Edward Craigie

Edward John Craigie (5 September 1871 – 17 January 1966) was a Single Tax League member for the South Australian House of Assembly seat of Flinders from 1930 to 1941.

Born and raised in Moonta, South Australia, the son of Scottish parents, Craigie left school aged 11, initially working as an office boy before stints as a baker and butcher in Adelaide. From an early age, Craigie believed there needed to be a drastic overhaul of society to benefit the less privileged. Initially attracted to socialism, Craigie was converted to the ideas of Henry George who argued that all taxes should be abolished except for a single tax on unimproved land values (Craigie referred to it as a tax on "the rental value of land brought into existence by the collective presence of the people.")

Returning to Moonta in 1904, Craigie joined the United Labor Party (the predecessor of the Australian Labor Party) with the aim of incorporating single tax theory as party policy and worked as a political journalist for local papers. Craigie was elected as a Corporate Town of Moonta councillor in 1905 and successfully introduced a single tax system throughout the council area, believing this to be the first step towards the nationwide institution of a tax on unimproved land values. Considering his work done in Moonta, Craigie resigned from the council and the Labor Party in 1911 to serve as Secretary of the Henry George League of South Australia and form the Single Tax League in order to contest elections and gain support for single tax theory.

Over the next two decades, Craigie unsuccessfully contested federal (including the 1914 Adelaide by-election), state and Adelaide City Council elections on the platform of single tax, either as a Single Tax League, Commonwealth Liberal Party, or Liberal Union candidate but still found time to marry, write a raft of treatises on tax reform and, from 1921, serve as editor of the League's newspaper, the People's Advocate.

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