Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield

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Sidney Webb

Sidney James Webb , 1st Baron Passfield PC (born July 13, 1859 in London , † October 13, 1947 in Liphook , Hampshire ) was a British social scientist and politician ( Labor Party ).

Life

Webb came from a middle class family. He was a barrister and a member of the Gray's Inn Bar Association in London . He quickly made a career as an official of the Colonial Ministry, but left the civil service in 1881. In 1885 he joined the Fabian Society , founded the year before , which pursued a reform-oriented path towards socialism. From 1891 to 1910 he was one of the dominant members of the County of London Council .

In 1892 he married the industrialist daughter and committed social researcher Beatrice Potter .

Together with his wife, George Bernhard Shaw and Graham Wallas , he founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895 . In 1902/1903 he was one of the proponents of a new school law for London, which was soon adopted across England.

Webb was the author of several influential sociopolitical writings. Together with his wife, he published two standard works on the history (1894) and function (1897) of the British trade unions, which were published several times and also translated into German. Both works are considered the founding documents of the interdisciplinary research field of industrial relations (see industrial relations ). In 1909, he and his wife again published a report on poverty in England, which initiated reforms of the welfare system. His work Labor and the New Social Order , published in 1918, was adopted by the Labor Party as a party manifesto. He himself belonged to the party from 1915 to 1925. From 1922 to 1928 he held a seat in the House of Commons , in 1924 Webb became Minister of Commerce (President of the Board of Trade ), from 1929 to 1931 he was Secretary of State for the Colonies .

In 1929 he was raised to hereditary nobility as Baron Passfield , of Passfield Corner in the County of Southampton . A hereditary seat in the House of Lords was associated with the title . Since he had no offspring, the title expired on his death.

Work (selection)

  • Socialism in England (1890)
  • (with Beatrice Webb) The History of Trade Unionism (1894); dt .: The History of British Trade Unionism . Stuttgart 1895
  • (with Beatrice Webb) Industrial Democracy (1897); German: Theory and Practice of the English Trade Unions , 2 vols. Stuttgart 1898
  • (together with Beatrice Webb) The prevention of destitution (1911); German: The Problem of Poverty , Jena 1912
  • A constitution for the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain (1920)
  • The truth about Soviet Russia (1941)

literature

Web links

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