On September 28, a great international meeting for the reception of the French delegates took place in St. Martin’s Hall in London. The meeting was attended by a wide array of European radicals, including English Owenites, French followers of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Louis Auguste Blanqui, Irish and Polish nationalists, Italian republicans, and German socialists.[4] Included among the last-mentioned of this eclectic band was a somewhat obscure 46-year-old émigré journalist, Karl Marx, who would soon come to play a decisive role in the organisation.[4]