Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Collings, Jesse
COLLINGS, JESSE (1831-1920), politician, the youngest son of Thomas Collings, of Littleham, Exmouth, Devon, by his wife, Anne Palmer, was born at Littleham in December 1831. His father was a bricklayer, afterwards proprietor of a small building business; but in later life Jesse Collings was fond of tracing his descent from the Palmers, because they had, he believed, been yeoman farmers. He was educated at a dame’s school ‘for tradesmen’s sons’, and also spent a year at Church House School, Stoke, Plymouth, which was kept by a cousin. At the age of fifteen he became a shop assistant, later a clerk and commercial traveller in the ironmongery trade. Entering in 1850 the firm of Booth & Co., of Birmingham, as a clerk, he became a partner in the business, under the style of Collings and Wallis, fourteen years later, and retired in 1879. While living at Exeter and representing his firm he obtained much knowledge of rural conditions by his travels through the west of England. His first public work was done when he helped to establish the Devon and Exeter Boys’ Industrial School in 1862. His interest in education developed when he went to live in Birmingham in 1864, and in 1868 he published a pamphlet which was the immediate cause of the formation of the National Education League for the advocacy of free and non-sectarian elementary education. He was elected a town councillor for the Edgbaston division of Birmingham in that year, and thereafter became prominently associated with the programme of municipal reform in Birmingham carried out by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain [q.v.]. He was elected mayor in 1878, after ten years’ service on the council.
Outside municipal affairs Collings was becoming widely known as an advocate of free education and of land reform. In the latter connexion he, with a number of other radicals, was closely associated with Joseph Arch [q.v.] and the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union. Collings was for a time a trustee of this Union. In 1880 he was returned to parliament in the liberal interest as one of the members for Ipswich, and in 1882 he secured the passing of the Allotments Extension Act. In 1886 Collings and his fellow-member for Ipswich were unseated on petition; they were, however, personally blameless. Returned to parliament for Bordesley, Birmingham, in the same year, he retained the seat until his retirement in 1918. Always the close associate and personal friend of Joseph Chamberlain, Collings became a liberal unionist on the occasion of the Home Rule split. In the Salisbury administration of 1895 he was under-secretary to the Home Department, retaining office until 1902. In 1892 he had been made a privy councillor. A loyal colleague and good party servant, his work in office was mainly administrative, and unconnected with his life interests.
From the days when he appeared on the platforms of the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union until he retired from public life, Collings was an enthusiastic advocate of land reform. It was he who in 1885 began to use the phrase ‘three acres and a cow’ which for many years was the war-cry of the land reformers. During the debate on the Queen’s speech at the opening of parliament in January 1886 he moved an amendment on the subject of small holdings, and thereby brought about the defeat of the conservative government. But the Home Rule controversy of that year scattered the group of radical land reformers which had gathered round the agricultural labourers’ movement. They were henceforth in different and opposing political camps. Arch and his associates adhered to the Gladstonian party, Collings and his associates became unionists, and the effectiveness of both groups was destroyed. In 1883 Collings had formed the Allotments Extension Association; and in 1888 he became its president, but was deposed, partly as a result of differences on the question of Home Rule. He then formed the Rural Labourers’ League (afterwards known as the Rural League) with which he was connected until 1919. He continued his interest in rural affairs, including education, allotments, small holdings, and the administration of charitable trusts. In education he was the advocate of a vocational system of elementary education in rural areas, and in land reform the advocate of a system of peasant proprietorship. His educational views were never embodied in legislation, though to a small extent they were adopted in teaching practice and administration. His ideas on land reform were partly embodied in the ineffective Small Holdings Act of 1882, and again in the Land Settlement Act of 1919. He published Land Reform (1906), The Colonization of Rural Britain (1914), and The Great War: its Lessons and Warnings (1915).
Beloved by all with whom and for whom he worked, Collings was the recipient of many presentations, including one from working-men of Birmingham and one from rural workers. He died at Edgbaston, Birmingham, 20 November 1920. He married in 1858 Emily, daughter of Edward Oxenbould, a master at King Edward VI’s grammar school, Birmingham, and had one daughter.
[Life of ... Jesse Collings, Part I by Jesse Collings, Part II by Sir John L. Green, 1920.]