Labour Party members yesterday urged the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to abandon plans for a new voting system that could transform the face of British politics.
The party leadership was accused by the leader of the GMB union, Mr John Edmonds, of making "shabby little deals" after it headed off a potentially damaging conference vote on electoral reform.
Opponents of proportional representation for Westminster elections believed they would have secured an overwhelming victory if a motion condemning moves to change from the current first-past-the-post system had been put to the vote.
Many Labour members favoured PR during the party's 18 years in opposition, but Mr Blair's landslide victory in the May 1997 election has curbed the appetite for a system that could hurt Labour and boost the Liberal Democrats. The government is committed to holding a referendum on the issue.
Party handlers managed to avoid embarrassment for Mr Blair by persuading the general secretary of the engineering union AEEU, Mr Ken Jackson, who sponsored a motion highly critical of PR, not to press the issue to a vote.
Speeches in favour of PR were greeted with only polite applause. Mr Richard Burdon, however, said many people were disenchanted with the first-past-the-post system and reminded delegates that "the government's victory last year came from the lowest turnout since the 1930s. That can't be right."
Mr Blair has appointed Lord Jenkins, a former Labour chancellor of the exchequer who left in the 1980s to form the Social Democratic Party, to recommend the best system of PR for Britain.
Lord Jenkins is due to submit his report at the end of the month amid speculation that Mr Blair will risk alienating the Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Paddy Ashdown, by delaying a referendum until after the next election.
In other business, a £500 million programme to tackle "havoc" caused by truants and troublesome teenagers excluded from school was announced by the Education and Employment Secretary, Mr David Blunkett. The scheme includes computerised registration to help track truants and follow up non-attendance with home visits, allowing schools, councils and police to develop "truancy watch" programmes and setting up special school units.
Earlier, the Scottish Secretary, Mr Donald Dewar, led a fierce attack on the Scottish National Party (SNP) ahead of next year's Scottish Parliament elections. He offered a stark contrast between the two parties: "The Labour Party has a detailed, practical blueprint for health, education and housing. For the nationalists, the one defining policy is the break-up of Britain into separate states," he said.
At a separate engagement, Mr Blair, who was praised for the delivery of his speech in Blackpool earlier this week, told an audience of local schoolchildren: "When I was young I certainly didn't think of being a politician. I would have fallen over if you had said I was going to be Prime Minister. I wanted to be an actor for a time - I was very very keen on that. But because my father was a lawyer I decided I wanted to become a lawyer. It was only when I was 25 or 26 I wanted to be a politician."