Harry Quelch

[3] His son, Tom, followed in his father's footsteps as a radical political activist, becoming a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In April 1884 Quelch became an international delegate of the British socialist movement for the first time when he and Hyndman were sent to Paris to attend a congress of the French Workers' Party.

When a large section of the party's active membership, led by William Morris, departed the SDF in 1884 to form the Socialist League, Quelch stayed behind, redoubling his efforts on behalf of the organisation.

He also represented the SDF on bodies including various strike committees and the Trades Union Congress, and at socialist conferences across Europe.

A thin partition was installed in a small corner of the printing works and Quelch was forced to "squeeze up" into these cramped quarters as a makeshift editorial office to make room for the Russians.

There in a speech he condemned an international conference of diplomats then sitting at The Hague, attended by Tsar Nicholas II, as a "thieves' supper."

Government authorities were swift in expelling Quelch from the country for his remarks, an action which boosted British esteem in the eyes of their radical peers.

[9] Lenin remembered his friend with a memorial article published in the Bolshevik newspapers Pravda Truda [Labour Truth] and Nash Put' [Our Path]: Harry Quelch was one of the most energetic and devoted workers in the British Social-Democratic movement.

Quelch in the early 1900s.