Unemployed Agitation
Fleming spent many periods unemployed and was active in unemployed agitation. Many Trade Unions and Trades Hall officials were not sympathetic to unemployed agitation at this time. Fleming described one occasion:
- "...The unemployed meeting was held on a piece of land near the Workingmen's College. At the conclusion of the meeting, old John White and I carried the calico banner which had written on it: Feed on our flesh and blood, Capitalist hyena; it is your funeral feast. When the unemployed arrived at the Trades Hall they were attacked by unionists. During the fight the banner was destroyed. The police came and ended the fight ..."
In 1908, as part of an unemployed agitation, Fleming and Percy Laidler, a Marxist, led the unemployed into Federal Parliament in Melbourne, stopping it for one and a half hours.
Read more about this topic: Chummy Fleming
Famous quotes containing the words unemployed and/or agitation:
“I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)