Front page of land reform
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This image shows the front page of Jesse Collings book ‘Land Reform’, published in 1906, an important monument to his broader ideas on the land issue. By 1906, Collings could boast a long, distinguished and often highly controversial political career at a local and national levels. A brief account of Collings’ life in a publication entitled ‘contemporary biographies’ (1900) included the following information on his life and the startling span of his achievements:
‘The Right Hon. Jesse Collings, M.P. was born in December, 1831, at Littleham, near Exmouth, and at an early age gained an insight into the special needs of the agricultural labourer, whose champion he subsequently became. [He was] Hon. Sec. of the Birmingham Educational society, 1867; returned to the Council as representative for Edgbaston Ward, 1868; member of school board, 1873-75; elected Alderman, 1875, was for some years an active worker on Committee and Chairman of the Free Library and Art Gallery Committee[…] Mr Collings in 1868, gave initiation to the National Education League, and was one of the founders of the agricultural Labourer’s Union, the Allotments and Small Holdings Association, and the Rural labourers League [ …] passed the Allotments Exchange Bill, 1882, in 1886 carried the small holdings resolution, which caused the resignation Lord Salisbury’s government; appointed parliamentary secretary to the Local Government Board, 1886; M.P. for the Bordesley Division since 1886; Privy councillor since 1892; Under Secretary for the Home Office since 1895’.
