Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield, OM, PC (13 July 1859 – 13 October 1947) was a British socialist, economist, supporter of Stalinism, and reformer, who co-founded the London School of Economics.

Webb's upbringing was "comfortable", the family employing a live-in servant; his father was "a man of local substance" as a rate collector, guardian, and sergeant in a volunteer regiment.

Having attended a "first-class middle class day school" at St Martin's Lane, and his parents having sent him abroad to Switzerland and Germany to extend his education, [2] Webb later studied law at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution for a degree of the University of London in his spare time, while holding an office job.

[5] The couple's influence can be seen in their hosting of the Coefficients, a dining club that drew in some leading statesmen and thinkers of the day.

[citation needed] The Webbs ignored mounting evidence of atrocities being committed by Joseph Stalin and remained supporters of the Soviet Union until their deaths.

For the Fabian Society he wrote on poverty in London,[8] the eight-hour day,[9][10] land nationalisation,[11] the nature of socialism,[12] education,[13] eugenics,[14][15] and reform of the House of Lords.

[citation needed] In H. G. Wells' The New Machiavelli (1911), the Webbs, as "the Baileys", are mercilessly lampooned as short-sighted, bourgeois manipulators.

Shortly afterwards, George Bernard Shaw launched a petition to have both reburied in Westminster Abbey, which was eventually granted – the Webbs' ashes are interred in the nave, close to those of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin.