Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, feminist, socialist thinker and social reformer. She was among the founders of the London School of Economics and played a crucial role in forming the Fabian Society. Additionally, she authored several popular books, with her most notable being The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain and Industrial Democracy, co-authored by her husband Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield, where she coined the term "collective bargaining" as a way to discuss the negotiation process between an employer and a labor union. As a feminist and social reformer, she criticised the exclusion of women from various occupations as well as campaigning for the unionisation of female workers, pushing for legislation that allowed for better hours and conditions.
Early life Beatrice Webb (née Potter) was born in Standish House in the village of Standish, Gloucestershire. She was the youngest of nine daughters of Laurencina Heyworth, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant; and businessman Richard Potter. Laurencina was friends for a time with the prolific Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant during the 1840s. Both women were campaigning in Liverpool at the time (see Margaret Oliphant, Autobiography, edited by Elizabeth Jay, pages 25–26). Her paternal grandfather was Liberal Party MP Richard Potter, co-founder of the Little Circle, which was key in creating the Reform Act 1832.
Webb faced tragedy with her sisters: one, Blanche, died by suicide in 1905 in her own house; her oldest sister, Lallie, then died due to overdose the next year in 1906. It was believed at the time that both incidents were caused by their marital relationships. Yet, Webb struggled with this idea because of her beliefs of gender roles and equalities:
From an early age Webb was self-taught and cited as important influences the cooperative movement and the philosopher Herbert Spencer. After her mother's death in 1882 she acted as a hostess and companion for her father. In 1882, she began a relationship with twice-widowed Radical politician Joseph Chamberlain, by then a Cabinet minister in William Gladstone's second government. He would not accept her need for independence as a woman and after four years of "storm and stress" their relationship failed.Diaries of Beatrice Webb (2000), New Year's Day, 1901, p. 244.
Marriage in 1892 to Sidney Webb established a lifelong "partnership" of shared causes. At the beginning of 1901, Webb wrote that she and Sidney were "still on our honeymoon and every year makes our relationship more tender and complete."
She and her husband were friends with the philosopher Bertrand Russell.
My Creed and My Craft Webb left an unfinished autobiography, under the general title My Creed and My Craft. At her death, aged 85, the only autobiographical work she had published was My Apprenticeship (1926). The posthumously issued Our Partnership (1948) covered the first two decades of her marriage to Sidney Webb between 1892 and 1911 and their collaboration on a variety of public issues.
In the preface to the second work,Webb, Beatrice, Our Partnership, 1948, London: Longmans, Green & Co, p. vi. its editors refer to Webb's: desire to describe truthfully her lifelong pursuit of a living philosophy, her changes of outlook and ideas, her growing distrust of benevolent philanthropy as a means of redeeming 'poor suffering humanity' and her leaving of the field of abstract economic theory for the then practically unexplored paths of scientific social research. In 1926, when Webb had begun to prepare the second volume, Our Partnership, only to be repeatedly distracted by other more pressing commitments, the book's editors report her finding it difficult to express "her philosophy of life, her belief in the scientific method, but its purpose guided always by religious emotion."Webb, Our Partnership, 1948, p. vii.
A pioneer in social research and policymaking One of Beatrice's older sisters, Catherine, became a well-known social worker. After Catherine married Leonard Courtney, Beatrice took over her work as a voluntary rent-collector in the model dwellings at Katharine Buildings, Wapping, operated by the East End Dwellings Company.The Diaries of Beatrice Webb (2000), p. 53.
The young Beatrice also assisted her cousin by marriage Charles Booth in his pioneering survey of the Victorian slums of London, work which eventually became the massive 17-volume Life and Labour of the People of London (1902–1903).
These experiences stimulated a critical attitude to current ideas of philanthropy.
In 1890, Beatrice Potter was introduced to Sidney Webb, whose help she sought with her research. They married in 1892, and until her death 51 years later shared political and professional activities. When her father died in January 1892, leaving Potter an endowment of £1,000 a year, she had a private income for life with which to support herself and the research projects she pursued.
The Webbs became active members of the Fabian Society. With the Fabians' support, Beatrice Webb co-authored books and pamphlets on socialism and the co-operative movement including The History of Trade Unionism (1894) and Industrial Democracy (1897). In 1895, the Fabians used part of an unexpected legacy of £10,000 from Henry Hutchinson, a solicitor from Derby, to create the London School of Economics and Political Science.The Diaries of Beatrice Webb (2000), 21 September 1894, p. 186.Kitty Muggeridge and Ruth Adam, Beatrice Webb: A Life, 1858–1943, 1967, London: Secker & Warburg, pp. 151–156. Beatrice Webb also became one of the founding members of the Fabian Women's Group in 1908. As a member of the Fabian Women's group, she helped push for equal pay and supported the role of women in local government.Caine, Barbara. "Beatrice Webb and the 'Woman Question.'” History Workshop, no. 14, 1982, pp. 36. . Retrieved 28 February 2024.
