Michael Ward’s Unceasing War on Poverty is the first comprehensive biography of both the Webbs for forty years. It draws extensively on Beatrice’s diaries and on a wide range of other material.

Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb came from opposite ends of the Victorian middle class. Beatrice was one of the nine daughters of Richard Potter, an affluent businessman who became Chairman of the Great Western Railway. Sidney’s mother ran a hairdressing business off Leicester Square, in central London. Beatrice was educated at home by governesses (with a final year at a finishing school in Bournemouth). Sidney went to local schools, and then studied assiduously at evening classes, winning qualifications and prizes.

In 1882, when Beatrice was 24, her mother died. She took over running her father’s  household. But she looked for more from life, becoming a social investigator, working on Charles Booth’s study of the Life and Labour of the people of London. She also became a housing manager (or Lady Visitor), ruling over blocks of model dwellings in East London.

When he was 16, Sidney started work at a colonial broker’s office in the City. He set his sights on a career in the Civil Service – then not long opened up to appointment on merit by competitive examination. He succeeded in joining the Civil Service, winning appointment as  a man Clerk in the War Office  in 1978. Fortified by further study, he then moved rapidly though the ranks, arriving at the Senior Civil Service – Class I – in 1881.

They met in 1890, introduced outside the British Museum  by Beatrice’s cousin, the novelist Margaret Harkness. They were married at St Pancras Registry office in 1892, forming a remarkable partnership. Bertrand Russell said that they were

…the most completely married couple I have ever known…

They spoke as one, almost losing the use of the first person singular, saying ‘we think’ and not ‘I think’.

Their greatest achievement, the abolition of the Victorian Poor Law,  was posthumous. Beatrice died in April 1943; Sidney on 15 October 1947. A few days after Sidney’s death, in the King’s Speech, George VI told parliament that they would be asked to

…approve legislation to abolish the poor law and to provide a comprehensive system of assistance for all in need. …

The Prime Minister was Clement Attlee. Speaking later that day, he wished Sidney had lived long enough

…to see the last vestige of the old Poor Law swept away, but he saw sufficient to realise that that work of his had not been in vain.

Attlee had learned about the Poor Law as a voluntary youth worker in Edwardian East London, where he began

… to realise the curse of casual labour. I got to know what slum landlordism and sweating meant. I understood why the Poor Law was so hated.

In 1905 Beatrice had been appointed to a Royal Commission on

‘…the working of the laws relating to the relief of poor persons in the United Kingdom’  and to review unemployment policy.

There had been no review of the Poor Law since the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. That  Act was based on the principle of less eligibility, which stated that the position of the pauper – the person receiving relief –

…shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class. Every penny that tends to render the condition of the pauper more eligible than that of the independent labourer is a bounty on indolence and vice.

Administration of the Poor Law was placed in the hands of local Boards of Guardians – but with close supervision from Whitehall.

For the next six years, the Poor Law dominated the lives of both Sidney and Beatrice.

They concluded that it should be abolished, not reformed. Beatrice split the Commission: in her Minority Report, she called for outright abolition; the more cautious Majority wanted more limited changes.

Beatrice also proposed that the two existing forms of government health provision – the Poor Law medical service, which provided only for the destitute, and the preventative work of the local Medical Officers of Health – should be brought together in a unified health service, led nationally by a Minister of Health.

On unemployment, both Majority and Minority called for a network of local labour exchanges. This had been proposed in evidence from William Beveridge, then a young, Toynbee Hall based campaigner.

The minority went further,  saying that there should be a Minister of Labour, responsible for

…so organising the National Labour Market as to prevent or to minimise Unemployment.

From 1909 to 1911, Beatrice and Sidney led a national campaign  against the Poor Law and in favour of the prevention of destitution. They spoke at mass meetings all over the country – Beatrice called it

…raging, tearing propaganda..

Local groups were established; large numbers of volunteers were attracted to the campaign, coordinated by a handful of paid staff at the centre. One of those staff was Clement Attlee, who gave up his fledgling a career at the Bar to become the Meetings Organiser for the campaign.

But at the time the Webbs were unsuccessful: they could not persuade the Liberal government to legislate for Poor Law abolition. In 1911 they took a sabbatical year, to travel round the world. Returning in spring 1912, they launched a new War on Poverty campaign, bringing together the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society.

Towards the end of the First World War, Beatrice was appointed to  government committee on post war reconstruction. She wrote a further report on the Poor Law, bringing Majority and Minority closer. In 1919 a Ministry of Health was established – but there was no legislation on the Poor Law.

After another ten years, a Conservative Government did abolish Poor Law Boards of Guardians, but left the bulk of the Poor Law intact.

Only after the Second World War was the Poor Law finally abolished. In the weeks between Sidney’s death in October 1947, and the interment of the ashes of both Webbs in Westminster Abbey in December, the National Assistance Bill was introduced, beginning with the resounding words

The existing poor law shall cease to have effect.

 

Unceasing war on poverty: Beatrice and Sidney Webb and their world, by Michael Ward, is published by the Conrad Press. ISBN978-1-915494-61-0. Price £25.00.

Available from booksellers or from www.michaelward.eu