Sydney Haldane Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier, (16 April 1859 – 15 February 1943) was a British civil servant. A Fabian and a member of the Labour Party, he served as Governor of Jamaica and as Secretary of State for India in the first government of Ramsay MacDonald. He was the uncle of the actor Laurence Olivier. Background Olivier was born in Colchester, the second of eight children of Anne Elizabeth Hardcastle Arnould and the Reverend Henry Arnold Olivier, a stern Anglican. His brothers included Henry (1850–1935), who had a military career ending as a colonel, Herbert, a successful portrait painter, and Gerard (1869–1939), a clergyman (the father of Laurence). During Olivier's youth, the family spent time at Lausanne and Kineton, and at Poulshott in Wiltshire, where Henry Olivier was rector. Sydney Olivier was sent to Tonbridge School, and then studied philosophy and theology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Oxford he became a close friend of Graham Wallas, who came from a similar background. After graduation Olivier resisted family pressure to train as a barrister and instead sat the competitive examination for the Civil Service. He came first, beating Sidney Webb into second place. Olivier entered the Colonial Office in the spring of 1882, working as a resident clerk. He was joined by Webb shortly afterwards, and the two became good friends. In contrast to Webb, Olivier was an impulsive and dominating dandy, nicknamed the "socialist hidalgo". At this time Olivier also worked at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, living in the slums of Whitechapel and teaching Latin at the Working Men's College. He was a member of the Land Reform Union, where he met George Bernard Shaw in 1883, and part of team which in 1883 established a monthly periodical called the Christian Socialist, inspired by the Christian Socialist movement of 1848–1852. Olivier had become enthusiastic about Positivism after working as a tutor to the son of Henry Compton, a leading Positivist. He was attracted to the Positivist vision of a moral reform of capitalism, rather than mere amelioration, and for a while entertained this notion as an alternative to socialism that might be more palatable to Victorian England. On 1 May 1885, Olivier and Sidney Webb followed Shaw's lead and enrolled in the Fabian Society, which had been formed at the start of 1884; Wallas joined the following year, and the three became known as