Well, comrades, that's showbusiness

There are several myths about what Labour Party conferences used to be like. One of them is that they were rather jolly occasions where the delegates from the constituencies mingled with the mighty on terms of easy familiarity. Anyone was in a position to receive a nod from Clem, a smile from Hugh or a wave from Nye. Then along came television to spoil things, and then came "security" to make them much worse, and the old, comradely days were gone for ever.

It is certainly true that security has spoilt conferences. As the Manchester Guardian used to say in its leaders, it is greatly to be hoped that it will be less oppressive in Bournemouth this week. Who, after all, would want to do any mischief to poor Mr Iain Duncan Smith, apart from depriving him of the leadership of his party? But it will probably be the same as always, with the attractive pier placed fatuously out of bounds by an omnipresent constabulary.

Even without the presence of security, however, Labour conferences were hardly egalitarian events. Members of the National Executive Committee and, if Labour happened to be in government, assorted ministers would be at the headquarters hotel, together with the representatives of the more prosperous newspapers. These would be the industrial rather than the political correspondents (who would deign to attend only the Tory conference in the following week). Thus cocooned, they would spend many days in one another's company as if in an ocean liner sailing to Byzantium. Any delegate asking Aneurin Bevan his views on anything would have received the shortest of replies.

The other myth is that Labour governments used to pay the most respectful attention to what conference decided. In the People's Party, by the way, the omission of the definite article before the word "conference" is considered de rigueur. Indeed, Ms Zeinab Badawi, questioning some people in the Winter Gardens on behalf of BBC2, asserted confidently that in former times Labour governments would go into reverse if rebuffed in a vote. How different, how very different, from life under Mr Tony Blair!

But it was never quite like that. In the 1960s the great questions which agitated the conference were Vietnam and the state of the economy as signified by cuts in public expenditure, the condition of sterling and the deficit in the balance of payments (of the last two we hear nothing at all these days). There is, however, a parallel, not so much with the PFI as with the collapse of the stock market, about which an unaccountably complacent Mr Gordon Brown kept understandably quiet but which will affect every single pensioner in the land.

Iraq is a clear parallel to Vietnam, except that Harold Wilson took good care not to commit a single British soldier to the conflict, restricting himself to general expressions of support (as Mr Blair is manifestly not doing with Mr George Bush). If, after any reverse on the conference floor, Wilson was asked what he intended to do next, he would reply:

"The government, your government, the Labour government, will carry on governing."

Nor was James Callaghan any less vigorous in his approach. In 1979 he refused to include the abolition of the Lords in the manifesto, even though it had been passed by a majority at a previous conference greater than the two-thirds required for inclusion in the "party programme" – a Platonic entity from which the manifesto was supposed to be cobbled.

In fact, it was the refusal of the Callaghan government to follow the party's wishes which was the origin of Mr Tony Benn's great success in succeeding years. Its predecessor under Wilson had made greater efforts to please, which had resulted in the 1976 crisis. I well remember Ms Patricia Hewitt's speech at the 1979 conference, where she strenuously urged the necessity of keeping slack Labour ministers under the most stringent control by the party.

Almost a quarter-century later and by now a minister herself, she showed no disposition to welcome such supervision. Nor did the comrades show any great inclination to provide it. Her colleague Ms Estelle Morris escaped even more lightly. She evidently finds as much difficulty in administering A-levels as she did in passing them. She is out of her depth and clearly struggling. As the PE teacher which she herself once was might have put it:

"Come out of the pool immediately, Estelle. That water is much too deep for you."

It would, however, be wrong to conclude that all ministers were given an easy time. Mr Blair – which may surprise you – was not given an easy time. After the Iraq debate, one lot of papers said he had been supplied with a blank cheque to do more or less as he liked, provided he had first gone through various motions with the United Nations. Another lot said that, according to the resolution, any military action had to be authorised by the UN. The first view was supposed to be represented by Mr Jack Straw, the second by Ms Clare Short.

In this feast of interpretation, exegesis and explication, what was missing was what the resolution actually said. I will now tell you. As it is the length of a shortish political column, quotation in full would be tedious and also enable the editor, were he so minded, to accuse me of not providing value for money. It begins with a recent history of Iraq, including a tendentious account of Saddam Hussein's iniquities in the Iranian war: which is rich, not to say fruity, when we remember that we were then urging him on to even greater enormities on our behalf or, at any rate, on that of the United States. The crucial part comes at the end:

"Conference believes that the authority of the UN will be undermined unless it is enforced and recognises that in the last resort this could involve military action but considers this should be taken within the context of international law and with the authority of the UN."

My own view is that this supports Ms Short's interpretation rather than Mr Straw's. In particular, the use of "and" instead of "or" at the end means that, if the UN fails to come up with anything satisfactory to the US, the latter cannot then attempt to justify an attack by recourse to some alleged doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence. People can make up their own minds.

Such an analysis was as remote from anything Mr Blair said next day as it was from what Mr Bill Clinton had to say the day after that. The concupiscent old rascal produced much the same effect as, perhaps, Mr Tom Jones: part of a process of turning politics into a branch of show business that started with J F Kennedy. Wilson strove to follow Kennedy. Mr Blair is imitating Mr Clinton – but with greater plausibility.