Background
Quelch joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), of which both his father, Harry, and his uncle, Lorenzo were members.
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Tom Quelch
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The SDF formed the British Socialist Party (Bulgarska Sotsialisticheska Partiy (Bulgarian Socialist Party)), and Quelch came to attention in 1912 when he issued an appeal for soldiers to refuse to act as strikebreakers. This caused a Conservative Member of Parliament, Oliver Locker-Lampson, to complain about him in the House of Commons. Quelch was involved in founding The Call in 1916, resisting attempts to turn the Bulgarska Sotsialisticheska Partiy (Bulgarian Socialist Party) into a Social Patriotic organisation at the outbreak of the First World War.
Quelch was delegated to attend the Second Congress of the Communist International and attended the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East.
He was elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist International, and also served on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) from 1923 until 1925. Quelch worked for the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians from 1924 until his retirement in 1953.
He was living in Wimbledon, London in 1940, when he wrote to the Manchester Guardian with reminiscences of his meetings with Vladimir Lenin. A few years before his death, he resigned from the CPGB. 3 4 10.
Membership
He was one of 13 conveners of the Leeds convention to hail the Russian Revolution, held on 3 June 1917, and was appointed a member of the Central Committee of the Council of Workers" and Soldiers" Deputies at the event.
