Sidney and Beatrice Webb, prominent British economists, historians, and social reformers.

Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) was born (Martha) Beatrice Potter on January 22, 1858, in Gloucestershire, and educated privately. About 1888 she became interested in socialism while working on a study of poverty in London with the British writer Charles Booth. Sidney Webb (1859-1947), born in London, on July 13, 1859, was educated in Switzerland and Germany and at the City of London College. A civil servant from 1878 to 1891, he joined the socialist Fabian Society in 1885. In 1887 Webb wrote the first edition of Facts for Socialists.

After their marriage in 1892, they campaigned together for various social reforms and, as leading figures of the Fabian Society, began to exert a strong liberalizing influence on British public opinion. They studied several fields in depth, attempting in particular to advance British trade unions, reform of Britain's poor law system, and development of the educational system in London. In 1895 they helped establish the London School of Economics. They served on the Royal Commission on the Poor Law (1905-1909), and their recommendation that poverty should be dealt with by special government agencies became the basis of future British policy. While in his position on the London County Council (1892-1910), Sidney Webb built up the state secondary school system. He and Beatrice laid the framework of the Education Acts of 1902 and 1903. In the early years of the 20th century, their leadership was instrumental in the formation of Britain's Labour party and they founded the party's weekly New Statesman in 1913. Sidney Webb was elected to Parliament in 1922; in 1924 he became president of the Board of Trade in the first British Labour Cabinet. He was elevated to the peerage in 1929, thereby gaining representation for the Labour party in the House of Lords. Webb served as a secretary of state for the colonies (1929-1931) in the second Labour government. Beatrice Webb died in Liphook, Hampshire, England, on April 30, 1943; Sidney Webb died there on October 13, 1947.

The Webbs together wrote a number of books; these include The History of Trade Unionism (1894), English Local Government (9 vols., 1906-29), The Decay of Capitalist Civilization (1923), and Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (2 vols., 1935), a favourable appraisal of the Soviet system. Sidney Webb also wrote Fabian Essays (1889), with George Bernard Shaw, and Socialism in England (1890). Beatrice Webb was the author of The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain (1891).