Jesse Collings - As A Liberal Unionist

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 in order 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.

Collings continued to be active in promoting land reform until 1918, when he retired from Parliament.

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.