The Fabians and the British Empire, Part XII

Akin in many ways to the relationship of a parent to a child, the Webb's idea of empire was very paternalistic in nature and echoed much of the rhetoric of the time. Although this somewhat contradicts Beatrice Webbs' favorable comments a year earlier regarding Indian intelligence, (for if the Indian people were as intelligent and as capable as the British, why then were the British justified in ruling them?) the Webbs did, nevertheless, exhibit an appreciation of how "far" the Indians had "come." They concluded by noting that the (Indian) "child is growing up. Whereas it used to be only seven years old, it is now fourteen. Are we to try to prevent it from attaining manhood?" [7] Unlike other imperialists who were not willing or able to see that India deserved eventual self-rule and political independence, the Webbs were acutely aware of this in 1913. Though paternalistic and somewhat racist, they were still somewhat different from the other imperialists of the day.

Footnotes:

[1] Beatrice Webb was appointed to the Poor Law Commission of 1905-1909, and was one of four members of the committee who advocating eliminating the Poor Laws altogether and replacing it with a system of government aid (similar to the modern Welfare State). She was one of four to write the famous Minority Report. Although their ideas did not gain immediate acceptance, the bulk of the Poor Laws were eliminated in 1929, and were scrapped altogether in 1947 under the post-war Attlee Labour Government.

[2] Lisanne Radice, Beatrice and Sidney Webb: Fabian Socialists, (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1984), p. 183.

[3] Ibid., p. 190.

[4] Beatrice Webb, Diary, 25 April 1912, quoted in Radine, pp. 191-2.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, "What is Socialism: XVII The Guardianship of the Non-Adult Races," New Statesman and Nation, vol. 1, no. 17 (August 2, 1913), p. 525.

[7] Ibid., p. 526.

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