Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield

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

"Sidney Webb" redirects here. For the English cricketer, see Sidney Webb (cricketer). For the English footballer, see Sid Webb.

The Right Honourable
The Lord Passfield
OM PC
Webb in 1893
President of the Board of Trade
In office
22 January 1924 – 3 November 1924
MonarchGeorge V
Prime MinisterRamsay MacDonald
Preceded bySir Philip Lloyd-Graeme
Succeeded bySir Philip Lloyd-Graeme
Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs
In office
7 June 1929 – 5 June 1930
MonarchGeorge V
Prime MinisterRamsay MacDonald
Preceded byLeo Amery
Succeeded byJames Henry Thomas
Secretary of State for the Colonies
In office
7 June 1929 – 24 August 1931
MonarchGeorge V
Prime MinisterRamsay MacDonald
Preceded byLeo Amery
Succeeded byJames Henry Thomas
Personal details
Born
Sidney James Webb

(1859-07-13)13 July 1859
London, England
Died13 October 1947(1947-10-13) (aged 88)
Liphook, Hampshire, England
Political partyLabour
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1892; died 1943)​
Alma materBirkbeck, University of London
King's College London

Background and education

Webb was born at 45, Cranbourn Street, near Leicester Square, London, the second of three children of Charles Webb (1828/9-1891) and Elizabeth Mary (1820/21-1895), née Stacey. His father was "variously described as an accountant, a perfumer, and a hairdresser"; his mother was a "hairdresser and dealer in toiletries". Webb's upbringing was "comfortable", the family employing a live-in servant; his father was "a man of local substance" as a rate collector, guardian, and sergeant in a volunteer regiment. Having attended a "first-class middle class day school" at St Martin's Lane, and his parents having sent him abroad to Switzerland and Germany to extend his education, [1] Webb later studied law at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution for a degree of the University of London in his spare time, while holding an office job. He also studied at King's College London, before being called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1885.

Professional life

In 1895, Webb helped to found the London School of Economics with a bequest left to the Fabian Society. He was appointed its Professor of Public Administration in 1912 and held the post for 15 years. In 1892, he married Beatrice Potter, who shared his interests and beliefs.[2] The money she contributed to the marriage enabled him to give up his clerical job and concentrate on his other activities. Sidney and Beatrice Webb founded the New Statesman magazine in 1913.[3]

Political career
Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb

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.[4] The couple's influence can be seen in their hosting of the Coefficients, a dining club that drew in some leading statesmen and thinkers of the day. In 1929, he was created Baron Passfield of Passfield Corner in the County of Southampton.[5] He served as Secretary of State for the Colonies and as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour Government in 1929.

As Colonial Secretary he issued the Passfield White Paper that revised the government policy on 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 until the fall of the Labour government in August 1931.

The Webbs ignored mounting evidence of atrocities being committed by Joseph Stalin and remained supporters of the Soviet Union until their deaths. Having reached their seventies and early eighties, their books, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? (1935) and The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942), still gave a positive assessment of Stalin's regime. The Trotskyist historian Al Richardson later dubbed Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? "pure Soviet propaganda at its most mendacious".[6]

Writings

Webb co-authored with his wife The History of Trade Unionism (1894). For the Fabian Society he wrote on poverty in London,[7] the eight-hour day,[8][9] land nationalisation,[10] the nature of socialism,[11] education,[12] eugenics,[13][14] and reform of the House of Lords.[15] He also drafted Clause IV, which committed the Labour Party to public ownership of industry.

References in literature
Beatrice and Sidney Webb working together in 1895

In H. G. Wells' 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 (1903–1908), fares no better in his estimation.

Beatrice Webb in her diary records that they "read the caricatures of ourselves... with much interest and amusement. The portraits are very clever in a malicious way."[16][17] She reviews the book and Wells's character, summarising: "As an attempt at representing a political philosophy the book utterly fails..."[18]

Personal life

When his wife, Beatrice, died in 1943, the casket of her ashes was buried in the garden of their house in Passfield Corner, as were those of Lord Passfield in 1947.

Shortly afterwards, George Bernard Shaw launched a petition to have both reburied in Westminster Abbey, which was eventually granted – the Webbs' ashes are interred in the nave, close to those of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin.

The Passfields were also friends of philosopher Bertrand Russell.[19]

In 2006, the London School of Economics, alongside the Housing Association, renamed its Great Dover Street student residence Sidney Webb House in his honour.

