In the preface to an anthology of Left Book Club publications, for instance, British historian A. J. P. Taylor is quoted as calling "Soviet Communism: A New Civilization" "the most preposterous book ever written about Russia". In the early 1930s Malcolm Muggeridge, one of Beatrice's own family by marriage, and himself the son of a Fabian, told her in no uncertain terms of his horrified disapproval of the Soviet system. She was among those listed in the German-compiled "Black Book". In 1929 Webb's husband, Sidney Webb, became Baron Passfield and a member of the House of Lords. Between 1929 and 1931 he served as Secretary of State for the Colonies and Secretary of State for the Dominions in Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government. Beatrice did not refer to herself as Lady Passfield or expect others to do so. Sidney and Beatrice Webb never had any children. In retirement Beatrice would reflect on the success of their other progeny. For instance, in 1895 they had founded the London School of Economics with Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw:  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 25,000 readers, and has absorbed two of its rivals, "The Nation" and the "Week-End Review". Meanwhile, the connections by marriage of their numerous nieces and nephews made Beatrice and Sidney part of the emerging new Labour establishment. Beatrice's nephew Sir Stafford Cripps, son of her sister Theresa, became a well-known Labour politician in the 1930s and 1940s. He served as British ambassador to Moscow during the Second World War and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Clement Attlee. (His daughter Peggy went on to marry Nana Joe Appiah, an African statesman and tribal chieftain who served as something of a founding father of the Republic of Ghana.) Margaret, yet another Potter sister, married the Liberal politician Henry Hobhouse, making Beatrice Webb an aunt of peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse and of Liberal politician Arthur Hobhouse. A dissonant voice entered the family after Katherine Dobbs, the daughter of Beatrice's youngest sister Rosalind, married the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge. In the early 1930s the young couple moved to Moscow, full of enthusiasm for the new Soviet system.