deputation left, the crowd followed. The police failed to stop the estimated 6,000 people surging along the street, then up the steps of Parliament, where they finally stopped at the closed doors of Parliament. Several of the organisers received summonses for 'taking part in an unlawful procession' and were imprisoned for a month. The campaign was successful, but numbers attending the Library on Sunday were insufficient, and the Library soon closed its doors on Sunday. Fleming's time in prison was not unproductive. While detained he studied the prison regulations and found that the sanitary arrangements were less than required. So, he stopped the Governor on his weekly rounds, 'lectured him for an hour' whereupon the Governor ordered immediate improvements. Union agitation In 1889, Fleming helped form a Melbourne lodge of the Knights of Labor in Melbourne, as well as being elected to the Eight Hours Committee. 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. Due to declining union membership, Fleming was instrumental in the Trades Hall Council devising union re-organisation, which resulted in a number of unions being brought into existence and many old ones strengthened. 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.' Twelve months later he was elected, unopposed, President of his union for a 6-month term, and for a similar period as President of the Fitzroy branch of the Progressive Political League, the fore-runner of the ALP. Fleming was a supporter of Max Hirsch, author of Democracy versus Socialism. At a Knights of Labor meeting in 1893, Fleming moved the motion for what was subsequently the first May Day procession in Melbourne. This was the start of a long association between Chummy Fleming and May Day in Melbourne. 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