ABSTRACT
The Gaitskellite victory in 1961 that Melvin Lasky reported to Michael Josselson was in large part the work of the Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS), a pressure group organised by young revisionist activists the previous year to mobilise support for the Labour Party leadership’s multilateralist position on nuclear disarmament. The considerable financial reserves at the disposal of the CDS, which enabled it to maintain offices with a full-time staff, publish a regular newsletter and pay the expenses of local campaigners, gave rise to speculation on the Labour left about the source of its funding. 1 Suspicions that the CIA was in the background were stimulated by the fact that William Rodgers, Chairman of its six-person Executive Committee, once reported that the organisation had received ‘a large sum from a source who wished to remain anonymous’. 2
