Jesse Collings, Agrarian Radical, 1880-1892

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1975 Jesse Collings, agrarian radical, 1880-1892. David Murray Aronson University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Aronson, David Murray, "Jesse Collings, agrarian radical, 1880-1892." (1975). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1343. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1343 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JESSE COLLINGS, AGRARIAN RADICAL, 1880-1892 A Dissertation Presented By DAVID MURRAY ARONSON Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1975 History DAVID MURRAY ARONSON 1975 JESSE COLLINGS, AGRARIAN RADICAL, 1880-1892 A Dissertation By DAVID MURRAY AFONSON -Approved ss to style and content by Michael Wolff, Professor of English Franklin B. Wickwire, Professor of History Joyce BerVraan, Professor of History Gerald McFarland, Ch<- History Department August 1975 Jesse Collings, Agrarian Radical, 1880-1892 David M. Aronson, B,A., University of Rochester M.A. , Syracuse University Directed by: Michael Wolff Jesse Collings, although a well-known and popular figure in late nineteenth century Britain, has long been neglected as a meaning- ful figure in the history of that era. The reasons for that neglect are two-fold: first, the struggle for economic and political power within the rural world has been masked by the preponderant influence of the urban industrial society over the weakened rural society; second, too often history of this period concentrates on the "high politics" of the political leaders to the detriment of the issues that were Impinging upon an increasingly responsive House of Commons. This dissertation explores one issue, land reform, and specifically Collings' struggle for allotments and small holdings, which became one of the central questions of late nineteenth century politics. Collings* own background— he was born and reared in rural Devon- shire— and his journeys as a commercial traveller through the south and west of England made him conscious of the poverty and depopulation of Agricul- the land. In 1872, he joined with Joseph Arch in the National conditions. tural Labourers' Union to press for better wages and working "Agricultural However, the failure of the Union, due in large part to the champion first Depression" of the 1870' s and 80' s, caused CollLngs to allotments and then small holdings as a means of improving the laborers' lives. In Parliament, in the early 1880' s, he had moderate successes in opening up charity lands for allotments, but more important, he made the land issue, with his slogan "Three Acres and a Cow," the question upon which the election turned in the counties. Because of that issue the Liberals won in many counties. He might have made real progress in his programs, except that Gladstone chose Irish Home Rule as first priority. Collings, after a series of traumatic events, split with Gladstone and joined Joseph Chamberlain in the Liberal Unionist party. The Liberal Unionist-Conservative alliance, after a difficult beginning, found Collings' program electorally popular. In 1887, they passed an Allotments Act based on his principles, and in 1892 they passed a Small Holdings Act again based on Collings' program. However, the Acts did not accomplish what Collings had hoped. They did not stay the migration of the rural laborers from the land, and they did not help revive the fortunes of British Agriculture. In the years following 1892, Collings changed the focus of his struggle from the creation of occupying ownerships to the preserva- tion of the agricultural "interests" in the face of a rapidly expanding industrial urban society which threatened to destroy and replace the older forms of English rural life by an agrarian capitalist system. Although he did have some small victories, he did not succeed in that struggle. However, he did produce a strenuous critique of the social and economic forces which were transforming late Victorian society even as he fought to halt their "dehumanizing" impact. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER P3g^ I RESONANCES (1831-1864) 1 II THE UPTURN (1864-1879) 19 III PROTESTS AND PROGRAMS (1880-1885) 46 IV COERCION AND COMPULSION (1885-1887) 89 V ACTS AND REALITIES (1888-1892) 132 VI THE DOWNTURN (1892-1920) 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 CHAPTER I Resonances (1831-1864) "Jesse Collings, where is she?" — Cashier, Birmingham bank, 1860. "Jesse Collings? Who was he?" — Librarian, local history section, Birmingham Central Free Reference Library, 1971. Jesse Collings is primarily remembered for his 1386 Amendment to the Queen's Address. This Amendment led to the ouster of the Con- servative Government and its replacement by a Liberal Government headed by W. E. Gladstone. Some more knowledgeable students might remember that Collings led the fight for allotments and small holdings in late- nineteenth century Britain. The conventional view is to write off his land reform ideas as impractical and unworkable given Britain's economic development. This "conventional wisdom" is inadequate, for it fails to deal with Collings, his programs, or the time in which he lived. Collings, some seventy years ago, understood why that would be so. Historians as a rule deal mainly with the political events and national occurrences of the times of which they write. Facts with regard to the land may be duly recorded, but their bearings on the life of the people are insufficiently dealt with, misapplied, or passed over altogether.^ The question of reform of the English land system had repercus- sions throughout nineteenth century Britain, but little is known about the causes behind the reform movement or about those who struggled to 1 transform that land system. That this is true reveals much about the nature of what historians study and what they consider significant in Victorian society and politics. In our time F. M. L. Thompson in his article "Land and Poli- tics in the Nineteenth Century" has boldly described the land question and the failure of any "dramatic" reforms of it as central to an understanding of English history. Thompson recognized that beneath the political developments which found their expression in Parliament and on the platform, there was a silent struggle taking place, "a struggle for power, and . attempts to use that power to obtain or prevent one or other solution" to the question of land reform.^ Thompson has suggested three reasons why this important aspect of British life has been overlooked. First, the battle was between two societies, an agricultural one and an increasingly powerful urban society, over "the use of resources on which the national wealth and welfare chiefly rested." As urban society became increasingly prominent an aspect of the nineteenth century to which many historians have turned and the agricultural society declined, even when some land reform was achieved, it had little impact on the urban scene. It was often overlooked, and has continued to be so. Second, throughout the nineteenth century, there was a body of opinion held by persons called "radicals" who saw a concentration of power and prestige in the hands of a few, often the landowners (at least through mid-century). The "radicals" viewed that concentration of power They as a threat to their emergence into economic and political power. gathered an amalgam of the "people," the wealthy, and the propertied landed classes in an attempt to dismantle the landed system, but the ^ 3 faced with the specter of their destruction rallied to fight any radical proposal on land reform no matter how beneficient it might be. The landed classes could not win the struggle, but they could and did prevent any dramatic reforms until such time as the agricultural depression of 1877-96 and England's industrial society simply undermined them. Third, because the "radicals" were unable to find a consistent inclusive plan of attack, they were often reduced to offering specific proposals to particular problems. In those cases the claims for each reform proposal were shown to be invalid or, worse, impractical, and the "radicals" were castigated for their lack of knowledge and understanding of rural Britain. Those pointed attacks have been remembered and they have helped to discredit the "radicals'" proposals . Certainly there are three reasons why Collings' reputation as a "radical" land reformer has been damaged, and to some extent they explain his lack of stature in the history of nineteenth century Britain. Col- lings' proposals for small holdings and his back-to-the-land theories have been described as "confused idealism" and thrown into the rag-bag of radical panaceas along with the Free Land Leaguers, the Georgists, and the bimetallists, without any real understanding of Collings' ideas. holders Collings' proposals to return urban laborers to the land as small the attractiveness have been rejected with the unverified assumption that Collings' of urban life drew the rural laborers to the cities, while men from their evidence of the economic and social conditions which drove paper is to take a rural abodes has been ignored.^ One purpose of this evaluating them searching look at Collings' proposals and his evidence, Victorian society. so as to better understand him and late This dissertation has still another purpose and that is to address the question of the politics of land reform in the 1880's and the 1890's. In recent years there has been a tendency among some notable historians to study the politics of those decades in terms of what was happening at the highest levels, namely, at the Cabinet level or at the Front Op- position bench.

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