Jesse Collings

Collings was the youngest son of Thomas Collings, Littleham-cum-Exmouth, Devon, and Annie Palmer. In 1858 he married Emily Oxenbould, the daughter of a master at King Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham. They had one daughter. ==Birmingham Town Council==

He was a close friend of Joseph Chamberlain in developing local improvement schemes in Birmingham, parks, and what at the time was called "gas-and-water socialism". He took over practical management of the education committee and served as Mayor of Birmingham in 1878–79. He was responsible for free public libraries in Birmingham and was the original proponent of the Birmingham Art Gallery funded from the profits of the gas company. ==Free education==

Early on, Collings had shown an interest in education by helping to found the Devon and Exeter Boys Industrial School in 1862. ==Land reform==

Collings' background in Devon gave him an appreciation of the problems of the agricultural worker and small-scale farmer rare in a major industrial city like Birmingham. The slogan for Collings' 1885 land-reform campaign Three Acres and a Cow became the battle cry of land reform and the fight against rural poverty. To some, however, this slogan was backward looking and the source of amusement amongst many Conservatives and farmers. Joseph Chamberlain adapted the Three Acres and a Cow slogan for his own Radical Programme: he urged the purchase by local authorities of land to provide garden and field allotments for all labourers who might desire them, to be let at fair rents in plots of up to of arable and three to of pasture. Collings founded the Allotments Extension Association in 1883 to promote the formation of allotments and smallholdings. He also collaborated closely with the Highland Land Reform Association. The 1882 Allotments Extension Act was put through Parliament by Collings. By 1886 there were 394,517 allotments of under and 272,000 garden allotments (Haywood, 1991). In 1886, Collings' work defeated Lord Salisbury's Government, which lost the vote on the Queen's speech, when Collings moved his 'Small Holdings Amendment Act'. A Liberal Government under William Ewart Gladstone took its place. Collings' work also led to 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act (which led to 30,000 families being resettled on the land) and the 1919 Land Settlement Act. ==Member of Parliament==

of Jesse Collings in Vanity Fair, 1888. The caption was "3 acres and a cow". He was Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Ipswich from 1880 until he was unseated on petition in April 1886, and then for Birmingham Bordesley from 1886 until 1918 (until 1912 as a Liberal Unionist, when the party was wound up, thereafter as a Conservative). On Chamberlain's recommendation, Collings served in Gladstone's administration as Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board in 1886, although at a reduced salary. Collings joined the Liberal Unionist group set up by Chamberlain in 1886 as a result of the split with the Gladstonian Liberals over Ireland. Collings served in Salisbury's government as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1895 to 1902. Although he served in Parliament from 1880 (with a small interruption) and was a junior minister in two Governments, he was most influential outside Parliament – his ministerial posts were not connected to his lifelong advocacy of free education and land reform. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1892. ==As a Liberal Unionist==

The concern of Liberal Unionists was that what they perceived as the need for important reforms was being subordinated to a preoccupation with Ireland. The land reform movement was split. Joseph Arch remained a Gladstonian Liberal and ensured that Collings was deposed from the Allotments Extension Association. Collings later set up the Rural Labourers' League, which supported land reform and advocated tariffs on imported food to support the rural economy. Collings proposed a system of vocational education through free schools in rural areas. Erroneously or not, Collings along with Chamberlain and others believed that land reform in Ireland would give the peasants a stake in the country and reduce poverty, but convinced neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives to attempt it. He was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Birmingham in 1911. Collings published Land Reform in 1906 and in 1914 The Colonization of Rural Britain. He also published The Great War: Its Lessons and Warnings in 1915. Collings continued to be active in promoting land reform until 1918, when he retired from Parliament on the abolition of his seat when he was then aged 87 and oldest member of the House. He died in November 1920 aged 88. == Portrait ==

A portrait of Collings, painted circa 1885, by Jonathan Pratt (1835–1911), hangs in Birmingham Council House. It is not in a public area but may be viewed by prior application. ==Sources==