Edward Welsh

Edward Welsh was a US labour activist.

Welsh was one of two African-Americans chosen by the then head of the US Communist Party, Jay Lovestone as part of a ten-strong delegation summoned to Moscow by Stalin in 1929. Welsh, then an organiser in Harlem, defended Lovestone against the criticisms of the Comintern leadership.

Welsh was among the Lovestoneites who were subsequently expelled from the Communist Party along with their leader.

He then joined Lovestone's Communist Party (Opposition), attending the new group's National Council in February 1930, at which time he was chairman of the Harlem Tenants League. In the same year, he was organizing workers as a volunteer for Local 22 of the ILGWU. He later taught at the Harlem Labor Center, where Maida Springer enrolled in his class.

in 1958, Irving Brown recommended that Welsh, Maida Springer and George McCray spent more time in Africa, particularly Nigeria, where he felt the labour movement was moving in a "dangerous direction".

According to Yevette Richards, some African labour leaders were sensitive about these contacts:

For example,McCray reported that Ed Welsh, assigned to the ICFTU to help with labor organizing in 1961, was advised not to settle in Kenya to avoid embarrassing Mboya," who is trying to prove that he is not overly friendly with America." Instead Welsh settled in Kampala.

Welsh organised workers in a number of industries while in East Africa, where he occasionally met with Maida Springer.

Welsh's wife Miriam Welsh was appointed as Lovestone's secretary in 1973. A cheque from James Angleton for Pagie Morris, which Lovestone believed had been mislaid by Miriam Welsh, subsequently ended up in the hands of the AFL-CIO leadership, sparking Lovestone's downfall in the organisation.