Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield

Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield PC OM (13 July 1859 – 13 October 1947) was a British socialist, economist, reformer and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. He was one of the early members of the Fabian Society in 1884, along with George Bernard Shaw (they joined three months after its inception). Along with his wife, Beatrice Webb, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Edward R. Pease, Hubert Bland, and Sydney Olivier, Shaw and Webb turned the Fabian Society into the pre-eminent political-intellectual society of England in the Edwardian era and beyond. He wrote the original Clause IV for the British Labour Party.

Background and education

Webb was born in London to a professional family. He studied law at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution for a degree of the University of London in his spare time, while holding down an office job. He also studied at King's College London, prior to being called to the Bar in 1885.

Professional life

In 1895 he helped to establish the London School of Economics, using a bequest left to the Fabian Society. He was appointed its Professor of Public Administration in 1912, a post which he held for fifteen years. In 1892, Webb married Beatrice Potter, who shared his interests and beliefs. The money she brought with her enabled him to give up his clerical job and concentrate on his other activities.

Political career

Webb and Potter were members of the Labour Party and took an active role in politics. Sidney became Member of Parliament for Seaham at the 1922 general election.^[1] The couple's influence can be seen in their hosting of the Coefficients, a dining club which attracted some of the leading statesmen and thinkers of the day. In 1929, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Passfield, of Passfield Corner in the County of Southampton.^[2] He served as both Secretary of State for the Colonies and Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in Ramsay MacDonald second Labour Government in 1929. As Colonial Secretary he issued the Passfield White Paper revising the government's policy in Palestine, previously set by the Churchill White Paper of 1922. In 1930 failing health caused him to step down as Dominions Secretary, but he stayed on as Colonial Secretary till the fall of the Labour government in August 1931.

The Webbs were supporters of the Soviet Union until their deaths. Their books, Soviet Communism: A new civilization? (1935) and The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942) have been widely criticized for adopting a largely uncritical view of Stalin's conduct during periods that witnessed a brutal process of agricultural collectivization as well as extensive purges.

Writings

Webb co-authored, with his wife, a pivotal book on the History of Trade Unionism (1894). For the Fabian Society he wrote on poverty in London,^[3] the eight-hour day,^[4][5] land nationalisation^[6] the nature of socialism,^[7] education,^[8] eugenics^[9] and reform of the House of Lords.^[10]

References in literature

In H.G. Wells's The New Machiavelli (1911), the Webbs, as 'the Baileys' are mercilessly lampooned as short-sighted, bourgeois manipulators. The Fabian Society, of which Wells was briefly a member (1903–08), fares no better in his estimation.

Personal life

Their ashes are interred in the nave of Westminster Abbey, close to those of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin. One of the LSE student residences, on Great Dover Street in London, is named Sidney Webb House, in his honour. In 2006 LSE, alongside the Housing Association landlord Places for People, renamed their Great Dover Street Student Residence Sidney Webb House in his honour.

Archives

Sidney Webb's papers are among the Passfield archive at the London School of Economics. For a small online exhibition featuring some of these papers see 'A poor thing but our own': the Webbs and the Labour Party. Posts about Sidney Webb regularly appear in the LSE Archives blog, Out of the box.

Bibliography

Works by Sidney Webb

• Facts for Socialists (1887)
• Fabian Essays in Socialism – The Basis of Socialism – Historic (1889)
• Problems of Modern Industry (1898)
• Grants in Aid: A Criticism and a Proposal (1911)
• Seasonal Trades, with A. Freeman (1912)
• The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions (1916)

Works by Sidney and Beatrice Webb

• History of Trade Unionism (1894)
• Industrial Democracy (1897)
• English Local Government Vol. I–X (1906 through 1929)
• The Manor and the Borough (1908)
• The Break-Up of the Poor Law (1909)
• English Poor-Law Policy (1910)
• The Cooperative Movement (1914)
• Works Manager Today (1917)
• The Consumer's Cooperative Movement (1921)
• Decay of Capitalist Civilization (1923)
• Methods of Social Study (1932)
• Soviet Communism: A new civilization? (1935)
• The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942)

Notes

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sidney Webb
• Critique of Webb by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed