Born in Norton, now a suburb of Sheffield, Webb followed his sister Lily to Ashton-under-Lyne, where he worked in a cotton mill.
At 17, he joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) despite its limited presence in the Manchester area.
In the January 1910 UK general election, Webb campaigned for William McGee, an independent labour candidate in Ashton-under-Lyne.
[1][2][3][4] Following the October Revolution, Webb supported the formation of a single, national communist party, and signed the manifesto of the Communist Unity Group, a splinter group from the SLP.
In 1947, he was the CPGB's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Ashton but did not stand in the 1950 general election.