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 lifeedit
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]
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.[citation needed]
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]
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.[citation needed]
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 lifeedit
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.
In 2006, the London School of Economics, alongside the Housing Association, renamed its Great Dover Street student residence Sidney Webb House in his honour.
Archivesedit
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]
Bibliographyedit
Works by Sidney Webb
Facts for Socialists (1887)
Fabian Essays in Socialism – The Basis of Socialism – Historic (1889)
"Socialism in England". Publications of the American Economic Association. 4 (2). April 1889.
A plea for an eight hours bill (1890)
English progress towards social democracy (1890)
Practicable land nationalization (1890)
The workers' political programme (1890)
What the farm laborer wants (1890)
A Labour policy for public authorities (1891)
London's neglected heritage (1891)
London's water tribute (1891)
Municipal tramways (1891)
The municipalisation of the gas supply (1891)
The reform of the poor law (1891)
The scandal of London's markets (1891)
The "unearned increment" (1891)
Socialism : true and false (1894)
The London vestries: what they are and what they do: with map, table of vestries, etc. (1894)
The difficulties of individualism (1896)
Labor in the longest reign (1837-1897) (1897)
The economics of direct employment (1898)
Five years' fruits of the Parish Councils Act (1901)
The education muddle and the way out (1901)
Twentieth century politics : a policy of national efficiency (1901)
The Education Act, 1902 : how to make the best of it (1903)
London Education (1904)
The London Education Act, 1903 : how to make the best of it (1904)
Paupers and old age pensions (1907)
The decline in the birth-rate (1907)
Grants in Aid: A Criticism and a Proposal (1911)
The necessary basis of society (1911)
The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage (1912)
Seasonal Trades, with A. Freeman (1912)
What about the rates? : or, Municipal finance and municipal autonomy (1913)
The War and the workers : handbook of some immediate measures to prevent unemployment and relieve distress (1914)
The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions (1916)
When peace comes : the way of industrial reconstruction (1916)
The reform of the House of Lords (1917)
The teacher in politics (1918)
National finance and a levy on capital (1919)
The root of labour unrest (1920)
The constitutional problems of a co-operative society (1923)
The Labour Party on the threshold (1923)
The need for federal reorganisation in the co-operative movement (1923)
The Local Government Act, 1929 - how to make the best of it (1929)
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)
Notesedit
^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.)
^"Sidney and Beatrice Webb | British economists". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
^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.
^The History of the Fabian Society, Edward R. Pease, Frank Cass and Co. LTD, 1963
^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
^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
^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
^Webb, Sidney (1891), "The case for an Eight Hours Bill", Fabian Tract, 23
^Webb, Sidney (1890), "Practicable land nationalization", Fabian Tract, 12
^Webb, Sidney (21 January 1894), "Socialism: true and false. A lecture delivered to the Fabian Society", Fabian Tract, 51
^Webb, Sidney (1901), "The education muddle and the way out: a constructive criticism of English educational machinery", Fabian Tract, 106
^Webb, Sidney (1907), "The decline in the birth-rate", Fabian Tract, 131
^"Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left's closet | Jonathan Freedland". The Guardian. 17 February 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
^Webb, Sidney (1917), "The reform of the House of Lords", Fabian Tract, 183
^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
^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/.
^Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).
^"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 readingedit
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 sourcesedit
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)
External linksedit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield.