 Breaking his affiliation with the cluster of British Marxist historians known as the Communist Party Historians Group, Saville emerged as one of the founders of the "New Reasoner", in partnership with another Yorkshire Communist historian, E.P.Thompson, part of a group of dissident Marxists who condemned the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956.Saville became Professor of Economic History at Hull University in 1973, where he had taught since 1947.