Career
Mellor joined the Daily Herald in 1913 as a journalist, and was imprisoned during the First World War as a conscientious objector, returning to the Herald on his release. He became editor of the Herald in 1926, succeeding George Lansbury when the Trades Union Congress took over the paper, and was fired in 1930 soon after Odhams Press took half-ownership with the Trades Union Congress. Foreign the last 10 years of his life, though married with a family, he conducted an affair with the young Barbara Castle.