John Saville

John Saville (born Orestis Stamatopoulos; 2 April 1916 – 13 June 2009) was a Greek-British Marxist historian, long associated with University of Hull.

He was an influential writer on British labour history in the second half of the twentieth century, and also known for his multi-volume work, the Dictionary of Labour Biography, edited in collaboration with others.

Saville was born Orestis Stamatopoulos in 1916, in the village of Morton, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire to an English mother and a Greek father.

Saville's father died while he was an infant.

In 1937 he changed his name by deed poll to John Saville, taking the surname of his mother's second husband.

He was brought up in Romford.

He won a scholarship to Royal Liberty School in London and went on to study at the London School of Economics, where he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

He was an active member of the CPGB until 1956 and also fought in the Second World War on the Liverpool docks and in India.

He was deeply involved in the crisis of the CPGB in 1956, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Saville emerged as one of the supporters of the New Reasoner group of dissident Marxists who condemned the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956.

He was associated with the Socialist Register (editor with Ralph Miliband) and the multi-volume Dictionary of Labour Biography; from 1972 onwards he was one of the editors of the ten-volume Dictionary.

Saville became professor of economic history at the University of Hull in 1973, where he had taught since 1947.

His wife Constance died in 2007.

He was survived by their three sons, a daughter, and two granddaughters.

His acquaintances and co-thinkers included the MI5 agent planted at his home in Hull, John Griffith, Stuart Hall, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing, Ralph Miliband, Sir John Pratt, Raphael Samuel and E.P. Thompson.