John William 'Chummy' Fleming (1863 – 25 January 1950) was a pioneer unionist, agitator for the unemployed, and anarchist in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
[1] At the age of 10 he was sent to work in a Leicester boot factory,[1] which took its toll on the boy's health, and gave him a personal understanding of social injustice.
In Melbourne he started attending Queens Wharf and North Wharf Sunday afternoon meetings at the Yarra River where popular speakers included Joseph Symes, President of the Australasian Secular Association, Monty Miller, a veteran radical from the Eureka Stockade, and William Trenwith, an aspirant labour politician.
In September, 1890 Fleming was first elected as a delegate of the Victorian Operative Bootmakers Union to the Trades Hall Council, and later served on the Executive.
He supported inter-colonial strikers, female organisation, and agitation for piece work rates as opposed to a minimum wage which the employers were after.
Often his support of grass roots initiatives, self-help and the unemployed put him at odds with trade union bureaucrats and Labor politicians such as William Trenwith, who he accused of 'working with blood-sucking capitalists.'
During the 1930s, when Fleming's anarchist politics was out of favour with the May Day Committee, then controlled by the Communist Party of Australia, Fleming started marching a block ahead with his red flag with Anarchy emblazoned in white, going so slowly the march caught up with him; or sometimes he started back In the ranks and gradually edged to the front.
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 remained on good terms with mutualists, individualists and communist anarchists active in the club.
Upon Hopetoun's impending departure, he donated money and 25 dozen bottles of champagne, entrusted to Fleming, for distribution to the unemployed.
[3] The following day the bottles of Champagne, along with beer from 6 hogsheads donated by Shamrock Brewery, were distributed by Fleming, (who neither smoked or drank).
In 1933, he was invited to make a speech at the Congress Against War and Fascism, organised largely by the Communist Party of Australia.
From 1901 until he died in 1950, each Sunday he would set up his Freedom stand, conducting meetings and lecturing on social questions, working conditions and other issues.