polisher in Nottingham. During long periods of unemployment he occupied himself with extensive reading, and was particularly influenced by the writing of Henry George. Inspired by Charles Bradlaugh and the cause of secularism in Nottingham 1881, he joined the National Secular Society. He rejected the austere and literalist Anglicanism of his up-bringing, but retained some religious faith and decided to join the Unitarian Church, impressed by its scientific approach to Christian doctrine and its progressive and tolerant values. A Unitarian teacher, John Kentish-White, introduced Snell to the works of Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Through acquaintances made in the Unitarian movement, Snell was able to find a job in London as a clerk at the offices of the Midland Institute for the Blind. Here he continued his self-education at the reference library of University College London, being influenced by the writings of Thomas Paine, William Morris, John Ruskin and John Stuart Mill. Eventually Unitarianism would grow even too strict for him, and he became an agnostic and member of the National Secular Society. After hearing Annie Besant address a meeting of the Secular Society on the subject of socialism, Snell joined the Social Democratic Federation. He worked on John Burns' campaign for Parliament in 1885, and began to address public meetings himself, appearing alongside the likes of Henry Hyndman, Tom Mann, Eleanor Marx and Ben Tillett. He was active in supporting the Bryant and May match factory strike and the London dock strike of 1889. Member of Parliament In 1890, Snell began social work for the Woolwich Charity Organisation Society, and later became secretary to the director of the London School