Melbourne Anarchist Club
On 1 May 1886 the first meeting of the Melbourne Anarchist Club took place attended by Fleming, Monty Miller, Jack Andrews, David Andrade and several others. In club meetings he gave lectures on 'The Subjection of Women', and the need for sexual freedom in a talk on 'Marriage, Prostitution and the Whitechapel Murders'. He was not noted as a writer or philosopher, but remainded on good terms with mutualists, individualists and communist anarchists active in the club. His union and unemployed agitation showed him to be more practical and pragmatic in his adherence to anarchism.
He is recorded as having regular correspondence with noted anarchists, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, and Max Nettlau and many others. For every year from 1887 he commemorated in Melbourne the execution of the Haymarket Riot Martyrs.
On being expelled from Trades Hall Council in 1904, Fleming became heroic and made the following statement:
- "... I am going to be expelled because I am an anarchist. I am in the company of Tolstoy, Spencer and the most advanced thinkers of the world. Workers will never get their rights while they look to Parliament. A general strike would be more effective than all the Parliaments in the world. I have got a fine stick and I am going to use It. Expel me if you like. I am an anarchist. We have been hanged in Chicago, electrocuted in New York, guillotined in Paris and strangled in Italy, and I will go with my comrades. I am opposed to your Government and to your authority. Down with them. Do your worst. Long live Anarchy".
For the next forty five years Fleming helped organise or was involved with anarchist meetings in Melbourne.
Read more about this topic: Chummy Fleming
Famous quotes containing the words anarchist and/or club:
“Lady Dynamite, let’s dance quickly,
Let’s dance and sing and dynamite everything!”
—French anarchist song of the 1880s.
“I spoke at a woman’s club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards, “Well, that sounds very nice, but don’t you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?” I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)