Campaign for Democratic Socialism

"Campaign for Labour Victory" redirects here. For the organisation associated with the left wing of the Labour Party, see Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory.

Not to be confused with Campaign for Social Democracy.

The Campaign for Democratic Socialism or CDS was a social democratic and democratic socialist organisation in the British Labour Party, serving as a pressure group representing the right wing of the party. Established in 1960, the CDS was composed of Gaitskellites, Labour members who supported the then-party leader, Hugh Gaitskell.

The origins of the CDS can be traced to the 1959 general election, which Labour was largely expected to win, but lost due to the Conservatives exploiting public uncertainty over the Labour economic programme. Gaitskell had promised that there would be no new taxes under his administration should he become Prime Minister, not wanting to tamper with the prosperity that had emerged in Britain under the Conservative governments of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Macmillan. However, the Bevanites – the left wing faction of the Labour Party – had pushed through an electoral manifesto stating it would raise taxes to support increased government expenditures, undercutting Gaitskell's public image. In the aftermath of the electoral failure, which Gaitskell blamed on the Bevanites and their economic views, Gaitskell attempted (and failed) to "modernize" the Labour charter's Clause IV, which called for nationalisation.

As a result of the massive Bevanite grassroots mobilisation against Gaitskell, the CDS was established in October 1960 by a group of Labour politicians and supporters, among the most prominent of which were Bill Rodgers, Dick Taverne, Anthony Crosland, Douglas Jay, Roy Jenkins. They established as their goals the promotion of economic modernisation and reformism as official policies of the party.

Shortly after the CDS was formed, the Labour Party held its 1960 party conference, at which the Bevanites secured the commitment of the party to backing unilateral nuclear disarmament. The CDS declared the need to create a grassroots organisation for the Labour right that could compete with the organisations allied to the Bevanites, specifically Tribune and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and positioned itself as that organisation. It was extremely successful; at the 1961 party conference the Gaitskellites managed to overturn the previous year's commitment to disarmament largely due to the CDS efforts. In between the 1959 and 1964 elections, 23 of the 29 Labour MPs elected in by-elections were allied to the CDS, as were 7 of the 12 Labour regional election organisers.

After the reversal of the disarmament issue, the CDS returned to its efforts to oppose Clause IV. The CDS also supported British entry into the European Economic Community, which most Gaitskellites supported. CDS influence began to wane, first with the splitting of Gaitskell over the EEC issue in 1962, then with his death and replacement as party leader by the Bevanite Harold Wilson in 1963, a position he retained until 1976. After Wilson became Prime Minister in the 1964 general elections the CDS shut down.

However, despite Wilson's vows to "smash" the CDS before he would resign as Party Leader, former CDS members managed to elect Roy Jenkins to the position of Deputy Party Leader shortly after the 1970 Labour electoral defeat. However, the Labour left managed to remove him in 1972. In 1977, Bill Rodgers established the Campaign for Labour Victory (CLV), an organization that was somewhat a successor to the CDS. By 1981, the former CDS members had felt that the Labour party had gone too far to the left and claimed that Trotskyists had taken over the party, removing its responsibility to the party membership. As a result, the "Gang of Four" of Labour moderates issued the Limehouse Declaration, stating that they were leaving the Labour Party to establish the Social Democratic Party. Two of the Gang of Four (Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers) were former CDS founders, and a number of the younger CDS members joined in leaving Labour for the SDP.

## Bibliography

[edit]

* Bell, Patrick. The Labour Party in Opposition, 1970-1974. London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 3, 190-216.
* Brivati, Brian. "Campaign for Democratic Socialism." In Contemporary British History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (September 1990), pp. 11–12.
* McKenzie, Robert Trelford. British Political Parties: The Distribution of Power within the Conservative and Labour Parties. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1963, pg. 622.

