Sydney
Olivier was
born in Colchester on 16th April 1859. The son of Rev. Arnold Olivier,
an Anglican clergyman, Sydney was educated
at Tonbridge
School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
At university Olivier met Graham Wallas
who became a life long friend.
In the spring of 1882 Olivier became a clerk at the Colonial Office.
After inspired by the work of Henry George,
Olivier joined the Land Reform League.
Olivier also contributed articles to the Christian
Socialist,
a journal run by Henry Hyde Champion.
At the Colonial Office, Olivier became friends with Sidney
Webb, and the two men joined the Hampstead
Historic Club where they met George Bernard Shaw.
In the spring of 1885, Shaw encouraged both Webb
and Olivier to join the Fabian Society.
The following year Olivier was elected to Fabian Society Executive
Committee and in 1886 was appointed Secretary of the organisation.
Olivier also contributed to the Fabian journal Today,
wrote the Fabian Tract Capital
and Land (1888)
and provided the article, The
Moral Basis of Socialism,
to the book Essays
in Fabian Socialism
(1889).
In 1890 Sydney
Olivier
was appointed Colonial Secretary to the government of the British
Honduras. Over the next twenty years, overseas postings restricted
him involvement in the Fabian Society. This
included posts as Auditor General of the Leedward Islands, Secretary
of the Sugar Commission in the West Indies, Colonial Secretary to
Jamaica and Governor of Jamaica.
Olivier retired from the Civil Service in 1918 and once again played
an important role in the Fabian Society.
On the formation of the first Labour Government
in 1924, Ramsay MacDonald granted Olivier
a peerage and appointed him as Secretary of State for India. Following
the 1929 General Election, MacDonald appointed
Olivier as Chairman of the Royal Commission that investigated conditions
in the sugar industry.
Sydney Olivier wrote several books on colonialism including The
Anatomy of African Misery
(1927), White
Capital and Coloured Labour
(1929) and The
Myth of Governor Eyre and Jamaica
(1936). Sydney
Olivier died at Bognor Regis on 15th February, 1943.
(1)
Edward
Pease, The History of the Fabian Society (1918)
At
the meeting on June 19th, 1886, at 94 Cornwall Gardens, Sydney Olivier
assumed the duties of Secretary. Sydney Webb, Bernard Shaw, Graham
Wallas, and Sydney Olivier, then and for for many years afterwards
may be said to have worked and thought together in an intellectual
partnership. Webb and Olivier were colleagues in the Colonial Office,
and it is said that for some time the Fabian records - they were not
very bulky - were stored on a table in Downing Street.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
