John Saville

John Saville

John Saville , b. Orestes Stamatopoulos, (born April 2, 1916 in Gainsborough ; † June 13, 2009 ) was a British historian who was part of the political left, initially the Marxist and later the New Left .

Life

Saville was the son of Edith Vessey and Orestes Stamatopoulos. His father left the family early and his mother married a second time soon after the First World War. From his stepfather, Saville took his later surname. In 1934 John Saville began studying at the renowned London School of Economics (LSE) .

For a long time he was employed at Hull University, in 1947 he took up teaching there and in 1973 became professor of economic and social history. He held this position until 1982. He was also a longstanding member of the British Communist Party (CPGB) .

Political career

Looking back on his political socialization at the LSE, he wrote: “I joined the student communist party towards the end of my first term.” Before that, he had already belonged to various left-wing student groups. While at the LSE, Saville also participated in the famous Cable Street Riots. During these unrest, a march of British fascists led by Mosley (the so-called "black shirts") triggered violent riots in London's East End. The march was stopped by militant barricades on Cable Street. In this context, Saville expressed the accusation that the British police were mainly defending fascists against their counter-demonstrators: “I do not remember an anti-fascist meeting where the police did not think it their duty to defend the fascists against their protestors . "

During World War II, Saville was used as a soldier in Liverpool and India. According to his later colleague Eric Hobsbawm , this war effort was important in broadening Saville's scientific and political horizons. Hobsbawm saw this as the reason that some members of the British Communist Party Historians Group broadened their horizons beyond the usual mainstream interests. Saville belonged to this group of historians within the CP of Great Britain from 1946 to 1956.

In 1956 he broke with the party as a result of the Soviet intervention in Hungary. His disappointment with the Communist Party resulted in his involvement in the New Left. When he left the CPGB, John Saville was already 40 years old. He had spent his time as a student within the Communist Party. So he was not a student part of the New Left, but more a writer of the New Left, as he worked with EP Thompson on the publication of the New Reasoner. He has thus positioned himself as a British communist dissident in a course against the CPGB. With the Reasoner, Saville and Thompson already criticized the party from within the party, with the New Reasoner then finally against the party from outside the party.

From 1964 to 1990 he was among the editors of the journal Socialist Register .

Historical work

Saville's political and thus his academic line as a Marxist historian emerges from this Communist Party socialization: He wanted to write a history of the tradition of the workers' movement, focus more on the marginalized and their social groups, and deal with the genesis of capitalism.

The publication of the “Dictionary of Labor Biography” also fits in here, which achieved an outstanding status in his work. As the title of this multi-volume work suggests, it is a biographical encyclopedia that lists important figures in the British labor movement, at both national, regional and local levels. The first volume appeared in 1972, after around ten years of preparatory work and already with the announcement of further volumes. Saville's aim was to list in this work all those who had been of importance to the modern British labor movement (since 1790, to the exclusion of the living).

With this Saville tries to create a memory of the previous generations of the workers' movement and to portray the traditions of this movement. The lexicon was primarily intended to serve scholars who dealt with the British labor movement.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Eric Hobsbawm: Obituary. John Saville , The Guardian, June 16, 2009, accessed November 29, 2013
2. ↑ John Saville: Memoirs from the Left. London (Merlin Press) 2003, page 8.
3. ↑ John Saville: Memoirs from the Left. London (Merlin Press) 2003, p. 16.
4. ^ Eric Hobsbawm: The Historians' Group of the Communist Party. In: Maurice Cornforth (ed.): Rebels and Their Causes. Essays in honor of AL Morton. London (Lawrence and Wishart) 1978, pp. 21-47, here: 24.
5. ↑ David Martin: John Saville (1916-2009). Appreciations and Memories. In: Labor History Review, Vol. 75, No. 1, April 2010, pp. 114–127, here: 114.