John Saville (original) (raw)
John Stamatopoulos, the son of an Greek engineer, was born near Gainsborough on 2nd April 1916. His mother later remarried and after this he was known as John Saville. He won a scholarship to the Royal Liberty School and in 1934 began his studies at the London School of Economics.
Saville was strongly influenced by the teaching of Harold Laski and The Coming Struggle (1932) by John Strachey. He considered joining the Labour Party but disagreed strongly with its policy towards the Spanish Civil War. He wrote in his autobiography, Memoirs from the Left: "The most wicked decision of these years, however, was undoubtedly Labour's support for the infamous Non-Intervention policy... Support by Labour was withdrawn after eighteen months but by this time the scale of fascist intervention was considerable and the Spanish Republic was already on the way to defeat and the terrible decades which followed."
Saville, who had been very impressed with the speeches of Harry Pollitt, joined the Communist Party of Great Britain: "There were about twenty-five to thirty members of the LSE student Communist Party group at the time I joined. Membership figures always appeared some what imprecise, partly because of the uncertain numbers of evening students but more perhaps because people always seemed to be drifting in and out... There was always a very lively core who conducted their affairs in a notably intense manner and in the earlier years of the thirties sometimes in a conspiratorial atmosphere; some parts of which were no more than late adolescent play-acting. There were, however, more serious aspects of party membership. The general view that capitalism was a degenerate and declining system was contrasted with what was believed to be the bright star of Socialism in the Soviet Union."
In the Second World War he refused to accept a commission and served as an anti-aircraft gunner in Liverpool. "My section of guns was first allocated part of the defence system around Speke aerodrome, outside the city.... During daylight hours, below 30,000 feet, firing was often useful in breaking up enemy formations although direct hits were rare. At night the Ack-Ack firing during the year of the Blitz could first be regarded as a reassuring volume of noise for the civilian population." John Saville was sent to India in 1943 and by 1945 had been promoted to the rank of regimental sergeant major.
In 1947 Saville was appointed to teach economic history at the University of Hull and along with E. P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Victor Kiernan, Maurice Dobb, A. L. Morton, Raphael Samuel, George Rudé, Rodney Hilton, Dorothy Thompson and Edmund Dell, he helped establish the Communist Party Historians' Group. Saville later wrote: "The Historian's Group had a considerable long-term influence upon most of its members. It was an interesting moment in time, this coming together of such a lively assembly of young intellectuals, and their influence upon the analysis of certain periods and subjects of British history was to be far-reaching."
During the 20th Party Congress in February, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev launched an attack on the rule of Joseph Stalin. He condemned the Great Purge and accused Joseph Stalin of abusing his power. He announced a change in policy and gave orders for the Soviet Union's political prisoners to be released. Pollitt found it difficult to accept these criticisms of Stalin and said of a portrait of his hero that hung in his living room: "He's staying there as long as I'm alive".
Khrushchev's de-Stalinzation policy encouraged people living in Eastern Europe to believe that he was willing to give them more independence from the Soviet Union. In Hungary the prime minister Imre Nagy removed state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. Nagy also released anti-communists from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4th November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary. During the Hungarian Uprisingan estimated 20,000 people were killed. Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet loyalist, Janos Kadar.
Saville, like most members of the Communist Party Historians' Group, supported Imre Nagy and as a result he was expelled from the Communist Party of Great Britain after the Hungarian Uprising. "I still regard it as wonderfully fortunate that I was of the generation that established the Communist Historians' group. For ten years we exchanged ideas and developed our Marxism into what we hoped were creative channels. It was not chance that when the secret speech of Khrushchev was made known in the West, it was members of the historians' group who were among the most active of the Party intellectuals on demanding a full discussion and uninhibited debate."
He remained a Marxist and joined forces with E. P. Thompson to publish The New Reasoner. In 1958 Saville and other left-wing historians established The Society for the Study of Labour History. This inspired the three volume, Essays in Labour History (1960,1971,1977). He was also the editor of the 10 volume Dictionary of Labour Biography (1972-2000). As Eric Hobsbawn has pointed out this "remarkable work, the best of of its kind anywhere in the world, will almost certainly remain as his most lasting monument."
Most of Saville's work was published in the Socialist Register, an annual volume he co-edited with Ralph Miliband. He was also active in the Oral History Society and the Council for Academic Freedom.
Saville retired from University of Hull in 1982 and published his autobiography, Memoirs from the Left, in 2003.
John Saville died on 13th June 2009.
Primary Sources
(1) John Saville, Memoirs from the Left (2003)
It is not difficult to understand why young people in the mid-thirties chose the Communist Party rather than the Labour Party. The catastrophe of 1931 was still in everyone's mind and from 1933 there was the new and frightening menace of fascism in Germany. The weak experience of the Labour Party and the right-wing trade union leaders in this decade before the war has remained with me throughout my life. The most wicked decision of these years, however, was undoubtedly Labour's support for the infamous Non-Intervention policy of the British and French governments - and especially of the British government. Support by Labour was withdrawn after eighteen months but by that time the scale of fascist intervention was considerable and the Spanish Republic was already on the way to defeat and the terrible decades which followed.
