Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield

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.

In 1895, he helped to establish the London School of Economics, using a bequest left to the Fabian Society. He was appointed Professor of Public Administration in 1912, a post he held for 15 years. In 1892, Webb married Beatrice Potter, who shared his interests and beliefs.[1] The money she brought with her 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.[2]

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.[3] 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.[4] He served as both Secretary of State for the Colonies and Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in Ramsay MacDonald's 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 ignored the 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 described Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? as "pure Soviet propaganda at its most mendacious".[5]

Webb co-authored, with his wife, a book on The History of Trade Unionism (1894). For the Fabian Society he wrote on poverty in London,[6] the eight-hour day,[7][8] land nationalisation,[9] the nature of socialism,[10] education,[11] eugenics[12][13] and reform of the House of Lords.[14] He also drafted Clause IV, which committed the Labour Party to public ownership of industry.

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 (1903–08), fares no better in his estimation.

In her diary,[15] Beatrice Webb records that they have "read the caricatures of ourselves... with much interest and amusement. The portraits are very clever in a malicious way."[16] She reviews the book and Wells's character in detail, summarising: "As an attempt at representing a political philosophy the book utterly fails..."[17]

When Beatrice Webb died in 1943, the casket containing her ashes was buried in the garden of their house in Passfield Corner. Lord Passfield's ashes were also buried there in 1947. Shortly afterwards, George Bernard Shaw launched a petition to have both reburied in Westminster Abbey, which was eventually granted. Today, the Webbs' ashes are interred in the nave of Westminster Abbey, close to those of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin.

He and his wife were friends with the philosopher Bertrand Russell.[18]

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

Sidney Webb's papers are among the Passfield archive at the London School of Economics.[19] Posts about Sidney Webb regularly appear in the LSE Archives blog.[20]

• 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: 534-52
• 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: 469–75.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield.

Wikisource has the text of a 1905 New International Encyclopedia article about "Sidney Webb".

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sidney Webb
• Critique of Webb by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed
• The Webb Bibliography
• The Webb Diaries available in full from LSE
• Works by Sidney Webb at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Sidney Webb at Internet Archive
• Newspaper clippings about Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW