=Source.=--_The Times_, February 17.
Yesterday afternoon three or four thousand of the unemployed of
London held a demonstration on the Embankment near Cleopatra's
Needle, and afterwards marched to Westminster, carrying banners.
From Whitehall a large number of the crowd passed into Downing
Street near the Premier's residence, where a Cabinet meeting was
being held at the time, but at the request of the police, of whom
an extra force were in attendance, the crowd moved round to King
Street, where they were addressed in somewhat inflammatory terms
by some of their speakers, who wore red badges. One speaker clung
to the top of a lamp-post, and thence harangued the crowd; another
spoke from a window-sill. Meantime, in the absence of Sir Charles
Dilke, who was at the Cabinet Meeting, Mr. G. W. E. Russell,
Parliamentary Secretary of the Local Government Board, received a
small deputation of the leaders.... At the close of the interview
the crowd marched back to the Embankment, where the following
resolution was passed unanimously: "That this meeting of the
Unemployed, having heard the answer given by the Local Government
Board to their deputation, considers the refusal to start public
works to be a sentence of death on thousands of those out of
work, and the recommendation to bring pressure to bear on the
local bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; further, it
will hold Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the members of the Government,
individually and collectively, guilty of the murder of those who
may die in the next few weeks, and whose lives would have been
saved had the suggestions of the deputation been acted on."
(Signed) JOHN BURNS, ENGINEER.
JOHN E. WILLIAMS, LABOURER.
WILLIAM HENRY, FOREMAN.
JAMES MACDONALD, TAILOR.