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Labour Party

History

| Main|

* History of the Labour Party

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Topics|

* Electoral history
* General election manifestos
* History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom
* European Parliamentary Labour Party
* Scottish Labour Party (1888)
* Independent Labour Party
* Labour Representation Committee
* Gladstone–MacDonald pact
* National Labour Organisation
* Labour Independent Group
* Campaign for Democratic Socialism
* Lib–Lab pact
* Formation of SDP
* Gang of Four
* Limehouse Declaration
* Militant tendency
* The longest suicide note in history
* Labour Listens
* One more heave
* New Labour
* Tony's Cronies
* Blue Labour
* One Nation Labour
* Chakrabarti Inquiry

Leadership

| Leaders|

* Hardie
* Henderson
* Barnes
* MacDonald
* Henderson
* Adamson
* Clynes
* MacDonald
* Henderson
* Lansbury
* Attlee
* Morrison^
* Gaitskell
* Brown^
* Wilson
* Callaghan
* Foot
* Kinnock
* Smith
* Beckett^
* Blair
* Brown
* Harman^
* Miliband
* Harman^
* Corbyn
* Starmer

|

Deputy Leaders|

* Clynes
* Graham
* Attlee
* Greenwood
* Morrison
* Griffiths
* Bevan
* Brown
* Jenkins
* Short
* Foot
* Healey
* Hattersley
* Beckett
* Prescott
* Harman
* Watson
* Rayner

General Secretaries|

* MacDonald
* Henderson
* Middleton
* Phillips
* Williams
* Barker^
* Nicholas
* Hayward
* Mortimer
* Whitty
* Sawyer
* McDonagh
* Triesman
* Carter
* Watt
* Collins
* McNicol
* Formby
* Evans

Treasurers|

* Henderson
* MacDonald
* Henderson
* Lathan
* Greenwood
* Gaitskell
* Bevan
* Nicholas
* Davies
* Callaghan
* Atkinson
* Varley
* Booth
* McCluskie
* Burlison
* Prosser
* Elsby
* Dromey
* Holland

Leaders in the Lords|

* Haldane
* Cripps
* Ponsonby
* Snell
* Addison
* Jowitt
* Alexander
* Pakenham
* Shackleton
* Shepherd
* Peart
* Hughes
* Richard
* Jay
* Williams
* Amos
* Ashton
* Royall
* Smith of Basildon

Scottish Labour Leaders|

* Dewar
* McLeish
* Jamieson^
* McConnell
* Jamieson^
* Alexander
* Jamieson^
* Gray
* Lamont
* Sarwar^
* Murphy
* Gray^
* Dugdale
* Rowley^
* Baillie^
* Leonard
* Baillie^
* Sarwar

PLP Chairs|

* Hardie
* Henderson
* Barnes
* MacDonald
* Henderson
* Hodge*
* Wardle*
* Adamson
* Clynes
* MacDonald
* Henderson
* Lansbury
* Attlee
* Lees-Smith*
* Pethick-Lawrence*
* Greenwood*
* Gaitskell
* Wilson
* Houghton
* Mikardo
* Hughes
* Willey
* Dormand
* Orme
* Hoyle
* Soley
* Corston
* Clwyd
* Lloyd
* Watts
* Cryer
* Morden

EPLP Leaders|

* Stewart
* Prescott
* Castle
* Lomas
* Martin
* Seal
* Ford
* Green
* David
* Donnelly
* Murphy
* Titley
* Willmott
* Corbett

* = wartime, in opposition
^ Interim/Acting

Internal elections and selections

| Leadership elections|

* 1922 Ramsay MacDonald
* 1931 Arthur Henderson
* 1932 George Lansbury
* 1935 Clement Attlee
* 1955 Hugh Gaitskell
* 1960
* 1961
* 1963 Harold Wilson
* 1976 James Callaghan
* 1980 Michael Foot
* 1983 Neil Kinnock
* 1988
* 1992 John Smith
* 1994 Tony Blair
* 2007 Gordon Brown
* 2010 Ed Miliband
* 2015 Jeremy Corbyn
* 2016
* 2020 Keir Starmer

