U DJS Papers of Professor John Saville (1916-2009) 1850S-2000S
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Hull History Centre: Papers of Professor John Saville U DJS Papers of Professor John Saville (1916-2009) 1850s-2000s Accession number: 1 970/11; 1980/01; 1981/14; 1988/11; 1995/01; 1997/24; 2009/07; 2010/21; 2011/25; 2012/16; 2013/12; 2014/19; 2015/21 Biographical Background: John Saville (christened Orestes Stamatopoulos), was born near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on 2 April 1916. His parents were Orestes Stamatopoulos, a well- born Greek Engineer who had been attached to a Lincolnshire engineering firm, and Edith Vessey, a working class Lincolnshire girl. Shortly after Saville's birth, his father was called back to Greece for military service and was subsequently killed during the war. Edith went to London to find work and Saville was placed with a Mrs Allison in Gainsborough until he was four. He was then sent to live for a year with his mother's unmarried sister, Lily Vessey, in Ayot St Lawrence [U DJS/2/1/29]. At the end of this year Edith gained a housekeeping position in Romford, Essex, with a widowed tailor by the name of Alfred Saville, and his daughter Eileen [U DJS/1/29]. Saville came to live in with Edith, who would later marry Alfred. Eileen, who was 15 months older than Saville, would later marry Francois Lafitte and the step-siblings would stay in touch throughout their lives. Saville attended Romford Grammar School and won a scholarship to study at Royal Liberty School, London. He then won another scholarship to study at London School of Economics in 1934, and graduated in summer 1937 with a First in Economics, with a specialism in economic geography. At school Saville was known as 'Stama', then 'Comrade Stam' during his time at LSE. Although he legally changed his name to John Saville towards the end of his LSE days, friends and acquaintances from school and university continued to refer to him in this way throughout his life [U DJS/1/84]. It was during his time at LSE that Saville first became officially involved in politics. He was taught by left-wing academic Harold Laski at a time when LSE was a major centre for student Communism [U DJS/1/30, U DJS/1/54, U DJS/3/26]. Saville joined the university's Socialist Society in his first weeks, and two months later he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain [U DJS/1/84]. His first political demonstration was a march against Mosley in the East End of London. By his second year, he was student Communist organiser and it was through his student activism that he met Constance Saunders in October 1937, a fellow member of the CPGB, whom he would go on to marry in 1943 [U DJS/1/14, U DJS/2/1/15-16]. Whilst Saville remained a member of the party until the Hungarian incident of 1956, Constance resigned her membership earlier over the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. During his time at LSE he became friends with various people, including Jean Floud (nee Macdonald), James Jefferys, Teddy Praeger and Manuel Azcarate. He was also introduced to Mohan Kumaramangalam who was then at Cambridge University [U DJS/1/44]. After graduating, he worked briefly as a supply teacher and undertook voluntary work with the Union of Democratic Control on their China Solidarity Campaign. His work for the UDC came at the request of the organisation's then secretary Dorothy Woodman, and as part of this work he gave lectures on China and Japanese aggression to Left Book Club audiences. Not suited to supply teaching, Saville found alternative employment with the Dictaphone Company where he worked for most of 1938. This allowed him and Constance to move into a shared flat in Lambs Conduit Street, London. During this time he made contacts within the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM), including the London Secretary Don Renton [U DJS/1/59a]. He took part in the Hyde Park demonstration and the December 1938 Oxford Circus lie-down, during which he provided false information of 'communist disturbances' to keep police away from the area of the lie-down. Page 1 of 140 Hull History Centre: Papers of Professor John Saville Saville left the Dictaphone Company in January 1939 and was appointed as a research economist by British Home Stores. During his time at BHS he travelled around stores undertaking various roles so that he had a full understanding of the business, before going back to headquarters in January 1940. He was called up in April 1940 and spent the war as an anti-aircraft gunner, gunnery sergeant major instructor and regimental sergeant major. He began his service at Arborfield in Berkshire where he received training until