Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield

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Background and educationEdit

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, <ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref>

Political careerEdit

File:Beatrice and Sidney Webb, 1932.jpg

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.<ref>The History of the Fabian Society, Edward R. Pease, Frank Cass and Co. LTD, 1963</ref> 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.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> 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.Template:Cn

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.Template:Cn

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".<ref>Al Richardson, "Introduction" to C. L. R. James, World Revolution 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International. Humanities Press (reprint), 1994; Template:ISBN</ref>

WritingsEdit

Webb co-authored with his wife The History of Trade Unionism (1894). For the Fabian Society he wrote on poverty in London,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> the eight-hour day,<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref> land nationalisation,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> the nature of socialism,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> education,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> eugenics,<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and reform of the House of Lords.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> He also drafted Clause IV, which committed the Labour Party to public ownership of industry.Template:Cn

References in literatureEdit

File:Beatrice and Sidney Webb, c1895 (9259293969).jpg

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.Template: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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She reviews the book and Wells's character, summarising: "As an attempt at representing a political philosophy the book utterly fails..."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

Template:Moresources 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 Webbs were also friends of philosopher Bertrand Russell.<ref>Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).</ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Posts about Sidney Webb regularly appear in the LSE Archives blog.<ref>Out of the box.</ref>