A. J. P. Taylor described Sidney as ‘a door that can never be unlocked’, while Bertrand Russell once remarked: ‘If you set down a list of Beatrice’s leading characteristics you would say “What a dreadful woman!” But in fact she was very nice.’ However, he was unable to explain this paradox. Harrison certainly unravels some of the mysteries about their characters. The young Sidney Webb emerges as an exceptionally vulnerable and sensitive person. The son of a London hair-dresser, he raised himself from his lower middle-class background by obsessively taking and passing exams. He was clearly brilliant, but aspects of his character are surely also revealed by the fact that among his achievements was the Medhurst Prize for proficiency, punctuality and regularity! His job in the Colonial Office left him plenty of time for other activities and by January 1890 he had become the intellectual leader of the Fabian Society. At this point he met and fell in love with Beatrice Potter, a member of a wealthy upper-class family from Gloucestershire. If Harrison may have had difficulty in showing she was ‘very nice’, he does at least bring out her vivacity, intellectual curiosity and honesty as well as the problem of being a highly intelligent woman in Victorian society.

Beatrice’s first mentor was Herbert Spencer, whose philosophy she tried to incorporate into her work as a rent collector in the East End. At this point her main concern was that poor law relief might interfere with the Darwinian processes of natural selection. However, such views were then counteracted by Joseph Chamberlain, the first love of her life. By 1890 she was therefore seeking a new theory which would replace Spencerism and provide a more reliable guide to action than Chamberlain’s opportunism. This was provided by Sidney, who had weaned himself from Mill and Comte, rejected Marx, and now developed his own approach to economic and social problems. The existing class system, he argued, was iniquitous, but this was not necessarily inherent in capitalism itself: the fault lay with parasitic property owners who extracted too much rent from the economy without using their accumulated profits for the benefit of the community as a whole. Reforms, based on the best possible empirical evidence, could transform the system. Beatrice found Sidney’s ideas and growing influence attractive, and he adored her—and so their remarkable partnership began.

By now Beatrice had proved herself an indefatigable social investigator with a rare talent for eliciting information about their lives from people of all classes. The couple wrote on an immense range of subjects, combining her bursts of energy and flair for interviewing with his painstaking command of detail. But the quality was more important than the quantity, and Harrison argues persuasively that some of their works, particularly the History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy, remain unsurpassed to this day. Certainly, many of their theoretical insights are both interesting and surprising. For example, they anticipated Michels in perceiving an iron law which tends to separate the leaders from the rank and file; but, instead of simply accepting the inevitability of oligarchy, they advocated new forms of shop-floor representation to reverse the trend. They realised that bureaucracies could undermine the goals of elected leaders long before this became received wisdom and sought ways of maintaining political control. These books demonstrated both sophistication and real engagement with the purposes of working-class organisations.

Yet while their writing has often been under-estimated, it is the range of their practical work which is extraordinary. Sidney, who relished meetings, broke the London County Council’s rules by serving on five of its committees rather than the stipulated three. It was from his position as chairman of the Technical Education Committee that he made his major impact in these years. He was able to bring about a thorough reorganisation of secondary education in London before using, or rather mis-using, the will of a Fabian benefactor to establish the LSE. Meanwhile Beatrice devised much of the strategy, used her money to enable him to work on his projects full-time, and facilitated his access to the social and political elites. This meant that in the course of twelve years he did more than anyone else has ever achieved to reform English education.

The accomplishments are evident, but what was the nature of their politics? Once again Harrison does his best to provide a balanced picture. The Webbs, he argues, ‘were not merely practitioners within the English reformist tradition; they must be numbered among the makers of it’. This is certainly true, but they do not emerge from his book as being among the most radical or democratic of its exponents. They virtually ignored the formation of the Labour party, preferring to work with the Liberal hierarchy; their philosophy was based essentially on reconstruction from above rather than empowerment from below; and they were never really comfortable with people whose politics were based on emotion rather than reason. Their emphasis was always on ‘sensible’, administrative reform rather than projects for human emancipation. Some of their views on race and empire are also deeply offensive, although, as Harrison reminds us, we have to consider them in the context of their time and environment. But whether one likes them or not, there is no doubt about their long-term influence over the British labour movement.

Has this all changed with the birth of New Labour? Of course, Tony Blair has confined their projects for nationalisation and municipal socialism to the dustbin of history, but when he talks of the need for modernisation it is impossible not to be reminded of their quest for national efficiency. It seems that the Webbs are immortal as exemplars of the centre-left tradition in British politics.