the end of July 1940. He was then sent to a firing camp at Bude in North Cornwall until end August 1940. From there he was sent then to Liverpool where he remained until May 1941 when he was posted to various places in the Midlands. In the middle of 1942 he was assigned a new unit and was posted successively to Blandford in Dorset, Borstall and then the Shetlands in July 1942 for a year. On leaving the Shetlands, he was sent to Manorbier in South Wales where he stayed for c.3 months training as a gunnery instructor before being sent to Woolwich to await posting. For the rest of the war he was posted to various places in Britain as an instructor. Six weeks after D-Day, he was posted to India, setting out from Liverpool to Bombay, and served the rest of his time in Karachi. He was eventually demobilised in 1946. It is worth noting that, against the policy of the Communist Party, he refused commission as an officer on a number of occasions, believing his place to be amongst the ordinary soldiery. It was during these experiences that he became more sharply aware of the extreme class and racial divisions extant in British society [J. Saville, Autobiography]. Whilst in Bombay he sought out Mohan Kumaramangalam, and through him was introduced to P.C. Joshi and Nehru at the headquarters of the Indian Communist Party in Bombay. Kumaramangalam and Saville became very close whilst in India and corresponded regularly. He also met John Maclean who passed him onto J.J. Anjaria (who Saville had known vaguely in the LSE days), who then passed him on to C.N. Vakil. In Karachi met various Muslim Leaguers, including Hatim Alavi and his nephew Hamza Alavi, the Mallik family, and the Karachi Communist Party Secretary Bukhari. Bukhari put him in touch with British Communists in the RAF's Drigh Road camp, and Saville regularly attended their discussion meetings, even speaking for them on British intervention in Greece in March 1945. During a period of leave he met Anant and Kamala Kamat in Poona at the Communist Party Commune, and was invited to spend time in Bombay at the Mission with John and Agnes Maclean. Whilst on leave he accompanied Agnes on her various visits, worked for at the Party Commune, and wrote at least two pamphlets under the name J. Stammers. He also undertook editorial work for People's War, gave lectures at the Party Commune, organised schools, spoke with Communist Party Congress people, and attended seminars at Bombay School of Economics. His final days in India saw the beginnings of what would become known as the Drigh Road RAF Mutiny, led by Arthur Attwood, and involving David Duncan and Ernie Margetts. Saville, whilst not directly involved at Drigh Road, was involved with the Forces Parliament at Deolali along the Mervyn Jones and Bert Ramelson. Attwood's arrest did not take place until after Saville arrived back in Britain, and so from there he and Michael Carritt helped to initiate a successful Attwood Defence Campaign with D.N. Pritt acting as a civil liberties lawyer [U DJS/1/58]. Incidentally, Saville kept up a regular correspondence with Constance and others whilst stationed in India in which he discusses much of his political activity [U DJS/1/44, U DJS/2/1/16, U DJS/5/14-15]. Also, it was during the voyage home on-board a demobilization troopship in 1946 that Saville began writing notes of his time in the army which would help inform his memoirs. Page 2 of 140 Hull History Centre: Papers of Professor John Saville Once demobilized, Saville worked in the Chief Scientific Division (Economics Section) of the Ministry of Works, where Jacob Bronowski was then head of the Statistical Section. Looking for other work, Saville heard that Ian Bowen (a colleague of James Jefferys at National Institute) had just been appointed Chair of Economics at Hull and required an economic historian. He was invited to interview on a Friday in May 1947 and was offered a job on the following Tuesday. A few months later he moved to Hull, initially without Constance and their child who would join him a year later, and found himself working in one of the temporary Nissan huts then in use at the university [U DJS/1/38]. This first year was spent getting to grips with his new teaching responsibilities, and it wasn't until his second year that he again became politically active. Within the university he undertook a campaign in 1948 to improve library provisions by circulating a memorandum signed by himself, a lawyer, and a physicist. The result of this campaign was the formation of the Lecturing and Administrative Staff Association, or LASA (initially referred to as the Lecturing Staff Association), and Saville would go on to chair the group in 1960 [U DJS/1/39-40].