English socialist and author, born in London on the 13th of July 1859. He was educated at private schools in London and Switzerland, at the Birkbeck Institute and the City of London College. From 1875 to 1878 he was employed in a city office, but he entered the civil service by open competition as a clerk in the War Office in 1878, became surveyor of taxes in 1879, and in 1881 entered the colonial office, where he remained until 1891. In 1885 he was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn. Mr. Webb was one of the early members of the Fabian Society, contributing to Fabian Essays (1889); and he became well-known as a socialist, both by his speeches and his writings. He entered the London County Council in 1892 as member for Deptford, and was returned at the head of the poll in the successive elections of 1895, 1898, 1901 and 1904. He resigned from the civil service in 1891 to give his whole time to the work of the Council (where he was chairman of the Technical Education Board) and to the study of economics. He served from 1903 to 1906 on the Royal Commission on Trade Union Law and on other important commissions. He married in 1892 Miss Beatrice Potter, herself a writer on economics and sociology, the author of The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain (1891) and a contributor to Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People (1891–1903). His most important works are a number of Fabian tracts; London Education (1904); The Eight Hours Day (1891), in conjunction with Harold Cox; and, with Mrs. Sidney Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (1894; new ed., 1902), Industrial Democracy (1897; new ed., 1902), Problems of Modern Industry (1898), History of Liquor Licensing (1903), English Local Government (1906), &c. Mrs. Webb was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and she and her husband were responsible for the Minority Report and for starting the widespread movement in its favour. From 1909, when Mr. Webb, with his wife, Beatrice, was actively organizing opinion in favour of the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, he continued to play an influential part in the Labour and Socialist movement. He became one of the commissioners under the Development Act in 1913. His election upon the national executive of the Labour party in the early part of the World War brought him into a still closer connection with the responsible leaders of Labour, and two years later the entire constitution of the Labour party was remodelled and a programme constructed (Labour and the New Social Order), which was closely in accord with Mr. Webb’s views and policy. During the war Mr. Webb and his wife served on numerous departmental and other committees. In opposition to the majority report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, Mrs. Webb put forward a Minority Report which was afterwards (in 1919) published separately. At the general election of December 1918 Mr. Webb stood unsuccessfully as Labour candidate for London University (in which he held the professorship of Public Administration), being second in the poll. In the coal crisis of the spring of 1919 he was appointed a member of the Coal Industry Commission and also put forward in evidence a complete scheme of nationalization of the coal-mines. In the same year he was appointed to the Central Committee set up under the Profiteering Act of 1919. Among the publications of Mr. and Mrs. Webb after 1906, the following were the most important:—English Local Government: The Manor and the Borough (1908); The Break-up of the Poor Law and The Public Organization of the Labour Market (1909); English Poor Law Policy (1910); The State and the Doctor (1910); The Story of the King’s Highway (1913); The History of Trade Unionism (new and revised ed., 1920); A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (1920) and The Consumers’ Co-operative Movement (1921). Mr. Webb also produced Grants in Aid (1911); How to Pay for the War (1916); The Works Manager To-day (1917); and The Story of the Durham Miners (1921). Mr. and Mrs. Webb were concerned in the founding of the weekly New Statesman in 1913, and have been since 1895 active movers in the development of the London School of Economics and Political Science (university of London).