* * *

|

Deputy Leadership elections|

* 1952 Herbert Morrison
* 1953
* 1956 Jim Griffiths
* 1959 Aneurin Bevan
* 1960 George Brown
* 1961
* 1962
* 1970 Roy Jenkins
* 1971
* 1972 Edward Short
* 1976 Michael Foot
* 1980 Denis Healey
* 1981
* 1983 Roy Hattersley
* 1988
* 1992 Margaret Beckett
* 1994 John Prescott
* 2007 Harriet Harman
* 2015 Tom Watson
* 2020 Angela Rayner

Shadow Cabinet elections and reshuffles|

* Sep 1931 (Henderson)
* Nov 1931
* 1932 (Lansbury)
* 1933
* 1934
* 1935 (Attlee)
* 1936
* 1937
* 1938
* 1939
* 1951
* 1952
* 1953
* 1954
* 1955
* 1956 (Gaitskell)
* 1957
* 1958
* 1959
* 1960
* 1961
* 1962
* 1963 (Wilson)
* 1970
* 1971
* 1972
* 1973
* 1979 (Callaghan)
* 1980 (Foot)
* 1981
* 1982
* 1983 (Kinnock)
* 1984
* 1985
* 1986
* 1987
* 1988
* 1989
* 1990
* 1991
* 1992 (Smith)
* 1993
* 1994 (Blair)
* 1995
* 1996
* 2010 (Miliband)
* June 2016 (Corbyn)
* May 2021 (Starmer)
* November 2021
* 2023

Party structure

| Constitution|

* Clause IV

|

Executive|

* National Executive Committee
* General Secretary
* Treasurer

Parliamentary|

* Parliamentary Labour Party
* Chief Whip of the Labour Party

Conference|

* Labour Party Conference

Subnational|

* Scottish Labour
* Welsh Labour
* Labour Party in Northern Ireland

Directly elected city mayoral authorities|

* London Labour

CLPs|

* Constituency Labour Party
* Labour International

Miscellaneous|

* National Policy Forum
* Affiliated trade unions
* Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation
* Labour Co-operative
* Co-operative Party
* Labour – Federation of Labour Groups

Associated organisations

| List|

* Organisations associated with the Labour Party

|

Sectional groups|

* Young Labour
* Labour International
* LGBT+ Labour
* Labour for Trans Rights
* Labour Students
* BAME Labour
* Disability Labour

Factional groups|

* Blue Labour
* Campaign for Labour Party Democracy
* Christians on the Left
* Compass
* Fabian Society
* Young Fabians
* Future Britain
* Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance
* Jewish Labour Movement
* Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform
* Labour CND
* Labour Friends of Israel
* Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East
* Labour Growth Group
* Labour Party Irish Society
* Labour Representation Committee (2004)
* Labour Women's Network
* Momentum
* Open Labour
* National Union of Labour and Socialist Clubs
* Progressive Britain
* Red Wall Caucus
* Revolutionary Communist Party Formerly Socialist Appeal
* Socialist Health Association
* Socialist Educational Association
* Socialist Environment and Resources Association
* Socialist Campaign Group
* Socialist Youth Network
* Socialist societies

Media publications|

* LabourList
* Tribune

Party alliances

| Current|

* Party of European Socialists
* Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
* Progressive Alliance
* Socialist International

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Hugh Gaitskell

Political career|

* Leader of the Labour Party (1955–1963)
* Chancellor of the Exchequer (1950-1951)
* Member of Parliament for Leeds South (1945–1963)

Shadow Cabinet elections|

* 1951
* 1952
* 1953
* 1954
* 1955

Party leadership elections|

* 1955
* 1960
* 1961

General elections|

* 1959

Family|

* Dora Gaitskell, Baroness Gaitskell (wife)

Related topics|

* Gaitskellism
* Campaign for Democratic Socialism
* Butskellism
* Clause IV debate
* Ann Fleming
* Frognal

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