Beatrice Webb
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, FBA (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, feminist and social reformer.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, where she coined the term "collective bargaining" as a way to discuss the negotiation process between an employer and a labor union.[1][2] 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.In the preface to the second work,[10] 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.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.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.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.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."[25] The frustrations and disappointments of the next few years – the election of a narrow Labour majority of MPs in May 1929, the Great Depression which began later that year, the agreement of fellow Fabian Ramsay MacDonald, after the October 1931 election, to form and head a National Government, thereby splitting the Labour Party – partly explain why Beatrice and Sidney began to look on the USSR and its leader Stalin with different eyes.[citation needed] Historians have criticised the Webbs for her supposition that the methods they had developed in analysing and formulating social policy in Britain could be applied to the Soviet Union.Their book promoted and encouraged an uncritical view of Stalin's conduct, during agrarian centralisation in the first five-year plan (1928–1933), the creation of the gulag system, and the extensive purges of the 1930s.In the third edition of Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation (1941), for instance, the Webbs voiced the opinion that in 1937 "strenuous efforts had been made, both in the trade union organisation and in the Communist Party, to cut out the deadwood".In the early 1930s Malcolm Muggeridge, one of Beatrice's own family by marriage, and himself the son of a Fabian, told her in no uncertain terms of his horrified disapproval of the Soviet system.The London School of Economics is undoubtedly our most famous one, but the New Statesman is also creditable—it is the most successful of the general weeklies, actually making a profit on its 25,000 readers, and has absorbed two of its rivals, The Nation and the Week-End Review.Meanwhile, the connections by marriage of their numerous nieces and nephews made Beatrice and Sidney part of the emerging new Labour establishment.A dissonant voice entered the family after Katherine Dobbs, the daughter of Beatrice's youngest sister Rosalind, married the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.Shortly afterward, the nonagenarian George Bernard Shaw launched an ultimately successful petition to have the remains of both moved to Westminster Abbey.As her niece Kitty commented:[41] ... although it was Beatrice herself who put the 20th-century zeitgeist into its most concrete form, in the Welfare State, something in her remained sturdily Victorian to the very end.
Beatrix PotterMartha Beatrice Webb (medical doctor)The Right HonourableGloucestershireLiphookSidney WebbRichard PotterCatherine CourtneySir Stafford CrippsBarbara DrakeKitty Muggeridgesociologistfeministsocial reformerLondon School of EconomicsFabian SocietyStandish HouseStandish, GloucestershireMargaret OliphantLiberal PartyLittle CircleReform Act 1832self-taughtHerbert SpencerJoseph ChamberlainCabinetWilliam GladstoneBertrand RussellCatherineLeonard Courtneymodel dwellingsKatharine BuildingsWappingEast End Dwellings CompanyCharles BoothLife and Labour of the People of Londonco-operative movementLondon School of Economics and Political Scienceeconomicconsumer co-operativeco-operative wholesale societiesCo-operative Wholesale Societyfederal co-operativesworker co-operativescentral planningcollective bargainingMinority report (Poor Law)Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09Conservative governmentA. J. BalfourLiberal governmentH. H. Asquithminority reportWelfare StateworkhousesPoor LawWilliam BeveridgeBeveridge ReportJessie HolidayH. G. WellsAmber ReevesMaud Pember ReevesThe New MachiavelliGuild SocialistsG.D.H. ColeHenry Devenish HarbenAgnes HarbenNew StatesmanClifford SharpGeorge Bernard ShawJohn Maynard KeynesLabour PartySeahamCounty DurhamRamsay MacDonaldNational GovernmentSoviet UnionFellow of the British AcademyJohn CrippsStafford Crippsfirst five-year planAl RichardsonArchie BrownMoscow TrialsNikolai BukharinLeft Book ClubA. J. P. TaylorMalcolm Muggeridge"Black Book"Ivan MaiskyWorld War IIPassfieldBaron PassfieldSecretary of State for the ColoniesSecretary of State for the DominionsGraham WallasChancellor of the ExchequerClement AttleeHenry HobhouseStephen Henry HobhouseArthur HobhouseWilliam Harrison CrippsCharles Cripps, 1st Baron ParmoorKatherine DobbsManchester GuardianThe Manchester GuardianWoking CrematoriumpetitionWestminster AbbeyErnest Bevinpost-war Labour governmentHistory of Trade UnionismIndustrial DemocracyRoads Improvement AssociationEnglish Local GovernmentAnna Louise StrongFeminist economicsList of feminist economistsFederal Mediation and Conciliation Service (United States)Caine, BarbaraLewis, JaneRuth AdamInternational Labour OrganizationWayback MachineHarris, JoseMacKenzie, Jeanne