Beatrice Potter Webb

Beatrice Potter Webb 1858-1943, English socialist economist; daughter of a wealthy industrialist. She took an early interest in social problems and worked with Charles Booth on his survey of working life in London. Her Cooperative Movement in Great Britain was published in 1891. In 1892 she married Sidney James Webb, 1859-1947, a civil servant and a contributor to Fabian Essays (1890). Thereafter they worked together, complementing each other's qualities in an unusual partnership. They were of first importance in the Fabian Society , in the building up of the British Labour party, and in the creation (1895) of the London School of Economics. In 1913 they founded the New Statesman. Most of the political and social reforms of their period owe much to their indefatigable research and political acumen. Together they produced The History of Trade Unionism (1894; rev. ed. 1920), Industrial Democracy (1897), English Local Government (9 vol., 1906-29), Consumers' Cooperative Movement (1921), and Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (2 vol., 1935). In 1922 Sidney Webb was elected to Parliament. He was president of the board of trade in the 1924 Labour government and secretary for the colonies from 1929 to 1931. In 1929 he was created Baron Passfield, a title his wife refused to share.

Bibliography: See Beatrice Webb's autobiographical My Apprenticeship (1926) and Our Partnership (1948); her diaries (ed. by M. I. Cole, 2 vol., 1952-56); biographies by M. I. Cole (1945) and K. Muggeridge and R. Adam (1968); M. I. Cole, ed. The Webbs and Their Work (1949).

Webb, Beatrice (née Potter) and Webb, Sydney James (1858–1943; 1859–1947) Noted authors of a definitive History of British Trade Unionism, and leading thinkers and activists of the so-called Fabian socialist movement, who made a distinguished contribution to the development and characteristic outlook of the British Labour Party. The Webbs' work on trade unions shows a distaste for the strong craft tradition in Britain and looks forward to a time when state regulation of minimum wages, together with social insurance, will make unions obsolete. Their socialism was distinguished for its advocacy of building democratic socialist institutions by steady accretion. The welfare consensus between the political parties of post-1945 Britain owed much to their ideas.

Webb, Beatrice, née Potter (1858–1943), married Sidney Webb (1859–1947), the son of a London shopkeeper, in 1892. Both were leading spirits in the Fabian Society, and they produced jointly numerous works on social history, served on many royal commissions, and helped to found the London School of Economics. Beatrice also wrote two autobiographical works (My Apprenticeship, 1926; Our Partnership, 1948), and kept a remarkable diary of which selections were published in 1952 and 1956, ed. M. Cole; the first volume of a fuller four-volume edition, ed. N. and J. Mackenzie, appeared in 1982. These show the width of her human and intellectual interests and considerable literary skill, and are a valuable record of social life and progressive thought of the period.