WEBB, Beatrice nee Potter (1858-1943) and Sidney James, 1st Baron Passfield (1859-1947), social reformers. Sidney Webb, was educated in Switzerland and Germany and at the City of London College, Beatrice privately. A civil servant from 1878 to 1891, Sidney joined the socialist Fabian Society in 1885. Beatrice became a socialist while working with Charles Booth. Married in 1892, they campaigned together for various social reforms and, as leading figures of the Fabian Society. In 1895 they helped establish the London School of Economics. In the early years of the 20th century, their leadership was instrumental in the formation of Britain's Labour party and they founded the party's weekly New Statesman in 1913. Sidney Webb was elected to Parliament in 1922; in 1924 he became president of the Board of Trade in the first British Labour cabinet. He also served as a secretary of state for the colonies (1929-31) in the second Labour government.The Webbs together authored a number of books; these include The History of Trade Unionism (1894), English Local Government (9 vol., 1906-29), The Decay of Capitalist Civilization (1923), and Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (2 vol., 1935), a favorable appraisal of the Soviet system. Sidney Webb also wrote Fabian Essays (1889), with the British dramatist George Bernard Shaw, and Socialism in England (1890). Beatrice Webb was the author of The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain (1891)
Analytic philosophy