Archives

Sidney Webb's papers form part of the Passfield archive at the London School of Economics.[20] Posts about Sidney Webb regularly appear in the LSE Archives blog.[21]

Bibliography
Works by Sidney Webb
Works by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
  • History of Trade Unionism (1894)
  • Industrial Democracy (1897); translated into Russian by Lenin as The Theory and Practice of British Trade Unionism, St Petersburg, 1900
  • Problems of Modern Industry (1898)
  • Bibliography of road making and maintenance in Great Britain (1906)[22]
  • English Local Government (1906 through 1929) Vol. I–X
  • 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 civilisation? (1935, Vol I Vol II) (the 2nd and 3rd editions of 1941 and 1944 did not have "?" in the title)
  • The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942)

Notes
  1. Davis, John (2004). "Webb [née Potter], (Martha) Beatrice (1858–1943), social reformer and diarist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36799. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. "Sidney and Beatrice Webb | British economists". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
  3. The world movement towards collectivism, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, New Statesman, 12 April 1913;
    Bending the arc of history towards justice and freedom, New Statesman, 12 April 2013, retrieved 13 May 2014.
  4. The History of the Fabian Society, Edward R. Pease, Frank Cass and Co. LTD, 1963
  5. "No. 33509". The London Gazette. 25 June 1929. p. 4189.
  6. Al Richardson, "Introduction" to C. L. R. James, World Revolution 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International. Humanities Press (reprint), 1994; ISBN 0-391-03790-0
  7. Webb, Sidney (1889), "Facts for Londoners: An exhaustive collection of statistical and other facts relating to the metropolis: with suggestions for reform on socialist principles", Fabian Tract, 8
  8. Webb, Sidney (May 1890), "An Eight Hours Bill in the form of an amendment of the Factory Acts, with further provisions for the improvement of the conditions of labour", Fabian Tract, 9
  9. Webb, Sidney (1891), "The case for an Eight Hours Bill", Fabian Tract, 23
  10. Webb, Sidney (1890), "Practicable land nationalization", Fabian Tract, 12
  11. Webb, Sidney (21 January 1894), "Socialism: true and false. A lecture delivered to the Fabian Society", Fabian Tract, 51
  12. Webb, Sidney (1901), "The education muddle and the way out: a constructive criticism of English educational machinery", Fabian Tract, 106
  13. Webb, Sidney (1907), "The decline in the birth-rate", Fabian Tract, 131
  14. "Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left's closet | Jonathan Freedland". The Guardian. 17 February 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  15. Webb, Sidney (1917), "The reform of the House of Lords", Fabian Tract, 183
  16. "Webbs on the Web | LSE Digital Library".
  17. Beatrice Webb's typescript diary, 2 January 1901 – 10 February 1911, LSE Digital Library http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:won715bor/read#page/622/mode/2up
  18. Beatrice Webb's typescript diary, 2 January 1901 – 10 February 1911, LSE Digital Library http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:won715bor/read#page/622/mode/2up/.
  19. Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).
  20. "Collection Browser".
  21. Out of the box.
  22. "Full text of "Bibliography of road making and maintenance in Great Britain"". Internet Archive. Retrieved 21 March 2022. A sixpenny pamphlet for the Roads Improvement Association.

Further reading
  • Bevir, Mark. "Sidney Webb: Utilitarianism, positivism, and social democracy." Journal of Modern History 74.2 (2002): 217–252 online
  • Cole, Margaret, et al. The Webbs and their work (1949)
  • Davanzati, Guglielmo Forges, and Andrea Pacella. "Sidney and Beatrice Webb: Towards an Ethical Foundation of the Operation of the Labour Market." History of Economic Ideas (2004): 25–49
  • Farnham, David. "Beatrice and Sidney Webb and the Intellectual Origins of British Industrial Relations." Employee Relations (2008). 30: 534–552
  • Harrison, Royden. The Life and Times of Sydney and Beatrice Webb, 1858-1905 (2001)
  • Kaufman, Bruce E. "Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Institutional Theory of Labor Markets and Wage Determination." Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 52.3 (2013): 765–791. online
  • MacKenzie, Norman Ian, and Jeanne MacKenzie. The First Fabians (Quartet Books, 1979)
  • Radice, Lisanne. Beatrice and Sidney Webb: Fabian Socialists (Springer, 1984)
  • Stigler, George. "Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, and the Theory of Fabian Socialism," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1959) 103#3: 469–475

Primary sources
  • Mackenzie, Norman, ed. The Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb (3 volumes. Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. xvii, 453; xi, 405; ix, 482)
    • Volume 1. Apprenticeships 1873–1892 (1978)
    • Volume 2. Partnership 1892–1912 (1978)
    • Volume 3. Pilgrimage, 1912–1947 (1978)
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