Contributions to the theory of the co-operative movement Beatrice Webb made a number of important contributions to the political and economic theory of the co-operative movement.
In her 1891 book The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain, based on her experiences in Lancashire, she distinguished between "co-operative federalism" and "co-operative individualism". She identified herself as a co-operative federalist, a school of thought which advocates consumer co-operative societies. She argued that consumers' co-operatives should be set up as co-operative wholesale societies (by forming co-operatives in which all members are co-operatives, the best historical example being the English Co-operative Wholesale Society) and that these federal co-operatives should then acquire farms or factories.
Webb dismissed the idea of worker co-operatives where the people who did the work and benefited from it had some control over how it was organised, arguing that – at the time she was writing – such ventures had proved largely unsuccessful, at least in ushering in her form of socialism led by volunteer committees of people like herself.Potter, Beatrice, The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain, London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1891. Examples of successful worker cooperatives did of course exist, then as now. In some professions they were the norm. However, Webb's final book, The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942), celebrated central planning.
She also is credited with introducing the concept of "collective bargaining." "Collective bargaining" defines the process in which unions discuss with their employers the conditions, hours, pay, and safety of their work environment.American Federation of Labor. "Collective Bargaining." America's Unions | AFL-CIO, aflcio.org/what-unions-do/empower-workers/collective-bargaining. Accessed 28 February 2024.
1909 Minority report to the Royal Commission
For four years Beatrice Webb was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09. The Conservative government of A. J. Balfour established the commission, which issued its final report to the Liberal government of H. H. Asquith.Woman's Hour discussion on 1909 Minority Report, BBC Radio 4, 2008.Wallis, Ed (editor). From the Workhouse to Welfare Fabian Society and Webb Memorial Trust, 2009. Beatrice was the lead author of the dissenting minority report. This sketched the outlines of a Welfare State which would:
...secure a national minimum of civilised life ... open to all alike, of both sexes and all classes, by which we meant sufficient nourishment and training when young, a living wage when able-bodied, treatment when sick, and modest but secure livelihood when disabled or aged.
With the minority report, she advocated for more aid towards those who were disabled and supported the use of outside relief for infants in workhouses, which often were in poor condition and unsafe. The Minority Report emphasized proper medical care and child-well as provisions needed to the Poor Law.Platt, Lucinda. "Beatrice Webb's Minority Report." LSE History, 4 Oct. 2023, blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2018/02/23/beatrice-webb-william-beveridge-poverty-and-the-minority-rep ort-on-the-poor-law/. Accessed 28 February 2024. William Beveridge, future author of the 1942 Beveridge Report that introduced the welfare state in the United Kingdom, worked as a researcher for the Webbs on the Minority Report.Harris, Jose, "The Webbs and Beveridge", in From Workhouse to Welfare (Fabian Society, 2009). He was later appointed director (1919–1937) of the London School of Economics.
Rivalries on the Left, 1901–1922
The influence of the Webbs on the Fabian Society and its policies was attacked by H. G. Wells. For a time, he joined the Society but was critical of its cautious approach: "They permeate English society with their reputed Socialism about as much as a mouse may be said to permeate a cat."Quoted in Muggeridge and Adam, p. 168. For her part, Beatrice voiced disapproval of Wells' "sordid intrigue" with the feminist Amber Reeves, the daughter of a veteran Fabian Maud Pember Reeves. Wells responded by lampooning the couple in his 1911 novel The New Machiavelli as Altiora and Oscar Bailey, a pair of short-sighted, bourgeois manipulators.
Other rivals from the left of the Fabian Society at that time were the Guild Socialists led by the historian and economist G.D.H. Cole. Cole and his wife Margaret would later run the Fabian Research Bureau.
In 1913, the Webbs and Henry Devenish Harben, husband of suffragist and fellow Fabian, Agnes Harben, co-founded the New Statesman, a political weekly edited by Clifford Sharp with contributions from many philosophers, economists, and politicians of the day, including George Bernard Shaw and John Maynard Keynes.
The Webbs became members of the Labour Party in late 1914. At the end of World War I, Beatrice collaborated with her husband Sidney in his writings and policy statements such as Labour and the New Social Order (1918). She also campaigned for his successful election in 1922 to the parliamentary seat of coastal Seaham, a mine-working community in County Durham.
Soviet Communism In 1928, the Webbs moved to Liphook in Hampshire, where they lived until their deaths in the 1940s. Soon Sidney was a minister in the new Labour government. Observing the wider world, Beatrice wrote of "Russian communism and Italian Fascism" as "two sides of the worship of force and the practice of cruel intolerance" and she was disturbed that "this spirit is creeping into the USA and even ... into Great Britain."Muggeridge and Adam, Beatrice Webb: A Life, 1967, p. 225.