Beatrice Webb - Family

Family

Webb's nephew, Sir Stafford Cripps, became a well-known British Labour politician in the 1930s and 1940s, serving as British ambassador to Moscow during World War II and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Clement Attlee. His daughter, Peggy, went on to marry the Nana Joe Appiah, a noted African statesman and tribal chieftain who served as something of a founding father of the Republic of Ghana.

Her niece, Barbara Drake, was a prominent trade unionist and a member of the Fabian Society. Another niece, Katherine Dobbs, married the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, whose experience reporting from the Soviet Union subsequently made him highly critical of the Webbs' optimistic portrayal of Stalin's rule. Their books, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (1935) and The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942) have been widely denounced for adopting an uncritical view of Stalin's conduct during periods that witnessed a brutal process of agricultural collectivization as well as extensive purges and the creation of the gulag system.

Her sister Margaret Hayworth Potter was married to the Liberal politician Henry Hobhouse. Thus, she was an aunt of peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse and Liberal politician Arthur Hobhouse.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb had no children of their own. In retirement Beatrice reflected upon this and the success of their symbolic children, the London School of Economics and New Statesman. On September 14, 1936 Beatrice wrote: "In old age it is one of the minor satisfactions of life to watch the success of your children, literal children or symbolic. The London School of Economics is undoubtedly our most famous one; but the New Statesman is also creditable - it is the most successful of the general weeklies, actually making a profit on its 25000 readers, and has absorbed two of its rivals, The Nation and the Week-end Review".