Peter Sedgwick (1934-1983) was a translator of Victor Serge, author of a number of books including PsychoPolitics and a revolutionary socialist activist.
Life
Peter Sedgwick grew up in Liverpool, and won a scholarship to Balliol College Oxford where he became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1956, after the Hungarian Revolution he left and joined the Socialist Review Group, later the International Socialists (forerunner to the Socialist Workers Party) He wrote for the group’s press whilst also involved himself in the activities of rank-and-file members. He was opposed to the International Socialism group renaming itself as the Socialist Workers Party in 1976, refusing to join the new organisation while always remaining a man dedicated to the far left. Peter Sedgwick wrote a book on psychiatry called Psychopolitics. In many respects this book predicted and explained the severe Thatcher/Reagan era reductions in USA and UK NHS psychiatric services especially in the number of NHS beds for the mentally ill which were reduced by 80,000 in the UK during the nineteen eighties. Peter Sedgwick identified that "politically correct" "liberal" interpretations about mental illness could be exploited by the right wing to reduce services. He argued that the Marxist left should argue for more and better psychiatry, not less. Sedgwick did not view mental illness being primarily as a product of social stress, although he was only too aware of concepts of alienation and existential explanations as the cause of schizophrenia and other conditions. He just dismissed these on the grounds that they did not fit his experience. He also wrote brilliantly on Chinese politics and was generally a polymath. Peter Sedgwick was found dead in a canal in Northern England. Suicide was suspected. He was editing the works of Victor Serge at the time of his death.
Selected articles/works
- Introduction to Victor Serge Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1963)
- George Orwell: International Socialist? (1969)
- PsychoPolitics (1982)
- "The Unhappy Elitist: Victor Serge’s Early Bolshevism" (1984)
