THERE are moments when to see democracy in action is enough to make one ashamed of being cynical about politics. I am aware that, given what we have heard in recent weeks, this is unlikely to be a widely held view, hut let me explain.

On Monday night, with three days to go to polling day in Britain, I was in the campaign headquarters of the Vauxhall Labour Party in south London. Two young Asian women, graceful as flowers and with their heads bent close together, sat at a small table. One was marking the electoral register, the other was addressing envelopes to the people whose names she had starred.

On the side of the table was a pile of election addresses, written in Urdu, asking people to vote Labour. The first young woman explained to me that not everybody in the Asian community reads Urdu script, so it was important that the letter be sent only to those who could do so. Otherwise, the recipient might feel insulted.

How had they come to be there? A few days previously, she told me, a leaflet had dropped through the letter box, appealing for help in the final days of the campaign. I did not know that it was possible for us to work for a political party here," she said. "It is a privilege for us to work for the Labour Party, We could not do this at home."

Much of the British election campaign, seen on television or through the eyes of journalists who have been corralled into accepting the restrictions imposed by the political parties, has been less than inspiring. There has been little of idealism or generosity from either side, so determined has each been not to frighten the floating voter who is believed to care only about the economy.

It has been depressing to see the Conservative Party tearing itself apart in an increasingly meanspirited argument over Europe. But on the other side, Tony Blair and his New Labour Party have failed to offer anything that might be interpreted as a more generous and inclusive vision for Britain. The poor have scarcely rated a mention. The problems of racial minorities have disappeared from the agenda. The old ideals of equality and the redistribution of wealth have been purged from the public debate.

WE all know the reasons for this abandonment of traditional Old Labour principles. The election campaign has been directed, to all intents and purposes, at 100,000 voters in key marginal seats who have to be persuaded that they have absolutely nothing to fear in the way of social or economic change if Tony Blair becomes prime minister.

Out on the hustings nothing is left to chance. Everything is organised in advance to ensure upbeat, positive pictures and soundbites of a vibrant, young leader accompanied by his clever, elegant and usually silent wife. On one occasion last week a woman journalist was told to take off her brown coat because it was a gloomy distraction from the light, bright clothes being worn by a group of school children and their teacher.

This isn't a free ride. Newspapers and TV have paid £350 a day for each journalist taking the Blair trail or £7,000 for the whole campaign. All this has been designed to make the Labour Party "electable" in a way which, obviously, it has not been for the past 18 years.

It is very easy to recoil from these methods, to feel profoundly shocked at the ruthless fashion in which the Labour leader and those close to him have not only expunged the party's history from their own rhetoric, but have insisted that everybody else toe the line as well. And yet, it has to be said that there is a quite new and dizzying sense of hope and expectation among Labour Party workers that today will bring victory and also a recognition that it is Tony Blair who has made this possible.

I have to declare a personal interest here, at least as far as the Vauxhall constituency is concerned. Kate Hoey, who will be reelected as Labour MP today barring a truly major upset, is an old friend. I have canvassed for her in every election which she has fought since her first campaign in a marginal seat in 1983. There have been some low points the time she lost by less than 100 votes, the traumatic disappointment of Labour's defeat in 1992.

This time it does feel different, though nobody wants to tempt fate by saying so. It isn't that there is any great enthusiasm for Tony Blair, even on the vast housing estates which form the core of Labour's support. But there is also surprisingly little criticism.

People agree that "it is time for a change", that the Conservatives have been in power too long and should be thrown out. That is the real achievement of Tony Blair and those close to him, the much reviled spindoctors such as Peter Mandelson, the party's campaign manager and press supremo, Alistair Campbell. They have made victory seem not only possible, but almost inevitable.

This in itself has created a sense of excitement about the possibility of change, a desire to be on the winning side. Candidates have been told that the main danger now is complacency, that people must be told over and over again to get out and vote, that a failure to do so in marginal seats could still lose the day.

Nobody really knows what will happen after the election. Many people in the Labour Party, who have had to button their lips in exchange for the chance of victory after the wilderness years, are fearful that Tony Blair will be as singleminded and ruthless in power as he has been in the course of winning it. They point to the fact that, even in the course of the past week, he has increasingly emphasised that the remaking of the Labour Party, the strategy for the whole campaign and whatever happens today are his personal achievements.

BUT it is precisely this New Labour Party, which Tony Blair claims to have created, that will provide the most powerful engine for change. The Labour Party is different now. By offering the possibility of getting rid of the Conservatives after 18 years, Blair has attracted many new members who would never previously have dreamt of working for a political party and do not see things in terms of the traditional machine.

One group of canvassers to whom I attached myself last weekend was a typical mix of Old and New Labour. There was a hospital consultant's wife, a gay couple, a young opera singer, two members of the local ethnic communities one Asian, one Afro Caribbean - and, yes, one young Irishman.

All of these people were there to work for a Labour Party victory. I did not hear any of them talking about Tony Blair or what he would do in power. Yet they all wanted to see real changes in the management of whole layers of British society - the National Health Service, discrimination on grounds of sex or colour, care of old people and so on. Today they will work to ensure that this happens, that there is no last minute upset that could snatch victory from their grasp.

In the early hours of tomorrow they will celebrate. But it's my guess that after that they will be impatient to see that New Labour makes a difference.