There were about twenty-five to thirty members of the LSE student Communist Party group at the time I joined. Membership figures always appeared some what imprecise, partly because of the uncertain numbers of evening students but more perhaps because people always seemed to be drifting in and out. I suppose at the maximum, which would be around 1937-38, there were between eighty or ninety members but these totals would include quite a number who were not very active, and whose membership might often be somewhat short-lived. There was always a very lively core who conducted their affairs in a notably intense manner and in the earlier years of the thirties sometimes in a conspiratorial atmosphere; some parts of which were no more than late adolescent play-acting. There were, however, more serious aspects of party membership. The general view that capitalism was a degenerate and declining system was contrasted with what was believed to be the bright star of Socialism in the Soviet Union. These beliefs were pervasive and powerful influences and they were greatly strengthened by the personalities of the Communist leadership of whom Harry Pollitt was outstanding.
(2) John Saville, Memoirs from the Left (2003)
We left Bude towards the end of August and travelled to Liverpool, and life immediately became different. My section of guns was first allocated part of the defence system around Speke aerodrome, outside the city. Daylight raids from German bombers had already begun from about 25,000 to 30,000 feet. The 3.7 heavy anti-aircraft gun was an excellent weapon but the directional equipment we used, predictors and height finders, were still at a primitive stage, and were quite inadequate for the purposes for which they were intended. These were the days before we had radar on gun sites, and for the coming year or so we were dependent upon manual operation of the command post equipment. The guns' elevation and traverse were transmitted electrically from the command post, the command post then calculated a fuse number, and this was shouted to the guns. The number was set manually on the fuse in the nose of the shell which was then loaded into the breech. The breech block was closed and the order to fire was shouted from the command post when the appropriate calculations had been made. During daylight hours, below 30,000 feet, firing was often useful in breaking up enemy formations although direct hits were rare. At night the Ack-Ack firing during the year of the Blitz could first be regarded as a reassuring volume of noise for the civilian population.
(3) John Saville, Memoirs from the Left (2003)
The Soviet attack on Budapest advanced these concerns to a critical point, and there is no doubt that for many members of the Communist Party it was the Hungarian events which brought about their resignation. The numbers were never exact but about seven thousand had resigned by the end of the year, and in social background they were representative of all groups within the Party. These included some important trade union leaders, including John Horner of the Fire Brigades Union, Bert Wynn of the Derbyshire Miners, Bill Jones of the Transport Workers, Dick Seabrook of USDAW and a considerable number of other working-class militants. My pre-war friend Don Renton was among them.
There was a mix of reasons why I did not find it easy to leave the Communist Party. There were some members, of course, whom I positively disliked, and mistrusted; others whom I tolerated; but most, whatever their social background, were comrades in the full meaning of the term: friendly, dedicated and self-sacrificing. Not all by any means were wholly committed, and that must be expected; but the British Communist Party, small though it was by comparison with the movements in France or Italy, had a solid base in the working class and quite a large group of intellectuals who were not dilettante but serious in their political and intellectual work. I still regard it as wonderfully fortunate that I was of the generation that established the Communist Historians' group. For ten years we exchanged ideas and developed our Marxism into what we hoped were creative channels. It was not chance that when the secret speech of Khrushchev was made known in the West, it was members of the historians' group who were among the most active of the Party intellectuals on demanding a full discussion and uninhibited debate. It must be emphasised again that when we began The Reasoner the idea of resigning from the Party was not in our minds and it was only in the months that followed that we recognised, with both reluctance and dismay, the basic conservatism not only of the leadership but of many of the rank and file. The central political problem, certainly for me and I have no doubt also for Edward, was the recognition that the achievement of socialism was never going to come about without a seriously organised opposition, the members of which must accept a tighter discipline than that of the Labour Party. It was the degree of acceptance that has always proved very difficult to determine, hence the constant flow of expulsions and resignations from the various groups on the Left in the past half century.
(4) Eric Hobsbawn, The Guardian (16th June, 2009)
John Saville, the socialist economic and social historian who has died aged 93, was an academic at Hull University for nearly 40 years, but will be remembered above all for the great, open-ended Dictionary of Labour Biography (partly co-edited with Joyce Bellamy), of which he was able to complete the first 10 volumes (1972-2000), and the three volumes of Essays in Labour History (1960, 1971, 1977) co-edited with Asa Briggs (Lord Briggs).
He was born John Stamatopoulos, in a Lincolnshire village near Gainsborough, to Edith Vessey, from a local working-class family, and Orestes Stamatopoulos, a Greek engineer who disappeared from the lives of both soon after. His mother's remarriage in London some years after the first world war to a widowed tailor, freemason and reader of the Daily Mail, to whom she had acted as housekeeper, gave her son a comfortable lower-middle-class childhood and the name he later adopted.
He won a scholarship to Royal Liberty school in east London, but in the conventional and, until the sixth form, not particularly intellectual, schoolboy sportsman there was little to suggest a future in political radicalism. But something must have been germinating for, "almost the day I arrived" at the London School of Economics in 1934, once again on a scholarship, he began to go to leftwing meetings and within two months had joined the Communist party, in which he was to remain for the next 22 years.
Saville left the LSE, then (with Oxford and Cambridge) the major centre of student communism, with a first, with the confident and incisive manner that became his trademark, in lifelong partnership with Constance (Saunders), whom he married in 1943, and with his passion for research postponed. He did not return to academic life until 1947, when he began to teach economic history at the (then) University College of Hull, where he was to remain until retirement from the chair of economic and social history in 1982. He continued to live in Hull until a month before his death.