933 Jesse Collings

Constituency : Ipswich  1880-86 , Birmingham  Bordesley  1886-1912  ( Liberal  Unionist ) , 1912-8  ( Conservative )

Jesse  took  one  of  the  Ipswich  seats  from  the  Tories.

Jesse  was  the  son  of  a  small  scale  builder  in  Devon. He  was  educated  locally  and  started  work  as  a  shop  assistant  and  worked  his  way  up  to  becoming  a  partner  in  an  ironmongery  firm  in  Birmingham  where  he  came  under  the  influence  of  the  radical  Unitarian  preacher  George  Dawson. He  also  became  a  great  friend  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  and  is  chiefly  remembered  as  his  loyal  lieutenant. He  took  over  the  local  education  committee  and  was  mayor  of  Birmingham  from  1878  to  1879. He  later  managed  the  libraries  and  art  gallery.
In  the  1860s  he  visited  America  to  study  their  school  system  and  subsequently  published  a  pamphlet  on  their  free  , non-denominational  system  which  inspired  the  foundation  in  1869  of  the  National  Education  League of  which  he  became  Secretary.  Jesse's  other  main  concern  was  land  reform. He  supported  a  strike  against  low  pay  by  agricutural  workers  in  the  1870s.He  was  a  friend  of  the agricultural  trade  unionist  Joseph  Arch  and  linked  his  union  to  the  N.E.L. He  advocated  giving  Allotments  and  smallholdings  to  poor  workers  in  rural  areas, a  policy  summed  up  in  the  slogan "Three Acres  and  a  Cow". Chamberlain  incorporated  this  in  his  Radical  Programme  extending  the  idea  to  urban  workers.

Jesse  and  Chamberlain  resided  together  in  London. Jesse  piloted  the  Allotments  Extension  Act  through  Parliament  in  1882. The  following  year  he set  up  the  Allotments  Extension  Association.

In  1886  Jesse's  amendment  to  the  Queen's  Speech  extending  smallholdings  brought  down  the  Salisbury  government  and  ushered  in  Gladstone's  third  ministry. Radicals  saw  it  as  a  sign  that  Gladstone  accepted  at  least  part  of  their  programme . Hartington  led  18  Liberals  to  vote  against  it  and  another  70  abstained.Gladstone  made  him  Parliamentary  Secretary to  the  Local  Government  Board . However  he  followed  Chamberlain  in  opposing  Home  Rule.  He  had  supported  Chamberlain's  plans  for  local  government  reform  in  Ireland.

Churchill  had  intervened  to  stop  the  Conservatives  opposing  him  in  Ipswich   but  Jesse  was  unseated  on  petition  in  1886.  He  was  immediately  re-seated  in  Birmingham  where  Henry  Broadhurst  had  been  chased  out.  Arch  remained  with  Gladstone  and  had  Jesse  kicked  out  of  the  AEA. Jesse  responded  by  setting  up  his  own  Rural  Labourer's  League. In  1887  he  secured  another  Allotments  Act  increasing  the  obligations  on  local  authorities  to  provide  them.

Jesse  served  as  Under  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Home  Office  from  1895 to  1902.

Jesse  backed  Chamberlain  again  on  tariff  reform  believing  that  tariffs  on   imported  food  would  benefit  the  rural  economy. On  one  occasion  he  visited  Devonshire  House  to  try  and  talk  the  duke   around  and  was  physically  escorted  out  of  the  building  by  him.

Jesse  though  still  outside  the  party  had  some  influence  on  the  Liberals'  Small  Holdings  and  Allotments  Act  in  1908.

In  his  later  years  he  became  a  writer. His  works  include  Land  Reform  ( 1906 ), The  Colonization of  Rural  Britain ( 1914  )  and  The  Great  War : Its  Lessons  and  Warnings  ( 1915 ) .  The  latter  envisaged  settling  wounded  soldiers  on  the  land  based  on  the  tragi-comic  idea  that  digging  trenches  would  have  given  them  a  taste  for  the  open  air  life.    

Jesse  stood down  in  1918. He  died  in  1920  aged  89.