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